Raygun:
“I’m very skeptical of ‘better data’ when it cites medical statistics coming from Cuba.”
I’m skeptical of a country who doesn’t allow the public to see its data. The US pulls its data out of a black box and doesn’t allow anyone to see how they got their numbers. Maybe you should be skeptical about that.
hoads:
“Look at the rankings you just posted–Cuba ranks #1 in cancer survival rates in 3 out of 6 cancers listed. You believe that?”
Yes, I believe that. That is because I am not brainwashed by the pharma industry. Maybe that’s because I work for the pharma industry (I am an oncology research chemist for a pharma company). You think it’s impossible for Cuba to have good cancer survival stats because the US has all the great drugs, right? The problem is, these expensive drugs at best give you a few extra months. The main purpose of these drugs is to pay my salary, not to increase survival rates. Look at Erbitux, for example. Erbitux costs $100,000 a year:
dancewithshadows.com/hara/cost-cancer-therapy.asp
Erbitux has “not been shown to prolong life”:
http://tinyurl.com/6aqoby
$100k a year for a drug that does not prolong life! Does a drug that does not prolong life have any effect on cancer survival rates? (Hint: No). Does a drug that cost $100k a year help to pay my salary? (Hint: Yes).
Do you know what does effect survival rates? Catching cancer early. You catch cancer early by having good screening programs. Cuba has this. They screen their citizens, catch cancers early, and then treat them with either chemo or cheap drugs. This is how you get good survival rates.
The US is not very interested in aggressive screening. Let’s see why by looking at colon cancer.
The yearly cost of Avastin is $55,000. If you are treated for 2 years, the cost is $110k. Avastin increases life span by 5 months, on average. This works out to $264,000 for every life year gained. This is insanely high. To compare, screening the population for colorectal cancer using a fecal occult blood test every 5 years costs $55,600 for every life year saved. Even better results were reported in the journal “Cancer”. Optical colonoscopy screening costs $9,180 per life-year saved, while virtual colonoscopy costs $4,361 per life year saved. Cuba can do simple screening tests and save many more lives than expensive drugs ever will. This is what increases survival rates.
The problem from the US point of view is that aggressive screening is relatively inexpensive, and has no benefit for big pharma. Allowing a person to get cancer and then treating them with Avastin will lengthen their life by 5 months vs not treating them, and the benefit is hundreds of thousands of dollars profit for big pharma. That’s what the US health care system is about.
