Researchers searched news stories on Google for the words "cancer
drug" and over-the-top terms such as "home run," "groundbreaking" and
"marvel." They found 94 news stories from 66 outlets published from June
21 to June 25 after the conclusion of a major cancer conference. News
sources ranged from leading newspapers and TV stations to small trade
publications.
While some new immune therapies put a fraction of
patients into long-term remission, none have been proved to definitively
cure patients, study co-author Vinay Prasad said.
Most new cancer
drugs extend survival by only a few months, said Prasad, an assistant
professor at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University.
Hyping
new cancer drugs "feeds into this mentality the newest thing has got to
be the best thing," Prasad said. While newer often means better when it
comes to cellphones or computers, that's not necessarily the case with
cancer drugs. Prasad said the hard reality of cancer is that, for many
tumors, "our treatments are just not that great yet."
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