The latest breakthrough in cancer treatment could prove to be “the cure” that kills it all, including a $50 billion-a-year industry. Dr. Carl June and his team at The University of Pennsylvania Medical Center have discovered a fresh, yet promising procedure that has leukemia patients marveling and pharmaceutical companies weary.

On August 10, 2011, the New England Journal of Medicine announced that the Alliance of Cancer Gene Therapy funded a clinical trial performed on three patients with the most common type of blood disease, chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The innovation that genetically alters T-cells and infuses them back into the body after chemotherapy has astonishingly decimated over six pounds of cancer in 28 days. All three terminally ill subjects have been in remission for over 10 months with two of the three having no trace of malignant cells, and the other with 75 percent shrinkage in the tumor.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. alone averages 15,000 new cases of leukemia every year, killing 4,300. The only treatment available is to undergo chemotherapy and radiation to stall the disease, and life-threatening bone marrow transplants to aid in remission. Dr. June said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg, “This is like a bone marrow transplant where the patient is the donor…this might make treatment more widely available with less long-term toxicity.”

His new procedure takes a small sample of the patient’s own T-cells extracted from their blood, and genetically modifies them to recognize cancer cells. They are then mixed with genetically harvested T-cells that have a similar coding to the HIV virus in the sense that they multiply 1000 fold when infused back into the body. Four days after chemotherapy, when the white blood cells are at their lowest and weakest points, the new genetically altered T-cells are given in one dose for three days, and act as replacement “serial killing” cells. Dr. June said of the research, “the results exceeded our expectations quite a bit.” Oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. David Steensma, who wasn’t involved in the study said, “[the army of T-cells] not only has attacked and cleared the field but it’s also set up a patrol to make sure the enemy doesn’t come back.”

So if a potential cure has been found, then why is there a lack of funding for further research and clinical trials? Both the pharmaceutical industry and the government’s National Institute of Health have denied financing this project and many others in the past. An ongoing battle since the 1970s has prevented a cure from obliterating not only a life altering disease, but also that of a lucrative cancer industry.

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Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has introduced critical legislation that aims to stem the coming tide of rationing of America’s health care services. The PATIENT’s Act will ensure doctors and patients have the final say about medical treatment and new ObamaCare created “comparative effectiveness research” will not put a government created barrier to better treatment.

On the surface, there is nothing inherently wrong with “comparative effectiveness research.” Advocates believe it will save the taxpayers money by studying whether alternative and cheaper treatments are just as effective as currently prescribed methods of treatment. ObamaCare appropriated nearly $1 billion for such studies.

The problem, however, is when government takes that research and mandates a “one-size-fits-all” health care regimen that does not fit every patient . And with government mandated to reduce the cost of health care, these studies will assuredly become the intellectual justification of rationing. Here’s why.

Doctors have a unique relationship with their patients. They know how they respond to treatments. Government bureaucrats do not know, and frankly do not care, how an individual responds. They care about the big picture – the bottom line. If they can show cost savings by swapping a drug, they will do it. That appears to be happening with the drugs Lucentis and Avastin.

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There’s a bad law on the books that is costing lives every single day.

Cancer patients from around the country have teamed up with a world-famous doctor, a non-profit and the Institute for Justice in a major federal lawsuit against the U.S. Attorney General to change that.

This week, we argued before the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  (You can listen to the audio of the argument here.)

As our client Kumud Majumder wrote this Monday in the USA Today:

My 11-year-old son, Arya, was an angel who transformed my life. His death from leukemia last April took away not just my only child, it also took away my very heart and soul, and triggered the collapse of my 23-year marriage.

Arya’s tragedy happened in part because of a lack of bone marrow donors. Each year, as many as 3,000 people in the U.S. die waiting for a bone marrow donor match. A significantly higher number of people die from complications arising from partially matched donors. This is largely avoidable, and the shortage of donors is made worse by a federal law that I and other families of cancer patients are fighting in federal court.

There is chronic shortage of bone marrow donors in the United States.   The sad reality is that cancer patients die every day as a result.  More people would likely donate their bone marrow if we did one simple thing:  compensate them.

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As the Congress prepared to vote to let us enter the world of waits for doctors, waits for specialists, waits for testing and waits for surgery, radiation and chemo, we should pause to consider the relative records of the private medical care system in the United States with the socialized system in the U.K.

In 2008, Britain had a cancer death rate 0.25% while the United States had a rate of only 0.18%.  The UK cancer death rate was 38% higher than in the United States.

The Guardian, the UK’s left wing daily, estimated that “up to 10,000 people” are dying each year of cancer “because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services.”  While many people die because of late detection due to their own negligence, there is no reason to believe this self-neglect is more common in the UK than in the US. (more…)