An interesting article about the treatment provided by Response Oncology:
Health Business Thrives on Unproven
Treatment, Leaving Science Behind
nytimes.com
West of Response Oncology said his company intended to keep selling transplants. Calls to stop offering them are "an oversimplification," he said, because the trials were not definitive. More trials and years of further study are needed, he said.
At bottom, he said, critics are missing the point. What matters, he said, is not whether the treatment has been shown to work but whether studies are producing more knowledge.
"You could say there was only one important question and you didn't answer that one," West said. "I know you want to think of it as a drug that either works or doesn't. I think of it more as a platform that needs to be modified and studied."
So now oncologists and companies say they will press ahead, continuing to sell a painful, expensive procedure that the best available science says is no improvement over standard care, which is less traumatic. Some patient advocates and doctors find this a troubling abandonment of the rigors of science.
"I don't have a problem with oncologists who say, 'We really have to do something for these patients, they are facing a terribly short future,' " said Alan Garber, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. "The problem is when they start to do things that have been tested and have not proven effective. Then you are leaving the arena of science and going into blind faith."
Is Response Oncology based on an expensive and bogus product? |
