Thank you for the quote, John. I used it to find a newspaper article on the matter, see below.
I feel rather offended that they describe an 'unholy alliance' between drugs companies and desperate breast cancer patients, which really smacks of backroom deals. I don't think that this is accurate at all and I would like some proof of collusion.
A lot of women have been working really hard to get their often very sad stories out there so they can get herceptin and have done so completely independent from the drugs companies. I got involved because really high-risk patients weren't getting herceptin ( such as a thirty-three year old with er-,pr-, inflammatory breast cancer, diagnosed while pregnant). The oncologists have been pressing for this as well.
Anyway, here's the URL for the story.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/09/news/lancet.php