The Politics of Cancer
Well, the Ride for the Roses Weekend is now just around the corner (actually, next weekend), so soon I will have daily reports and pictures from the big event.
In the interim, I wanted to toss out some striking information that I learned this week when I attended a seminar put on by the Judges and Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert. Consider the following points raised by Dr. Larry Norton, the deputy Physician in Chief for Breast Cancer at Sloan-Kettering.
First, as we probably all already knew, cancer research is driven by the economics of the drug industry. However, in practical application, this means that the more advances that are made in cancer research, the FEWER funds become available for targeting specific therapies. This is because as researchers narrow in on the more specific therapies, there is less of a target audience for the respective resulting drugs. Thus drug companies are less likely to fund research into their development, as it costs approximately $50 million to bring a drug to the market.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is another obstacle in cancer research. In theory, it sounds like a good idea to protect medical privacy and streamline the administrative process. However, in actuality this is a great hindrance to research and, as Dr. Norton noted, patient confidentiality was not an issue to begin with. The problem arises in that under HIPAA, doctors cannot consult old patient charts to correlate tissue samples. They can only consult charts for patients who give specific consent under HIPAA. This dramatically slows down research and makes a wealth of old data useless. The NIH has put up a very interesting web article on the topic here.
The net result of HIPAA restrictions is that doctors are "outsourcing" their research studies overseas. There are inherent problems with this practice, because people in other societies have different diets, are exposed to different pollutants, and populations overseas may be more homogeneous, thereby skewing research results.
And then there is the issue of bans on stem cell research...But I will keep my mouth shut about that one until it gets a little bit closer to November 2. :)
* * *
Wow, I've topped $26,000! Thank you, thank you!
2004 Fundraising goal: $20,000
Raised to date: $26,410
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE
In the interim, I wanted to toss out some striking information that I learned this week when I attended a seminar put on by the Judges and Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert. Consider the following points raised by Dr. Larry Norton, the deputy Physician in Chief for Breast Cancer at Sloan-Kettering.
First, as we probably all already knew, cancer research is driven by the economics of the drug industry. However, in practical application, this means that the more advances that are made in cancer research, the FEWER funds become available for targeting specific therapies. This is because as researchers narrow in on the more specific therapies, there is less of a target audience for the respective resulting drugs. Thus drug companies are less likely to fund research into their development, as it costs approximately $50 million to bring a drug to the market.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is another obstacle in cancer research. In theory, it sounds like a good idea to protect medical privacy and streamline the administrative process. However, in actuality this is a great hindrance to research and, as Dr. Norton noted, patient confidentiality was not an issue to begin with. The problem arises in that under HIPAA, doctors cannot consult old patient charts to correlate tissue samples. They can only consult charts for patients who give specific consent under HIPAA. This dramatically slows down research and makes a wealth of old data useless. The NIH has put up a very interesting web article on the topic here.
The net result of HIPAA restrictions is that doctors are "outsourcing" their research studies overseas. There are inherent problems with this practice, because people in other societies have different diets, are exposed to different pollutants, and populations overseas may be more homogeneous, thereby skewing research results.
And then there is the issue of bans on stem cell research...But I will keep my mouth shut about that one until it gets a little bit closer to November 2. :)
* * *
Wow, I've topped $26,000! Thank you, thank you!
2004 Fundraising goal: $20,000
Raised to date: $26,410
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE
I am an entertainment and intellectual property lawyer and have been for 13 years (since 1997 I have run the website 
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