Any journalist can take an activist's published position and run with it. I expect that most life threatening diseases can have parrallel statements to:
Death rates from cancer have been dropping for about 15 years in the United States, but experts say far too many patients receive inferior care.
Medical advances in the last 50 years is incredible, but you can always find an expert who will criticize the established treatment of diseases. Cancer treatment is particularly difficult to make accurate, broad brush statements about because it is not a single disease, but actually an umbrella description of a large group on the order of 100.
Treatment guidelines approved by experts already exist for 70 to 80 types of cancer (http://www.nccn.org/),
And I don't know the context of the criticsm
but the new measures are the first to be formally endorsed by cancer organizations to assess whether hospitals are performing up to par.
Do all diseases have some formal assessment process to tell how well a hospital is doing?
Most serious ones have formal assessment processes to show how well things are going, yes, although against which specific hospitals are measured I don't know about.
The series I'm publishing is not by "activists." It's by working scientists, and using 30 years of published data. It's ridiculous how little advance we've made with the most common forms of cancer in the last 35 years.
It's ridiculous how little advance we've made with the most common forms of cancer in the last 35 years.
i'm sorry but hat's just not true. I think that Dr. Duesberg's theories of aneuploidy hold up just fine without needing to indict the entire field of cancer research as a corollary.
And the impressive list of references was meaninglesss, Dean, unless we see a footnote next to each assertion that tells you exactly which reference backs it up.
It's by working scientists, and using 30 years of published data
this is also a meaningless statemen. Please provide specific journals in PubMed that back up the asertion that cancer treatment has made no progress in the last three decades.
"It's ridiculous how little advance we've made with the most common forms of cancer in the last 35 years. "
That's a pretty subject statement. Personally, I think it's instead amazing the amount of advance we've made in the last 35 years. Heck, in just the last decade.
The problem is that cancer is a really really hard and diverse problem. If someone believes that someone has a magic bullet and is keeping it from the public to make doctors rich, then of course they might think that progress has been slow (heck, that magic bullet could have just made it all go away!). But if instead you agree with me that cancer is a pretty darn fundamentally hard problem in organisms like us, and evidence is hard to come by (not to mention that treatments are very very hard to test in an evidence-based way because randomized trials are unethical on human beings), it looks to me like we've made all sorts of steady gains in both the effectiveness and comfort of treatments.
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
Medical advances in the last 50 years is incredible, but you can always find an expert who will criticize the established treatment of diseases. Cancer treatment is particularly difficult to make accurate, broad brush statements about because it is not a single disease, but actually an umbrella description of a large group on the order of 100.
And I don't know the context of the criticsm
Do all diseases have some formal assessment process to tell how well a hospital is doing?
The series I'm publishing is not by "activists." It's by working scientists, and using 30 years of published data. It's ridiculous how little advance we've made with the most common forms of cancer in the last 35 years.
"activists"
and working scientists ?
i'm sorry but hat's just not true. I think that Dr. Duesberg's theories of aneuploidy hold up just fine without needing to indict the entire field of cancer research as a corollary.
And the impressive list of references was meaninglesss, Dean, unless we see a footnote next to each assertion that tells you exactly which reference backs it up.
this is also a meaningless statemen. Please provide specific journals in PubMed that back up the asertion that cancer treatment has made no progress in the last three decades.
disclosure - I got my PhD at MD Anderson.
That's a pretty subject statement. Personally, I think it's instead amazing the amount of advance we've made in the last 35 years. Heck, in just the last decade.
The problem is that cancer is a really really hard and diverse problem. If someone believes that someone has a magic bullet and is keeping it from the public to make doctors rich, then of course they might think that progress has been slow (heck, that magic bullet could have just made it all go away!). But if instead you agree with me that cancer is a pretty darn fundamentally hard problem in organisms like us, and evidence is hard to come by (not to mention that treatments are very very hard to test in an evidence-based way because randomized trials are unethical on human beings), it looks to me like we've made all sorts of steady gains in both the effectiveness and comfort of treatments.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.