Treating cancer can be incredibly painful expensive and ineffective is it time that weve changed our approach. Here in the stream if cancer has affected your life or that of someone you know we want to hear from you join us on twitter or in our live youtube chat with your story. Today were joined by a leading american oncologist who says our current approach to treating cancer isnt working and needs a radical overhaul but 1st 3 of our Community Members share with us what surprised them about biting cancer as a cancer survivor i know a lot needs to be done to reduce the cost of Cancer Treatment so its not between losing your home or going bankrupt and saving your life if we can do so much as a nation to make its that cancer is not a death sentence nor is it a sense of poverty it was reconciling my new physical limitations the fact that i have is now on several different medications and had multiple follow up appointments with multiple different providers and it took me a little bit to figure out my new normal and how i fit in a mile so yes but i would wish my medical team to now is when treatment is done stuff about your patients one doctor with give me a new drug that just came approved and i need to go get a 2nd opinion a data fiber boston and it once i receive that letter they agreed to treat me with the drug so. If you keep up with your research in constantly questioning them i think everything will turn out good. Joining us to discuss the treatment of cancer is dr as and oncology space to new york and also of a new book on the disease called the 1st cell also with us in studio is racial michael part us she is a Breast Cancer survivor based in new york shes also Vice President a video for she media and joining us via Skype Charles grader he is a journalist based in new york and author of the book the breakthrough immunotherapy and the race to cure cancer guess good to have so much reaction from our Community Around the world. And probably not surprising for me because so many people either can relate to this personally or know someone in their social circles who have or had cancer so i want to share a little thread with you dr this from france are on twitter who saw or were doing the show and wrote in that too many cancer means mortality count down when we hear that any of our friends or family is diagnosed with cancer regardless of the type what comes to mind is the financial struggle and anxieties and then death but then he goes on to say people should be constantly informed updated on the progress made worldwide on Cancer Research its treatment and its survival rate today cancer is not what it used to be anymore so i give that one to you dr russell because i have read your book and i know that your views may not necessarily align with that we talked to us about what you think of what hes saying normally completely agree with the. Mortality from cancer has gone down by 26 percent in the last 3 decades the decline in mortality is not from any new treatment weve discovered it is because the found to Smoking Campaign and mostly from screening measures that were put in some 3040 years ago like my mom group. B. To sting and perhaps me is real curing 60. 8 percent of dancers that are diagnosed to be but what are we killing them with is the question the same old same old slash poison burn treatment its not that except for rare dances for which there have been developments the last majority of cancers of the common types greatest. Or lung cancer things like that are all treated with the old strategies and 32 percent patients who are diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer then ill come is as bad as it was 50 years ago. Good to have you thank you very much for coming into the stream and talking about your personal experience with cancer so when you were 1st diagnosed key take us to that moment of what options will you give it while so it was interesting i was diagnosed in 2014 i was the youngest woman in my family to be diagnosed my aunt had it in 1908 my mother had it in 2010 my cousin and 2012 so it was a big shock to all of us which is interesting since we had all had it you would have thought oh didnt you expect this we did and all because of my age. The 1st doctor who diagnosed me immediately said to me she said so listen you can have a lumpectomy radiation chemo or maybe you can just have like a misstep to me and i have to worry about any of that and i. I like froze because it was such a leak you know im not a person who cries a lot or anything but i really burst into tears because that was just so much for me to to handle in that moment and she said the word misstep to me so flippantly and nonchalantly and i was like then i went to Sloan Kettering and of course they explained to me what not so that even if youre very famous can ya spittle in new york yes so i went to Sloan Kettering and dana farber because im indian you know a lot of doctors. Well you know what everybody said i mean you know i think you are you know what i did but it was true i knew you know one of our Family Friends is doctors that hell hang garani and hes paying cancer specialist he is the one that made my mom get a 2nd opinion he made me get a 2nd opinion he kind of saved my mom and dana farber did from having to go through chemotherapy because thats what they recommended for her and it would have been no benefit at all. So thats not experienced child you speak to a lot of doctors and you have spoken to a lot of doctors and colleges about family stiffer cancers are you feeling optimistic from what you know what youve learned