Cancer Fight: Unclear Tests for New Drug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48VSU4AZ-L0&feature=player_embedded

Key Ideas:

• Dr. Griffith had a test to see whether her tumor had extra copies of a protein, HER2 and if it did, it would respond to a drug, Herceptin, which blocks the protein and stymies the tumor’s growth.
• Drugs aimed at disabling proteins that spur cancer are the future of cancer therapies.
• Herceptin, costing $42,000 a year wholesale, causes flulike symptoms and also has a rare, serious side effect: severe heart damage that can be fatal.
• HER2 tests, can give false-positives up to 20 percent of the time, the tests can tell women they need the drug when they do not, and 5 to 10 percent of the time, the tests can tell a woman that she should not take the drug, when she should.
• Medical experts's best advice is for women to ask that their breast cancer tissue be sent to experienced labs that follow certain procedures

Reflection

I think this story jumped out at me because it has to do with breast cancer. Breast cancer jumped out at me because breast cancer has been genetically passed down through generations on my dad's side of the family. I really hope I do not get it, but if I do feel a lump, I know to get tested as soon as possible. I am now better educated on which decision to make. I now know that taking the Herceptin can cause great harm to my body, and that it most likely isn't the way to go, especially if the tests are very inconsistent. The woman in the story made an educated decision by not taking the drug and going with an alternative route: chemotherapy. This article was interesting to read about, and I hope that medical advances are made to help with the fight against breast cancer. This course helped me to understand this topic because we studied cancer.

MLA: Kolata, Gina. "Cancer Fight: Unclear Tests for New Drug." New York Times. 20 Apr. 2010. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/health/research/20cancer.html.