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Financial interests cut both ways
But don't financial interests cut both ways? I mean the Finnish trial is the first one not funded by Genentech. As great as herceptin is, three weekly herceptin is a pain in the backside and I do worry about cardiotoxicity.
If you can get a statistically strong result from a small number (and this result was very strong) then that is actually much more credible result than one gotten by cobbling two not-entirely-identical studies together and passing this cut and shunt off as if it were standard automobile (the Lancet was right about this aspect of the ASCO presentations unfortunately), although I do wish that the Swedish researchers had done four taxotere+herceptin followed by four FEC 75 (nobody uses FEC60 now). Despite the small numbers (although big enough for a normal distribution) the Finnish trial is pretty close to demonstrating improved overall survival by methodologically impeccable means.
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