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Marrow transplants don’t work for breast cancer

Few stories in medicine are as sobering as the American experience with autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) for treating breast cancer. It has been a disaster.

It was suggested that a combination of bone marrow transplants and very high doses of anticancer drugs could pulverise breast cancer into submission. But legal wranglings over who should foot the bill for the high cost of this supposed treatment, as well as the findings of major randomised trials that didn’t support the use of the therapy, conspired to scuttle this establishment approach to breast cancer treatment from the start.

So, what lessons has the US medical establishment learned from this sorry episode? For one, you can’t say a treatment is cost-effective when its effectiveness hasn’t been proven in the first place.

For another, defining what is ‘experimental’ is an important government job, and should clarify financial support of major trials.

Finally, the media also has a ‘watchdog’ role to play in making sure new treatments are all they’re cracked up to be (BMJ, 2002; 324: 1088-92).

Bone-marrow transplants - Q:Please tell me the success rate for bone-marrow transplants in patients with leukemia. L G, Norwich. ...

Cancer link to bone marrow transplants - Bone marrow transplants often used to treat leukemia and other malignant diseases dramatically increase the risk of cancer. ...

Bone marrow transplants trigger diabetes - Long term survivors of bone marrow transplants have a substantial risk of developing insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance and type II diabet...

Bone marrow transplants:new cancer risk - New evidence suggests that there is a risk of solid cancers after bone marrow transplantation (BMT). ...

Breast cancer-the unkindest cut - Most breast cancer surgeons engage in surgical overkill, and many safety questions surround the new wonder drugs. ... ...

Aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer - Oncologists often have only one strategy when dealing with breast cancer: stop the flow of oestrogen to the tumour. Although only half of all breast c...

Breast cancer drug can weaken bones - Have you any up-to-date information on anastrozole, which I have been taking for two and a half years, following breast cancer in 1996 and lymph-node...

Breast cancer findings faked - The largest trial in the US on breast cancer which began the shift away from mastectomy as the preferred treatment was falsified (BMJ, 26 March 1994)....

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