over the years. Actually i am ive ive spoken to a great number of researchers doctors who are also researchers in this in this space weve had a fundamental misunderstanding of what cancer is and how the body reacts to or fails to react to cancer how our immune systems we always know when we have a cold or flu because there are symptoms and and yet with cancer you often need a test to know whether you have it it had always been assumed for really the whole history of modern medicine that the immune system couldnt recognize cancer couldnt kill cancer and so trying to help it do so was a waste of time and thats all changed very very recently the 2018 nobel prize was an acknowledgement that cancer immunotherapy drugs that help the natural music stem recognize and kill cancer or unleash it to do so can be effective and weve seen a massive transformation i think in the way cancer is being treated to the very early days but but i see real reason for hope and some of the researchers i speak to i completely commend and agree with the charge that the new has made progress and some bones and a well does the nobel prize and by 2 scientists last year thats great the only problem is that there are 2 types of stimuli that appeasement talking about one is called one is a group of drugs or Checkpoint Inhibitors and the other this cardi. The Checkpoint Inhibitors are not curative for anything for the layperson we give me your old dr spitz sideman a hey said i ok i will the way to understanding every single word you say ok so salems express certain signals on themselves which can either see me or dont eat me that immune system recognizes and if it says dont eat me one it will leave them alone so the cancer cells have learned to masquerade with as normal cells by expressing the signal of doom to me and that can be unmasked true these checkpoint inhibitor drugs as i said the problem is that they work very well they can produce complete remissions but its not a cure because the disease comes back even in dramatic responses in melanoma but that is not to diminish from the great advance in in science that has occurred sadly it hasnt helped patients as much know for card details be that can be curative. But its available 1st of all its only possible for say 7000 patients in the country now out of 1700000 Cancer Patients that are diagnosed every year secondly its extremely expensive just the preparation of cells is half a 1000000. 00 and then giving it and then 3rd the toxicity is terrible the patients have to be treated in tents of care units but the premise is this guard head of the beastie cells which are immune cells that are engineered to attack cancer they dont just attack the cancer they basically destroy everything in the organ that now has this cancerous and in it so what its approved for live is be cell malignancies be sent out a kind of. D. Cells and b. Cells. Lymphomas Lymphoblastic Leukemia these. Dances so diesel is going to destroy everything be selling your body nor just the cancer so then youre going to replace the beast function for the rest of the patients my point is these seemed. Would work but perhaps a bit less stops is this financial burden when its used a little in the disease instead of an end stage monstrosity so i want to pick up on that because weve got so many comments from people talking about those 2 things in particular its the toxicity and the expense ill share a tweet this from sue hague who says i wish doctors would have told us clearly that there is no cure for this disease because what patients go through in the name of treatment kills them before their time so ponder that because i want to play a video from someone who sent us this about her story this is really not while shes a social media strategist and heres what she told the story. My name is ray and i dont answer in 2015. Fastly from any syndrome which means i am more likely to get it again. The things i would most advocate for are Medicare Fraud because. Getting it again and not being able to afford it rather than just getting it again. And also Medicinal Marijuana because it is the only thing that treatment all of the medications prescribed to me like the answer not give me migraines i had terrible side effects and if we really want to have Cancer Patients will do that. Can you pick up on those 2 things the the going through the treatment and how awful that sounds but also she tells us shes less afraid of getting cancer again and more of having to pay for it not being able to. Experience was was a little different but with some of the same elements i want to speak 1st to the treatment being so rough on bodies i my mom and i have the same type of d cancer so we didnt need to go through chemo but my aunt and my cousin went through it my own got it in 1988 my cousin got in 2012 basically 20 years they went through the same treatment chemo hasnt changed it still breaks down all the good cells and the bad cells and youve seen people they lose their hair or you know my cousin was thrown into early menopause at 42 because of it and its not just like oh youre done with chemo great youre cured you fear it coming back so i do think we all deal with my gosh what if it comes back especially when you get younger and then i was very lucky to be in a job which had very Good Health Care but then after my treatment you know i just had my 5 year mark i get worried every time i change insurance or anything because if Sloan Kettering isnt on my insurance i want to stay with them so i would probably go out of pocket and i cant afford that so these are questions around