Perils of Experimental Cancer Drugs

[Guest guest]

Researchers said cancer doctors regularly resort to drugs still undergoing

testing, as long as they have been approved for other diseases or in different

combinations or doses.

But because the science is still up in the air, nobody really knows what the

consequences of taking such drugs are.

" Many of these drugs end up not being the tremendous improvement that we hoped

they would be, " said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American

Cancer Society, who was not involved in the new study.

" People need to realize that because the trials have not been completed there is

a great deal that is not known about the treatments, " he told he told Reuters

Health. " There are people who get these treatments and get hurt. "

The new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, looked at 172

clinical trials published over two years. Less than a third of the clinical

trials showed the experimental drugs improved patient survival, and less than

half found the drugs helped other clinical outcomes.

Those numbers could even be too high, researchers say, because negative findings

tend not to be published. On the other hand, two thirds of the trials reported

increases in at least one severe or life-threatening side-effect. Most of the

drugs under scrutiny had already been approved in different doses or

combinations -- or for different diseases -- and were available on the U.S.

market.

" In most cases, we should refrain from using experimental drugs outside of

clinical trials. " And it's not only patients taking the experimental drugs that

may feel the impact. Trials are designed to compare new drugs with existing ones

that have been deemed safe and effective by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Signing a patient up for a trial therefore often means only a 50-50 chance that

he or she will get the new drug. So doctors may choose to prescribe it off label

instead, and insurance companies often pay for it.

http://tinyurl.com/4t53gj4

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HOSPITAL ERRORS CAUSE MANY DEATHS

NaturalNews) Your local hospital just might be more of a death trap than an

actual health care facility. A new report issued by the Office of Inspector

General at the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) says that every month

roughly 134,000 hospital patients experience some type of adverse event during

their stays. And about 15,000 of them die every month due to various medical and

surgical errors.

According to the report, such adverse events include surgery mistakes,

medication dosage errors, improper care protocols, and transmission of infection

due to filthy conditions. In fact, patients are often admitted to hospitals in

healthier condition than when they leave (if they even do), and much of the time

their health declines are a result of avoidable medical errors.

Many hospitals are also hotbeds of infectious diseases like

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the infamous hospital

" superbug " that kills roughly 48,000 people every year

(http://www.naturalnews.com/028441_s...).

Nearly 50 percent of all adverse event problems are avoidable, according to the

report. But since there is no tracking system in place to address the problems

and work towards fixing them, many hospitals continue to make them without

consequence -- and the vast majority of hospital patients have no idea about the

significant risks they face.

" This report shows that hospital patients are being harmed by medical errors at

an alarming rate, " explained McGiffert from Consumers Union, in a

statement. " Unfortunately, most Americans have no way of knowing whether their

hospital is doing a good job preventing medical errors. "

http://tinyurl.com/29qfh3l

FYI,

Lottie Duthu

Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/030460_medical_msitakes_patients.html#ixzz1CUeyhJAP