Cancer cost "becoming unsustainable" in rich nations

[HuckleB]

Source: Reuters

An explosion of new technologies and treatments for cancer coupled with a rapid rise in cases of the disease worldwide mean cancer care is rapidly becoming unaffordable in many developed countries, oncology experts said on Monday.

With costs ballooning, a radical shift in thinking is needed to ensure fairer access to medicines and address tricky questions like balancing extra months of life for patients against costs of a new drug, technology or care plan, they said.

"The cancer community needs to take responsibility and not accept a sub-standard evidence base and an ethos of very small benefit at whatever cost," said a report commissioned by the Lancet Oncology medical journal on the costs of cancer care.

"There should be fair prices and real value from new technologies."


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/26/us-cancer-costs-idUSTRE78P26B20110926

---

Interesting piece of the equation.

[HereSince1628]

1. Wasn't this story run in a British paper over the weekend?

I remember the content...

[the other one]

2. I've read that cannibis shrinks tumors. That's cheap.

Google it.

Course it won't happen...

[HuckleB]

4. Researchers are in early stages of looking at cannabis extracts as cancer treatments.

One example: http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/11/cannabis_extract_for_cancer.php

[valerief]

14. Everything is a friggin' early stage. They've been looking at this and that for decades.

All early stages. They don't want to get rid of cancer. They want to get rid of people with cancer!

[Lorien]

20. They figured it out decades ago, we're just not allowed to talk about it:

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/dying_to_have_known

[TheWraith]

23. Can we please keep the pseudoscientific nuttiness out of this?

The "Gerson therapy" has long since been scientifically disproven, multiple times. It has no benefits.

[HuckleB]

26. Dude.

Vaccines are evil.

Nature will cure itself.

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[radhika]

5. Why not make primary research part of a Global Commons?

If I recall from my school days, the US started NIH as a place to do primary research on serious maladies, such as cancer. That changed as for-profit Pharma co-opted the public commons. But maybe it's time to resuscitate that idea. Not just here, but globally for things like AIDS and cancer.

[silverweb]

6. +1000

:thumbsup:

[Downwinder]

7. Add cancer costs to energy costs.

[plumbob]

8. Too bad useless hulking belching autos and trucks are still considered sustainable.

No one understands production anymore. Scale it up so per unit costs drop, dipshits.

That's what happens when bankers are considered producers and profits are considered a product. Neither is true.

[liberalhistorian]

9. Even though he works hard, hubby and I are

uninsured (his job doesn't offer it) and middle-aged. Our ages make individual insurance impossibly unaffordable, even though we're both healthy and have never had any type of major illnesses. One of my greatest fears is one of us getting cancer because I don't know how the hell we'd pay for the treatment, if we could even find a place that would treat us with no insurance and without tons of money upfront, money we just don't have (who the hell does have tens of thousands, if not hundreds, upfront unless you're wealthy, in which case you wouldn't need to worry about it anyway). And then good luck getting any insurance at all once we've had cancer.

[izquierdista]

17. You'd buy a plane ticket

And go where treatment is affordable. You can find places that will treat you, just not in the United States.

[On the Road]

10. This is an Area

where medical advances could result in a big economic boost if they can become more effective at lower cost.

[Xtraneous]

11. Explosion of new technologies + explosion of cancer

= big profits! not a coincidence.
Less and less access to healthy food and water, in rich and poor societies, is ignored over developing new technologies. How apt!

[HuckleB]

12. People living longer because they have more access to food, water and health care.

Are you really going to ignore that part of the equation?

[KT2000]

15. Expolsion of cancer

I recall an industry toad who appeared on TV saying how it was really not necessary to take regulatory measures to prevent skin cancer because it was curable. He was incorrect but he demonstrated the mindset of those fighting regulation.

We currently have about 100,000 chemicals in commercial use that were not in our environment 50-60 years ago. Most of those chemicals have not even been tested for human health effects. Some went through a testing lab in Canada and came up clean. That lab (a favorite of corporate America), was found to be conducting fraudulent testing. Their mice were being born and giving birth on the same dates etc. All of those chemicals were grandfathered in with no further testing.

