It is often assumed that before they can be made available to patients, drugs and medical treatments must first be proven unequivocally effective through rigorous clinical trials. Surprisingly though, this is by no means always the case. For example, a paper written by three Australian oncologists and published last year in the journal Clinical Oncology, showed that the contribution of chemotherapy to the five-year survival of adult cancer patients was extremely small - averaging between 2 and 5 percent (Morgan 2004). Most patients - and probably many oncologists too - generally assume, almost as a matter of faith, that the benefit is much greater.
Ralph Moss critiques the benefits of Nexavar and other targeted cancer therapies in his weekly email. For the rest of the story click here.
