Unregistered

here are few of the statistics cited in the paper:

1. the u.s national cancer institute states that in patients previously treated with cytotoxic chemo whose tumors overexpress her/2, administration of herceptin as a single agent resulted in a 21 percent response rate, the median duration of their response was 9.1 months, while the median duration of survival was 13 months. since this was a phase 2, single arm trial we do not know how these patients would have fared with a different anticancer treatment, or no treatment at all. why are there no studies about how women live, survive, progress without treatment???

2.for women with advanced breast cancer with her/2 herceptin, on an average , extended their lives by about 5 months, compared to chemo alone.however their was serious heart damage in 1/4 of the patients in the study. 27%

3.when we get to overall survival (piccart-gerhart study) there were 37 deaths overall in the observation group(2.2) percent as opposed to 29 deaths (1.7) percent in the herceptin group. not really any significance at all

4. concerning the graph. it show a graph from the piccart-gebhart study showing the percentage of patients surviving with either hercptin or observation alone(i.e no further cancer treatment)the two lines on the graph
a solid one showing survival with herceptin and a dotted one showing survival with no herceptin- are virtually indistinuishable.

5.conflict of intrest......Dr. hortobagyi, a breast specialist at m.d.anderson, houston, wrote an accompanying editorial in the new england journal of medicine. he is one of the best known figures in contemporary oncology. yet he qoutes this about herceptin........"the strenth of evidenceis so overwhelming at this point that it would be almost immpossible to withhold this drug"Herceptin should be made the standard."
well what is disturbing is that dr hortobagyi, serves as a paid consultant to gentech, and has recieved monetary honoraria from Pharmacia and astraZeneca. That makes me skeptical was someone has their fingers in the pot.
6. the rest is about cardiotoxic side effects. and i know we all agree that that is an issue.

i just want to clarify that my position is concerning taking herceptin as a stand alone treatment. which is the decsion i am faced with. my muga was only 58% before i had any chemo, i.e. ac/t and herceptin and i haven't had a second one yet. im just wondering how many times you women who are 3 and 4 year survivors have been through chemo? 2 times, 3, 4? more? i am curious.i just dont want to be someone driven by desperation and fear. i want to use the good sense god gave me and not listen to every pharmacutical company and dr that stands to benifit from a standarized treastment with their drug. the trial was to short. and nobody know the true picture of herceptin. based on what i read here i am not impressed with the handful of people who praise the name of herceptin as the"cure". last week in the submitted articals forum, some newbie wrote"looking for survivors", well when i read the post there wer only a couple out of 450 members and how many visitors to this site who could site an instance of survival. i am trying to be realistic, the numbers just are not there without including years and years of chemo therapy treatments. i can understand saying you've survived with chemo, but i really dont see through study and numbers how you can attribute your success to herceptin.