There are loopholes in the chemical safety net that industry has made sure are there so they can rush products to market.

It is only a minute number of chemicals that have been thoroughly tested - probably much less than 100.

Currently corporations are fighting regulatory requirements that chemicals be tested for hormone mimicing effects in the body. They have fought this off for decades. Please remember this when you hear about women with breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, endometrial cancer and men with prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

The group with the fastest rise in cancer is children.

[HuckleB]

16. Thanks for the claims.

Now, can you back them up with evidence beyond small and sketchy studies, or other "experts" making more claims?

[KT2000]

18. Do your homework

There are many books you should read for your own education.
Chemical Exposures:Low Levels High Stakes - Nicholas Ashford PhD and Claudia Miller Md
Chemical Exposure and Disease - Janette Sherman MD
Toxic Deception - Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle, Center for Public Integrity
many more - check Amazon and your public library

For children's cancer google the name Philip Landrigan MD
there is a good article in Environmental Health Perspectives: Environmental Pollutants and Disease in American Children: Estimates of Morbidity, Mortality, and Costs for Lead Poisoning, Asthma, Cancer, and Developmental Disabilities. - Vol. 110, no. 7, Jul2002
While you are in Environmental Health Perspectives look for other articles by Landrigan. In EHP you can also trace the history of hormone mimicking chemicals, the proposed models and the resistance from industries that do not want to consider their health implications or have that testing required.

* Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) is a publication of the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Quote from a 2006 GAO report "reviews of new chemicals provide only limited assurance that health and environmental risks are identified because TSCA does not require companies to test chemicals before they notify EPA of their intent to manufacture the chemicals." I am sure you can figure out how to find the report. There is quite a bit of damning info in that report. Go to GAO webiste and search

From Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine - "Cancer Health Risks Significantly Underestimated by EPA's Model Estimate."

The fraudulent lab info can be found in news articles and books that recount chemicals safety. Al Gore, when he was VP, initiated a plan to get those and other chemicals completely tested. Guess what happened to that.

Here is what you need to know. There is a vast amount of environmental health research that is quarantined much like the news of the Wall Street protesters. The info just does not make it into mainstream medicine and politicians beholding to corporate donations are loathe to mention such things - but there are a few exceptions.

HuckleB - I know you are something of a quackwatch, corporate person who likes to generate little fights. But why don't you use your energy to learn what you need to know to protect your safety and that of your loved ones. The government and the corporations are not protecting you. At least your posts allow me to post some truth for others who may be interested.

[HuckleB]

19. I've done my homework, and your usual, "I found a sketchy pseudo-link" to conspiracy nonsense...

... combined with your ad hominem attacks serve no good purpose.

Learn to understand science. Cut the crap. You are not serving any good purpose here.

[valerief]

13. Too bad they won't get rich of the carcinogens that cause most cancers. It's cheaper

to keep them and let everyone die quickly. THE REPUBLICAN HEALTHCARE PLAN.

[Lorien]

21. They get rich off both the carcinogens and the cancer

which is why the FDA and American Cancer Society try to stop effective treatments from entering the market. Don't believe me? Then watch this film from beginning to end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0ibsoqjPac

[TheWraith]

24. Little problem: that film is complete fantasy.

You'd get more accurate scientific information out of watching The Lord of the Rings.

Burzynski's claims are, like all the other claims of miracle cancer cures, completely unfounded scientifically. They have repeatedly been tested and debunked, because they don't work.

[Fearless]

22. So I guess the wealthy should be the only ones getting treatment.

:eyes:

[andym]

25. Almost every new anti-cancer "blockbuster" is a billion dollar a year drug

so of course treatment is going to be expensive. Problem is how to reduce the costs of such drugs given the costly safety trials necessary to prove efficacy. Perhaps some kind of cost "cap" ?