For cancer patients, the harsh side effects of powerful drugs have long been the trade-off for living longer. Now, patients and doctors are questioning whether all that suffering is necessary.
They’ve ignited a movement to radically change how new cancer drugs are tested, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urging drugmakers to do a better job at finding the lowest effective dose, even if it takes more time.
I don’t know I always felt not dying was worth feeling like absolute shit for a while.
The patient featured in the article has survived lung cancer for 15 years. Seems a little long to feel badly when it’s possible for newer types of therapies to use lower doses that are just as effective.
I have a loved one with permanent nerve damage from chemo. We’re very happy the chemo was successful, but imagine a combo of numbness and constant pain for the rest of your life in all your fingers, which becomes dramatically more severe with exposure to cold. It makes make simple daily life tasks from driving, to cooking, etc. far more difficult. They do not tell patients in advance they are going to continue the treatments until the point where permanent damage happens. You only realize after going through it that this was the plan all along. It makes medical talk about informed consent feel ridiculous. The severity fluctuates, but it has already been like 7 years, and this is never going away. It is not for “a while”.
Your comment comes across as ignorant and flippant tbh. When treatment makes you so ill you’d rather die, a lot of people choose to stop treatment. If a lower dose can be effective, shouldn’t that be explored, so that people’s quality of life can improve and they are able to make it through to the end of treatment?
I would have thought they would be doing that already… TIL
I’m not sure but I think some of these drugs can make permanent damage.
Obviously survival remains the topmost concern, but thinking about side effects sounds like the logical next step now that we’ve made tremendous progress with survival.