|
Dear Alaska Angel,
I've been following your posts here and on some level there is nothing I want to say other than: you're right. This is nuts that no one (except you and a few others in cyberspace) is talking about this.
But on the other hand, I think that's how it is going to be. We're in the middle of a huge paradigm shift--generally towards targeted therapies and more particularly towards using herceptin for early stage her2+ breast cancer. There will be follow up trials that come out of the recent adjuvant trials but I don't think any of them will address your questions. They will have to do with figuring out who gets most benefit (through the subset analyses of the current and maturing data, the monitoring of various markers like PTEN and so on) from adjuvant herceptin. There might even be follow up trials to figure out if 6 months is enough.
The reason I don't think your questions will get addressed is that there's no percentage in it. There is this incredibly painful dilemma you've outlined, and it is relevant to thousands of women, but it won't stay relevant. There's not an ever expanding market who will be treated according to the results of the kind of trial you want to see.
So I don't have any advice. Just deep sympathy for this incredible frustration you feel....
Best,
Jeff
|