Goodnight Mr Manchester
, broadcaster, political commentator, music impressario and "professional Mancunian" died today, aged 57. He had a kidney removed in January, and was diagnosed with cancer. Chemotherapy proved unsuccessful, and doctors suggested that he should take the drug Sutent, a first-line treatment for advanced kidney cancer. Sutent costs Β£3,500 per month and (very controversially) . Earlier this year, members of the Happy Mondays and other acts Tony Wilson supported over the years started a fund to help pay for his treatment.
In February, he talked movingly about losing a kidney and facing chemotherapy radio (the audio of this interview with ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio Manchester is here). You can watch a recent news report on the Sutent controversy, below, including one of Tony Wilson's last television interviews. We can expect the debate about the cost-benefit analysis that prevents so many NHS patients receiving that treatment to gather pace in the next days and weeks.
Comments
I recommend the book βPlague Timeβ by Paul Ewald published by Anchor Books which puts a lot of so-called medical βadvancesβ into perspective.
In my experience with ovarian and kidney cancer most drugs for stage 3 and stage 4 cancers are basically a waste of money and the patient would have a better quality of life if they did not undergo chemotherapy. Chemotherapy drugs in these stages extend life by only months at a great cost to oneβs overall quality of life.
One problem is that the drug companies put out statistics such as a β25% improvement in life expectancyβ. Well, if oneβs life expectancy is six months is another 6 weeks of life worth several thousands of dollars per week in treatment and 25% of the time spent in bed (one week in four every month)from the effects of the drugs?
Plague Time has an interesting example (pertaining to heart attacks) of how these statistics are misused. The example is:
2000 men took a placebo. 2000 others took a trial medicine suffering some constipation, gas and bloating. The placebo group had 38 heart attacks; the test group had 30. Results were published as a 25% drop in risk of heart attack (8/38 * 100). Put another way to save 8 additional heart attacks in a group of 2000 (0.4%) 1970 men who would not have had a heart attack suffered 7 years of constipation, gas and bloating.
The cost of the medication for the 2000 people who took it was $15MM dollars which works out to about $2MM dollars for every heart attack that was prevented. Of the two groups both had identical death rates which meant that there were a compensatory group of men in the test group who died from the effects of the medicine.
Who benefited apart from the drug company?
Regards,
Michael
Michael,
sutent is a POST chemo drug.
Re #2
I have no idea what you mean by a POST chemo drug unless you mean that it is a 'palliative' drug.
Regards,
Michael