Beyond the Genome, Cancer’s Secrets Come Into Sharper Focus - NYTimes.com

Understanding how cancer begins and then grows is fundamental to one day preventing the disease. Here, we explain three new theories for how cancer may form.....

Understanding risk : Cancer Research UK

Understanding risk

Every week it seems that there’s a news story about something that increases or cuts the risk of cancer.
Often, these reports are full of numbers - 11 per cent lower risk, 65 per cent increased risk, double the risk - but what do they actually mean?
To make things clearer, there’s a detailed explanation of risk on our Healthy Living pages.
Read our other top tips:

• Look at the numbers
• Look for controls
• Is the research published? If so, where?
• Who funded it?
• Still early days
• Weird, wacky and wonderful

Associations between age and quality of life in advanced ovarian cancer

Background:
..... Few studies have examined whether age influences advanced ovarian cancer patients' prognostic understanding or quality of life at the time of diagnosis."

Understanding Statistics Used to Estimate Risk and Recommend Screening | Cancer.Net

Now's the time to find biomarkers on purpose -- Annals of Oncology

"Studies need to be conducted to determine the optimal design for using genome-wide profiling to identify putative biomarkers of drug response. To date, most biomarkers of drug response identified through genome-wide profiling have occurred through retrospective analysis of available tissue. To really progress this field, realistic planning for biomarker discovery and validation in clinical trials needs to be conducted. We, as clinical scientists, need to progress from only using convenient clinical cohorts to identify biomarkers to actually planning and following through with prospective clinical trials whose aims are to discover and/or validate putative biomarkers of drug response. To initiate a study without a realistic plan for discovery and validation reflects a lack of serious desire to find robust clinical predictors.^.... Until this becomes more commonplace, the genomic revolution will be focused on manuscript generation and investigator career development, leaving the benefit to patients nothing more than an unrealized dream."

NO RESPONSE BY DECISION-MAKERS - sad! Ovarian Advocate - Caelyx for British Columbia Ovarian Cancer Women - funding vs life

FYI - Re: http://www.ovarianadvocate.ca/



February 17th, 2007


Sandi Pniauskas
117 Glen Hill Drive
Whitby, Ontario, Canada
L1N6Z8

Dear Madam/Sirs;

Re: Funding Caelyx for Treatment of Recurrent Ovarian Cancer in British
Columbia

I am writing to appeal to you to ensure that Caelyx is funded as a
treatment for recurrent ovarian cancer, or as deemed necessary, through
patient/physician decision-making. I do this because I have compassion,
understanding and intimate knowledge of the issues which ovarian cancer
women, their families and their friends face. From the initial
pre-surgery consultations to the last breath our ovarian cancer women
take. Research for decades is proof positive that ovarian cancer is the
most lethal of all gynecologic cancers. And yet, how far have we
actually progressed? 'Lethal' today is still the word used to describe
ovarian cancer. And yet, with our lack of decision-making, we actually
in fact consider our ovarian cancer women to be dispensable. They
deserve every chance and in light of extensive research, which you have
already received, the underlying issue of lack of actual access is not
comprehensible to me. I don't believe that I need to educate you on the
evidence-based research which provides sufficient criteria for simply
funding this chemotherapy for ovarian cancer women - today.

Further, it is irresponsible to confuse the economies of providing
Caelyx to ovarian cancer women in need. Confusion -  because it is with
the hopes of remission or extension of life which no economies can ever
truly value in concrete terms.  Further, recent reports indicate that
B.C.'s coffers are flush with funds. It therefore is a matter of
morality and quite simply the ability of the decision-makers to actually
make this decision.

Let us not continue to make mistakes of the past. The disparities in
access to either life-saving or life-extending therapies across
Provinces are well known. As a matter of fact, in the late 1990's,
Canadian ovarian cancer women experienced the very same issue between
Quebec and Ontario. Taxol was accessible to ovarian cancer women in
Quebec, and not in Ontario. It seems we have not yet learned our lessons
and are repeating the same mistakes but at the sacrifice of the valuable
women in our lives. The obvious lesson is that ovarian cancer does not
care where you live, but your survival does. How sad, in fact, that
while Health Care Ministers, Provincially and at the Federal level
discuss these issues, we simply are unable to recognize the deaths - the
actual realities while we wait for decisions. This is not acceptable and
our ovarian cancer women cannot wait. More importantly, the system which
you represent, has failed these women. It is a moral issue and only a
moral issue which stands in the way of ovarian cancer women in British
Columbia having access to this particularly effective chemotherapy.

Since my ovarian cancer diagnosis in 1999, I have been in the very
fortunate situation of surviving. But this survival comes at a price. It
is and has been typically a short term friendship, but one of value,
which words defy. It is and has been their absolute strength and will to
live and, yes, to suffer in silence, that alone deserves our respect by
doing the 'right thing'. You have the ability to give my ovarian cancer
women friends in British Columbia the will and the ability to improve
their life. This is a 'gift' through really a few strokes of the pen.
You can fund Caelyx for our ovarian cancer women in British Columbia. We
cannot wait, we should not have to wait.



Thank you.

Sincerely,

Sandi Pniauskas
email: sandipn@sympatico.ca