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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:09 AM
Subject: re: Cancer Fight: Unclear Tests for New Drug
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:09 AM
Subject: re: Cancer Fight: Unclear Tests for New Drug
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rules have enshrined a wrong concept of what cancer is, and people are dying for this error. Currently, the FDA defines cancers by their tissues of origin. That may be a sufficient definition for a surgeon, to whom any cancer is a lump to be cut out. For a scientist developing new cancer treatments or for an oncologist trying to treat patients, a cancer is defined by the genetic defects that drive it. To them, Herceptin is a drug that kills cancers that are driven by HER2, be they in the breast or the stomach or anywhere else. When one has a proper understanding of what cancers are, Dr.Griffith's case isn't ambiguous; she has two cancers. Both are in her breast, only one of them seems to be driven by HER2. We hope that Herceptin does kill the cancer driven by HER2. She may need an entirely different treatment for the other one.
Barry Levine
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