The Wall Street Journal’s health section is running an article on cancer patients and their families who are developing personalized drug combinations as a means of fighting their cancers. The article profiles the struggles of Neil Hutchinson, a forty-five year-old defense contractor, to save the life of his seven year-old son Sam, who suffers from neuroblastoma—a form of cancer that affects the sympathetic nervous system. Neil has taken an especially active part in Sam’s treatment and actually selected the individual drugs that make up Sam’s 44-pills-a-day drug cocktail. After reading stacks of books on neuroblastoma and hundreds of journal articles on its etiology and treatment responses, he developed Sam’s treatment regimen in consultation with his son’s oncologists and other doctors. While many medical professionals are uncomfortable with patients taking such an active roll in developing treatments, the Internet has allowed people to share anecdotes and other stories about effective treatments and, grudgingly anyway, the doctors will often acknowledge that it is precisely the personalized nature of the treatments that have allowed them to be effective for people.

Neil’s research into Sam’s condition has been the major factor in Sam’s cancer going into remission.

The idea behind drug cocktails for cancer is that instead of trying to develop a single agent that can stop cancer, its best to take a multi-focal approach and use a number of precisely-targeted agents to stop all of the various avenues in which cancer can grow. This treatment strategy should increase effectiveness and decrease side effects and it remains one of the most promising aspects of current cancer research. What has medical professionals most concerned about patients such as Neil and Sam are the devastating consequences that can happen when non-professionals spearhead a treatment regimen. They worry that in patients’ sincere attempt to get better they will actually be hurting themselves. Doctors also worry that if more people start their own treatments then enrollment in clinical trials will be reduced—which could have devastating consequences for the growth of medicine. If doctors and scientists can’t study enough people in a controlled setting, they fear the amazing treatment successes of recent years may not be replicated in the future.

Along with the Hutchinsons, the article discusses a number of other people who have also developed their own treatment regimens. While all acknowledge the controversy surrounding these developments, nearly everyone also agrees that in the battle against cancer, the most important thing to do is to fight the disease as creatively as possible.

Labels: cancer