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Re: Taxol Doesn't Treat Common Breast Cancer
The widely used chemotherapy drug Taxol does not work for the most common form of breast cancer and helps far fewer patients than has been believed, surprising new research suggests.
If further study bears this out, more than 20,000 women each year in the United States alone might be spared the side effects of this drug or similar ones without significantly raising the risk their cancer will return. That would be roughly half of all breast cancer patients who get chemo now.
"We want to make sure these data are correct before withholding it (Taxol) from some patients ... the stakes are high," said the lead researcher, Dr. Daniel Hayes of the University of Michigan. "On the other hand, we don't want to keep a therapy that doesn't work."
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