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I was in the trenches Phil. I was in the infusion rooms with my wife to know what goes on. I experienced the inappropriate use of chemotherapy to control cancer in patients we met. And those that never showed up again because of it. And I experienced it with my wife. So there is no need to belittle me with that innuendo. Performing laboratory oncology deserves the same degree of professional time and attention as random selection of chemotherapy. In fact, instead of random selection of chemotherapy. There would be a huge advantage for patients to receive a positive/sensitive drug, compared to a negative/resistant drug. The time and energy required to conduct proper "individual" selection pales in comparison to the time, energy and lost opportunities associated with months of ineffective, toxic therapy. I feel your focus on pushing a pharmaceutical company's drug is a disservice to the many that will not be helped by it. The system is overloaded with drugs and underloaded with wisdom and expertise for using them. We are getting an expanding list of treatments which are partially effective in a minority of patients, ineffective in a majority, remarkably effective in a few, while being enormously expensive. Whatever clinical response that has resulted to the average number of patients in a randomized trial is no indication of what will happen to an individual at any particular time. The fastest way to improve things is to match treatment to the patient. Neither would I like to debate this issue too long, but I will defend misrepresentations of my cancer patient advocacy.
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