[C]ure for skin cancer: Doctors announce historic breakthrough as 'spectacular' drugs bring hope to

Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 16:04 EST, 28 September 2013 | Stephen Adams

[Olog-hai]

Scientists have developed breakthrough drugs that cure skin cancer.

The treatment is already having “spectacular” effects in seriously ill melanoma patients—and could soon be used to defeat other types of cancer. …

One in six patients ravaged by deadly skin cancer are already being cured by the drugs, the European Cancer Congress was told yesterday, with the possibility of more than half being saved with an new combination. …

The first is ipilimumab—or “IPI”. According to research presented to the European congress in Amsterdam yesterday, 17 percent of patients are cured by this drug alone.

But many more—perhaps more than half—could be “clinically cured” by combining them with even newer drugs called anti-PD1s, which break down cancer cells’ defenses. …

[Steve_Seattle]

"It isn’t cheap. For an average weighted patient, the recommended regimen of 4 doses will cost over $140K."

Just to double check - $140,000 for four doses? And is that 4 doses per day, per week, per month, or do four doses eliminate the disease?

[Olog-hai]

Make that “the expectations with the IPI/anti-PD1 drug combination seem very high by comparison”, i.e. to IPI alone.

[waredbird]

My wife had a melanoma tumor removed from her back in February. Within six weeks scans revealed that the cancer had spread to her lungs making it a stage 4. The oncologists in the closest large city basically told us there wasn’t much that could be done. We did a lot of driving and found another oncologist that did further testing including biopsies of the internal tumors which turned out to be benign.

So as it stands now she is back to stage three since it had spread to a lymph node. And while the short term outlook is now good, melanoma can come back with a vengeance at any time. My guess is that if it does come back on her, the death panel option will kick in since she is now over 65.

FYI, There are two different types of melanoma mutations and I believe the drug mentioned in this article is only good for one of them.

Here is a great website on melanoma. Best wishes.
http://forum.melanomainternational.org/

[machogirl]

Obamacare is compared to that of British Healthcare (which the MSM here won't print the horror stories). I noticed this little death panel blurb about the NHS "rationed care" (come to US soon). "The breakthrough comes after David Cameron announced the extension of a £200 million-a-year budget to pay for cancer treatments denied to NHS patients because rationing body NICE believes they are poor value for money." ^There it is, a "rationing body" determining what is "value" and who is "valuable".

[exDemMom]

Those phrases are most common in scientific writing relating to the theory of evolution.

Indeed. Contrast the humility of life scientists relaying their observations with the utter arrogance of creationism-pushing con men, who insist with utter certainty that God is a liar.

[Lawgvr1955]

I have no doubt Obama’s minions put the death panels in the Unaffordable Care Act to make Social Security and Medicare on a more firm footing. Get rid of the old people.