STOP CANCER NOW!! MIRACLE CURE!!! ALMOST FREE!!!!!!!!!

The last year or so that I was living in Britain, you couldn’t watch the news without seeing at least one story about a woman campaigning their local National Health Service to receive the wonder breast cancer drug Herceptin. The drug was new and very costly ((21,000 pounds per year in the UK, around $50,000 in Canada) and not yet approved in the UK. But Roche, who makes the drug, had its PR claws out, informing women about the treatment, who then took their cases to the highest courts in the land (the media, of course); in one case the health minister actually intervened to give a woman Herceptin. It was a PR nightmare. The drug was approved months later by NICE, the body that decides which drugs are cost effective enough to be offered on the NHS.

While controversies still swarm around the drug in both Canada and the UK - mostly due to its high cost and how to fund it - one thing is certainly not debated: current evidence suggests that Herceptin really works. This 2005 analysis from the New England Journal of Medicine found that Herceptin and chemotherapy together could reduce recurrence by 52% and death by 33% in two years of follow up. In January of this year, a study from the Lancet in the UK found that women given Herceptin for early stage breast cancer found similar results (34% reduced risk of death, 36% reduction in risk of new cancer events). 

I mean WOW! 50% reduction in future cancer events. That’s awesome!

But what about the fact that you can also get a 50% reduction in relapse of breast cancer just by eating at least 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day and doing 30 minutes of walking, six times per week. Yes, you heard me...the WHEL study, (this segment on about 1500 women) on dietary patterns and breast cancer survival, found that women who follow this moderately health lifestyle (about a third of their group did) can do just as much for their cancer survival prognosis as by taking Herceptin. Their 10-year morality rate was just 7% - half that of women who ate less fresh produce and/or did less exercise.

But, you see, there is no miracle pill here. There is no powerful pharmaceutical company with a multi-billion dollar marketing budget to ACTUALLY CALL UP WOMEN PERSONALLY and tell them what a healthy lifestyle can do for them. Nope. And really, it’s pretty hard to get people excited about incredibly boring sensible advice. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to see a lawsuit from women who said that gym memberships were too high? Work days too long? Vegetables and fruits prohibitively expensive? The streets not safe enough for walking after dark? A dearth of bike paths?

I am not saying that women should be told just to exercise, eat an apple and pray; Herceptin can obviously save the lives of women facing more very aggressive cancer. But the imbalanced perception of a “miracle” drug versus the impact of lifestyle changes kind of cheeses me off.