[Gina]

I promise not to jump on my soap box, but reading this article just underscores to me that we are not treating the disease properly and that is why there has been really no improvement in survival...I think the same is true of most cancer. In any other venue, besides cancer research, if you had a model that failed between 85 and 90 per cent of the time, it is not the patients you would throw out with the bath water, but the model...in a corporate environment, if you were working on say a marketing plan that failed 85 per cent of the time to get the word out and if your boss was Donald Trump, YOU KNOW YOU WOULD BE SO "FIRED" that it wouldn't be funny and it wouldn't take 30 years.

I think it is just awful that they always blame the ever elusive "cancer" for the cause of so many deaths and never dare question if the model from which they work is correct or not. Also, I never get why oncologists can give the same treatment combo again and again and watch the patients die and die every time and never question their treatment, or even think to try something different next time.

Basically, a lot of you who know me from the past know that I do not support the traditional model for her-2 mediated disease and espouse rather an infection based root of this disease. Although not published, I have binders of evidence to support some sort of bacterial root to this horrible illness, but no one wants to talk cause anymore...just "cure, cure, cure," and here I am, against all odds, still living 10 years out, and there is still no cure. I think Science with a capital S has let us all down, with the exception of the invention of herceptin. If you have IBC that has a her-2 component, you should do everything you can to keep your immune system working. Many of you at first know that you were diagnosed with a breast infection...but when traditional anti-biotics failed on you, the doctors, immediately jumped to the C-word and your life has never been the same. Maybe instead of taking the easy way out, they should have continued to look harder at what was really going on...there are many bacteria that can not be cultured, and many others that barely leave the slightest trace of their undoing, but they are there, nevertheless, if only we would look for them...but once the C-word hits, no further investigation is made and the rest, well, is not good.

Best advice, as much as possible, take herceptin if you are eligible and fight your illness as you would a horrible infection...let's change the model and the improved outcomes will take care of themselves.

Genuinely concerned,
Gina