Patient Perspective: Leukemia
A new generation of precise and powerful drugs known as "targeted therapies" may represent a better way to treat many cancers, bringing hope for patients with rare cancers. Leukemia treatments are blazing the trail.
"Slowly, many scientists believe, the drugs are transforming cancer treatment. But for now, the drugs are still only a whisper of hope. They are not a miracle cure and not fully understood. Many are still in clinical trials. Those that work often help patients in subsets of disease—one kind of leukemia, one type of breast cancer...
"Yet for all they are not, it is what the drugs achieve for the lucky few that captures the imagination: the stories that patients tell of teetering near death, only to see a stunning comeback, at least for a while. They can mean an extra three months or five months or a year—another Christmas with the family, another season to plant a garden, another passage in the life of a child. Side effects, the bane of cancer treatment, are comparatively few."167
—Donna St. George,
The Washington Post
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Endnotes:
167 D. St. George, "Time in a Bottle; A New Generation of Precision Cancer Drugs Is Seducing Patients with the Possibility of Adding Months, Even Years, to Their Lives. If Only They Could Get Their Hands on Them," The Washington Post, 18 January 2004.
