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Christine MH-UK · 06-18-2006, 02:35 PM

This report came out last autumn, at a time when it had not yet been shown that herceptin improved overall survival at all.

I definitely belief the stories about the drugs company approaching women in the UK. I believe that there was even a ham-fisted attempt by somebody connected with Roche, posing as a medical student of all things, to mobilise patients through a chatroom in which I participate. Of course, there was more to it than that. Alot of women, including myself, were involved in a real grassroots campaign to get the government to move faster on herceptin, since even women with her2+ inflammatory breast cancer weren't getting it. The government body that recommends treatments was originally expected to approve herceptin in February 2008, which seemed to slow. So, there was some real grassroots but there some 'astroturf' out there as well. And there was alot of hype in the UK, partly due to the more sensationalist newspaper's casting things in black and white, such as making it seem like women were 'condemned to death' without herceptin.

In the end, however, the UK's National Institute of Clinical Excellent recently recommend herceptin and they are pretty strict about what they will accept. They are so strict that they recently failed to recommend taxotere, even though it seems to be highly cost effective, simply because Sanofi-Aventis hadn't sought a license for the most relevant chemo combination. The NICE document only looked at herceptin after chemo and did raise questions, such as whether the benefits of herceptin would really last a lifetime or maybe only buy five extra years. It only looked at herceptin after chemo:

http://www.nice.org.uk/page.aspx?o=328476

The real question about herceptin now isn't whether it works to increase overall survival, but whether the current treatment is perhaps much longer and more expensive than it needs to be. There have been some excellent results from smaller trials using just herceptin + taxane (with or without platinum salt) followed by anthracycline (FEC or AC) and these shorter treatments seem to have alot less cardiotoxicity.

06-18-2006, 02:35 PM	#8
Christine MH-UK Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 414	May be a bit dated This report came out last autumn, at a time when it had not yet been shown that herceptin improved overall survival at all. I definitely belief the stories about the drugs company approaching women in the UK. I believe that there was even a ham-fisted attempt by somebody connected with Roche, posing as a medical student of all things, to mobilise patients through a chatroom in which I participate. Of course, there was more to it than that. Alot of women, including myself, were involved in a real grassroots campaign to get the government to move faster on herceptin, since even women with her2+ inflammatory breast cancer weren't getting it. The government body that recommends treatments was originally expected to approve herceptin in February 2008, which seemed to slow. So, there was some real grassroots but there some 'astroturf' out there as well. And there was alot of hype in the UK, partly due to the more sensationalist newspaper's casting things in black and white, such as making it seem like women were 'condemned to death' without herceptin. In the end, however, the UK's National Institute of Clinical Excellent recently recommend herceptin and they are pretty strict about what they will accept. They are so strict that they recently failed to recommend taxotere, even though it seems to be highly cost effective, simply because Sanofi-Aventis hadn't sought a license for the most relevant chemo combination. The NICE document only looked at herceptin after chemo and did raise questions, such as whether the benefits of herceptin would really last a lifetime or maybe only buy five extra years. It only looked at herceptin after chemo: http://www.nice.org.uk/page.aspx?o=328476 The real question about herceptin now isn't whether it works to increase overall survival, but whether the current treatment is perhaps much longer and more expensive than it needs to be. There have been some excellent results from smaller trials using just herceptin + taxane (with or without platinum salt) followed by anthracycline (FEC or AC) and these shorter treatments seem to have alot less cardiotoxicity.