Listen
A new documentary explores of one man's struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Fighting For Cancer Drugs
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, May 29, 2008.
listen:
Cancer patients and their advocates are criticizing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the approval of new cancer drugs. They accuse the FDA of blocking experimental drugs that could save thousands of lives.
Cancer strikes one in three Americans, kills one in four, and is only second to heart disease as the nation’s biggest killer. New experimental medications offer some hope. But the FDA’s stringent regulations mean only 8 percent of such drugs get final approval. The regulation process slowed down even more when the FDA came under Congressional scrutiny after it approved Merck's painkiller Vioxx, later pulled off the market in 2004 because of safety concerns.
The advocacy group Care To Live is holding a nationwide protest Friday against the FDA for delaying the approval of a prostate cancer vaccine called Provenge. An FDA advisory committee voted 17-0 that it was safe, and 13-4 that it showed substantial evidence of being effective.
Business Week senior writer Catherine Arnst wrote about the battle over new cancer drugs, and joins Word of Mouth to discuss why cancer drugs are being held up.
(Photo by Derek K. Miller)
Search us
Podcast
Word of Mouth is on the move! Sign up for our podcast and take the show wherever you go.
Contact us
Say what you want to say. How you want to say it. We want to hear from you.
About us
Word of Mouth is all about what's new. Online and on-air, the show looks at our fascinating and ever-changing world, and puts the latest ideas under a microscope. Word of Mouth investigates everything from science and technology, to health and the environment, to new trends in popular culture. The show airs Monday through Thursday at noon and is hosted by Virginia Prescott.
Support From
 | |
THE NEXT GREEN THING
is supported by
supporting environmental education
and awareness and committed
to responsible forestry
It seems that our culture today forgot to use what we claim to have that makes us "higher" than the animals, our brains. If wedid use them, we'd reason that what we put into our cells, either strenghtnes, or mutates them. What we put nto our organs, either optimizes our health and immunity, or compromises it.
Doctors are successfully using organic plant based foods to reduce, reverse and help heal our organs from the ravages of the SAD, Standard American Diet, poisoned with hormone ridden, fat ridden, chemical ridden, processed foods. It's really shocking that even with babies having 240 chemicals in their cord blood, people are still so under-informed about where those chemcials come from. Eating highest on the so called food chain, causes our bodies to absorb higher amounts of carcinogens from the animal flesh and feed filled with toxins. Fat from eating meat and dairy, and the IGF-1 hormone on cows, dramatically increases cancer rates. (www.pcrm.org, www.notmilk.com) It would be refreshing to listen to a radio organization dig a bit deeper into why the cancer rates are even happening, instead of commercializing this preventable(as most are) disease to continue to fill the pockets of shareholders in R&D, drug manufacturering, and agribusiness.
The book written on the longest study in nutrition, a 50 year comparative research project, The China Study, should take precedent over the discussions of Indianna Jone movies. It would save lives, millions of them.