Making this country the greatest place britain departure is delayed. Follow drama bricks it on aljazeera. Tracing can credibly painful expensive and ineffective is it time that weve changed our approach. Here in the stream cancer has affected your life or that of someone you know they want to hear from you join us on twitter or in our live 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 not 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 or so yes but i would wish my medical team to now is when treatment is done stuff going about in patients one doctor with give me a new drug that just came approved and i need to go get a 2nd opinion a datafile boston and it once i received 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. Colleges spaced in new york and also of a new book on the disease called the 1st cell also with us in studio is. 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 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. Im 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 a cancer so i want to share a little thread with you dr this from on twitter who 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. 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 of the fan Smoking Campaign and mostly from screening measures that were put in some 3040 years ago like my mom. And perhaps me is real curing 60. 8 percent of dancers that are diagnosed today 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 cancers for which there have been developments the last majority of cancers of the common types greatest colorectal or lung cancer things like that at all untreated with the old strategies and 32 percent patients who are diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer their outcome 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. The experience counts so when you were 1st diagnosed key take us to that moment of what options would you give it was 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 and radiation chemo or maybe you can just have like a misstep to me and not have to worry about any of that and i. Froze because it was such a. 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 it is your very famous. Hospital in new york yes so i went to Sloan Kettering and dana farber because im indian you know a lot of doctors. But everybody said oh 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 a pain 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 chose you you speak to a lot of doctors and you have spoken to a lot of doctors and colleges about families different 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 always been assumed for really the whole history of modern medicine but 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 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 of well does the nobel prize and by 2 scientists last year thats great the only problem is that they dont do type the formula that appeasement talking one is called one is a group of drugs Court Checkpoint inhibitors and the other car. The Checkpoint Inhibitors are not curative for anything for the layperson we give me your you know dr spitz sideman a history that i own i love the way i do something every single word you say ok so salems express certain signals on themselves which can either see me or dont teach 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 card to 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 cancer cell in it so what its approved for live is be cell malignancies b. Cells out a kind of. D. Cells and b. Cells. Lymphomas Lymphoblastic Leukemia these are dances so diesel is going to destroy everything the cell in your body nor just the cancer so then youre going to release the beast function for the rest of the patients my point is these seemed. Wouldnt 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 we 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 so hey 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 real and i while she is a social media strategist and heres what she told the story. My name is rain i dont answer in 2015. Firstly from any syndrome which means i am more likely to get it again. The things i would most advocate for our 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. Would give me migraines 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 had the same type of 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 she 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 china eliminate cancer right down to the last cell. Certainly well i think that is a wonderful approach. If we could detect cancer early we could 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 mentioned 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 was 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 into zs 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 strange 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 effectively 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 but 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 was 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 who 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 really so now how do you go in and talk to a 35 year old woman for whom having ends dance is only her 2nd biggest problem this is what we are talking about america is the leader of the word we should be developing more compassionate and humane options for dealing with cancer other than these. 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 was necessary the best 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 bs of not this is not a pile in the sky but what im telling you was that 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 childhood and you can be imaged you this is an empty 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 try is there charles mention preponderant 800 trials going on to test the same kind of drugs when we nor that the they are not curative most most of them in fact i can tell you that dr richard pastor whos the head of the on College 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 and good the chances of an experimental trial succeeding in america right now in 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 an cancer patient so we cant stop doing things we need to continue on this part of developing immune therapy is 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 our smart bro why should we only have wimmin 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 what mammography so i got my 1st mammography because its horrible it basically its a horrible but its 7 seconds of a machine squeezing your breast 80 to like 5 days or so so he does it it does and great when you think oh they couldnt 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 neck boy 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 the 31 doctor 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