issues around the way that medicine is practiced in the United States where you have to have. Ideally insurance to get high Level Medical treatment i just want to bring child because you spent so much time with the Cancer Community what question would you like to. About her idea about lets just start looking for cancer super early lets look for the 1st cell china eliminate cancer right down to the last cell would you like to. Certainly well i think that is a wonderful approach. If we can detect cancer early we can fight it early thats for sure we also have not to beat this one drum but we do have a system thats been engineered over 500000000 years that is supposed to detect rogue cells early and thats the immune system and we have figured out how to unleash it in those 2 categories of medicine that she mentions but also there are only 19 approved i mean therapies right now these are such early days there are some 3876 right now new drugs in the pipeline waiting for Clinical Trials to be tested so we really dont know the full extent of the benefit and i certainly i would say that the 60 percent 5 year survival rate for patients with melanoma stage 4 melanoma is at such a death sentence. In over 60 percent survival rate that all those patients i think would say that there is a definite and important benefit to this however all patients i believe and you certainly have so much more experience with this than and i would like to know as soon as possible so that they could begin to treat it as quickly as possible and not have to chase down a spreading testifies and disease thats thats gone everywhere and i guess the real question is you know have these new technologies theres so much we couldnt do before in terms of being able to detect these sort of the stain smell of cancer if you will the smallest whiff of smoke from that fire thats going to perhaps consume us do you think weve weve made a turning point in our ability to utilize the new technologies big data sensing technologies genomics. Everything to be able to affectively do what what you and what what we all really want to have happen which is to have better biomarkers that we can look at and find cancer as quickly as possible so we can wipe it out. Should i answer oh really. Thats a brilliant question charles thank you before i answer this question though i want to tell everybody that im from pakistan im immigrant a muslim a woman who came to america with the idea of finding a cure for cancer and everyone my parents were alive i would go back to karachi once or twice a year and every time i went back my mother would have a whole long list of patients i had to see who she knew would work impoverished and wouldnt be able to afford an on call in just other ways one time when i when she said this 35 year old woman who was lost her husband has 3 kids and has been diagnosed with a bone marrow disease can you please go see her immediately the day i landed she had me go to the shantytown to see her and even before i entered this poor womans little shanty outside were sitting 3 little girls ranging from the age of 5 to 9 they looked so pale that i was even scared to ask my sister had asked the question before. Is everything ok and the girls just shook their head and my sister asked the question well. Have you had breakfast and unser this little girl gave was it wasnt my turn to have breakfast today so now how do you go in and talk to a 35 year old woman for whom having end stage dance is only her 2nd biggest problem this is what we are talking about america is the leader of the world we should be developing more compassionate you mean options for dealing with can serve rather than be. Extremely expensive options which are grooming this country i love the global context you put that conversation in because you were talking about your treatment how it wasnt necessarily the best but you had access to doctors and specialists and and world specialists in oncology but i also wondered i want to go back to charless question here which is how close are we to be able to detect various different cancers so early on that we know about it before its cancer yeah thats the question here this is why i lived the groundwork only to tell you that despite all of that practically every other person has a cell phone. And its become sort cheap they can afford it and no. This is not a fantasy and bees of not this is not a pile in the sky but what im telling you these are all technologies in various stages of development that are going on now in the western world for example you go to sleep at night in bed sheets that scan you over night for the appearance of a hot spot in the body you stand in your shower and you can be imaged you design them chip that i worked with with biomedical engineer is working so this exists right now this is yes i have clear is that instead of spending billions of dollars on those me to trials that charles mentioned 3 pounds and 800 trials going on to test the same kind of drugs when we nor that theyre not curative most most of them in fact i can tell you that dr richard pastor whos the head of the on Quality Center for excellence at the f. D. A. Recently criticized the checkpoint inhibitor trials p. D. L. P. D. L one of 3 well controlled trials were done in a cancer of the bone marrow called multiple my normal all 3 give negative results you know how many other trials are going on not 100 not 500 not 8002200 me 2 trials going on insert an end to the chances of an experimental trial succeeding in america right now and cancer is 5 percent 95 percent chances that it will be and yet there is so much investment in a venture that has a 95 percent failure rate all im saying is yes we have got into Cancer Patients so we cant stop doing things we need to continue on this spot of developing immune therapies developing Treatment Options but then at least some of the resources have to be shifted to early detection. And the last example you give is one of a smart bra why should we only have women once a year or once in 5 years be examined by groups and all. Of mammography this belongs in the store need children and i just want to just explain why im a memo. I got my 1st mammography because its horrible it basically its all horrible but its 7 seconds of a machine squeezing your breast 80 to like 5 days of so you does it it does and right when you think oh they can possibly squeeze it more they do to it until its almost flat until its almost flat and they squeeze like the netball too because a lot of like my cancer was like great around the nepalese area so d but the thing that ive learned to about all these screenings is they recommend women get it when theyre 40. I got this at 31 dr said you made of a very slow growing cancer they said you may have had the sense you were 30 so the recommendations are getting later and later the technology is getting older and older and i just want to go back to chemotherapy for a 2nd when my cousin was going through it one thing that we learned which i dont think a lot of people know is that chemotherapy for her she was told that it will only d. Decrease her chance of recurrence by like 4 to 6 percent some very small number and when we think of chemo i think we all think oh this is this is whats going to cure my cancer but it doesnt necessarily do that giving the will to be in this is like a baseball bat to a dog to get rid of it speeds thats so painful it can be you know people who might really my real question is always why on read nor using. God and technology as the charges mentioned do not keep choosing after the last cell but 2 words only addiction and stop treating the human body as something to be examined one so you get off to your 4 year although from birth to death we should start monitoring and scanning the body continuously for even footprints of bird to be sions of networks that can lead to chronic diseases so i wanted to bring this in because you mentioned going back to pakistan and the fact that the percentages are so low here in the industrial just realize world here in the u. S. Are communities asking what does that mean for the rest of the world so i want to share 2 experiences this from so hello who says Great Program youre doing im watching live from paracho i see many people prefer to die instead of treating it because of the costs we dont even have the doctors they just through trial and error so picking up on that i want to share a video comment if the last comment to this person Carolyn Taylor shes the founder of global focus on cancer and heres her take on. Things. 60 percent of all cancers occur and lower middle Income Countries it only 5 percent of the worlds total cancer resources reach these areas Cancer Treatment and Prevention Services are lacking with some countries having no specialized cancer care at all besides to disproportionate number of patients presenting in late stages of the disease and meeks treatment including i want to call it results in core outcomes even if appropriate treatment is available patients not might not be able to afford it making it less likely theyll receive the pay to care and often leading to financial catastrophe for patients and their families. Living was us with a lot to think about which of course we will continue to talk about online you can find us on twitter at a. J. Stream thats all the time we have for today but thank you to our community for sharing your story and do it couldnt have been easy and to our guests dr as. Us and charles graber. Absolutely this muslim undertakers working here is just 7 days a week thats grown with a community my father purchased a black ambulance man started to do the funeral and family we saw the stock being faltering to which im speaking is this part of the stories we dont often hear told by the people who the gift is for level. East and undertakers this is europe on aljazeera. For the last 2 years the students have been collecting rubbish every day its helped clean up the campus and helped build some of its facilities for every 2 kilos of Plastic Waste they collect the School Receives a brick made of plastic and cement. For some activists this may not be the most ecological way to eliminate the problems of plastic but this is seen as an immediate solution to the growing problems of landfills across the Country Waste can now be used to manufacture building materials. A story of blackmail. Heresy. Will have killed i have strength i have a story of courage a lot of the fear is real. Passion. And its very serious just. Hello im in london with a quick look at the headlines now we begin in the United States where impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump will reach a critical stage next week the u. S. House Intelligence Committee has announced it will hold the 1st public hearings in the inquiry with 3 key witnesses to testify Investigation Centers on why the President Trump abused his power by withholding a crane and exchange for an investigation into his political rival joe biden i think you will see throughout the course of the test when not only their testimony but many others the. Most important
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