Cancer Patients Take Heart: The Power of Public Opinion

A January 27, 2014, report on National Public Radio brought recent discussions into sharper focus. Though the story was unrelated to cancer, the lessons learned provide a road map for cancer patients in their pursuit of the most effective, least toxic treatments.

The condition known as “clubfoot” (talipes equinovarus) is a congenital deformity that afflicts one of every 1,000 births in the US. The abnormal internal rotation of the ankle is highly debilitating if not corrected shortly after birth. For decades, orthopedic surgeons used complex surgical procedures that disrupted the ankle structure and realigned the bones. Despite numerous surgeries, this rarely corrected the deformity resulting in chronic arthritis and gait disturbances. The costs were significant and the loss of productivity for those afflicted even greater, yet the dilemma remained unresolved.

Into the fray came Dr. Ignacio Ponseti. Ponseti, the son of a Spanish watchmaker, had gained a unique perspective on structural integrity working in his father’s shop. Fleeing the Spanish Civil War he came to the US to practice orthopedic surgery at the University of Iowa. Recognizing the poor outcomes for clubfoot surgery, he took it upon himself to rethink the problem. After all, newborns have flexible ligaments. These ligaments, he reasoned, could be re-trained through a series of casts that were replaced serially over months after birth. Once the foot was in better alignment, the children were placed in a boot to retrain the joint into its normal alignment. Not surprisingly, this simple, noninvasive, inexpensive method was eschewed by the orthopedic professionals. Undaunted, he continued to practice his art, with excellent results year after year. Dr. John Herzenberg, a Baltimore-based practitioner of the Ponseti method was quoted: “People were falling over themselves to do fancy invasive surgery, and this one strange old guy, who speaks softly with a Spanish accent in Iowa, was getting sort of ignored by the drumbeat of people who were in favor of surgery.” Despite its obvious appeal and its manifest successes, this technique remained largely in Iowa for 50 years.

And then came the Internet. When a child born with clubfoot in 2000 was recommended for standard surgery, her mother went online to examine all the options and came across Dr. Ponseti. She traveled to Iowa for an opinion. Convinced that Dr. Ponseti’s approach was superior, this brave mother took the leap and undertook the Ponseti method. Dr. Ponseti completely corrected the child’s foot. Horrified that her daughter would have suffered a life of misery without this brilliant breakthrough, this young mother took it upon herself to get the word out. Using the Internet, she created a Yahoo Support Group called “No Surgery 4 Clubfoot.”  Families with afflicted children could now find out about this technique and identify practitioners who used it.

Voting with their feet, parents took their children to centers that applied this simple, relatively noninvasive approach. Over time, the academic community and their adherents to invasive surgery found themselves on the wrong side of patient referrals. Demanding better outcomes for their children, parents charted a new course for their medical care and forced their doctors to agree or be left behind. With a 97% success rate today, virtually every orthopedic surgeon in America practices the Ponseti method. Indeed, it is now recommended by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.

I relate this story to cancer patients as they confront similar resistance. While marginally effective therapies are promoted by many academic centers, simple, comparatively easy techniques are available that can empower patients in treatment selection. Just like the clubfoot parents, cancer patients must demand access to treatment options and explore every lead.

The Internet has offered an entirely new platform for cancer patients to communicate their experiences, recommend physicians, educate friends and family members and change referral patterns. The power to change the way cancer is treated in America today is within the grasp of the patients themselves. Just like Dr. Ponseti, who knew that his method worked and just like his patients who avoided the pain and suffering they would have otherwise endured, patients enlightened about better ways to treat cancer need to communicate and take charge of their disease.

Rallying the Troops to Confront Cancer

The recent blog “Stand Up To Cancer Research!” described some of the pitfalls of modern cancer research and the clinical trial process. It has engendered an active discussion. It may be helpful to address some of issues raised. For those of you who did not have the opportunity to read that blog, it defined the difficulty that many patients encounter when they seek experimental treatments. Clinical trials are often only available at select centers, sometimes at great distances from patient’s homes. There can be rigid inclusionary and exclusionary criteria, and the pre-entry evaluations e.g. re-biopsy, CT/PET, etc. can be daunting, time consuming and inconvenient. Travel and accommodations may come at great personal expense.

I penned the blog, in part, to remind patients that they are ultimately in control of the process. One patient asked how can “we stand up to the system” describing herself a consumer while “they’ve got the goods.” This is the frustration many people feel. It should be remembered, however, that a substantial portion of research support comes from tax dollars and charitable donations. These are your dollars. If the system is not working, then those responsible must be held accountable. The American public has the power of the vote. Patient advocates can approach and lobby their representatives and demand improvements in the clinical trial process. To wit, the level of scrutiny and restriction upon access to new drugs must be re-examined. There is an army of well-trained clinical oncologists capable of delivering experimental drugs today. Not just the fully vetted, just-about-ready-for-prime-time agents currently found in phase III trials, but the really new exciting drugs. Once a drug has passed Phase I and found to be safe in patients, open up the accrual process. “Compassionate use” has virtually disappeared from the lexicon of cancer research. Twenty years ago I made a discovery in the laboratory. Working with the pharmaceutical company and the FDA, we were almost immediately granted access to a yet-to-be approved agent. The combination proved so effective that today it is one of the most widely used regimens in the world. That would not happen today. We simply cannot get access to the best drugs for our patients.

With the industrialization of medical care, growth of mega-medical systems and the increasing role of government, medicine must be viewed through a different lens. Changes in cancer research will require changes in cancer policy, and policy comes from political power. Cancer patients will need to identify legitimate spokespeople to take their concerns forward to their elected officials. While the current clinical trial process slowly grinds out new development, even the smartest, fastest trials take years to change practice. Every day, more than 1,500 cancer patients die in the United States alone. Cancer patients do not have time for clever doctors to pose interesting questions while they suffer the slings and arrows of ignoble, ineffective therapy. It is time for a change in cancer research, and patients must be the instrument for that change.

Stand Up to Cancer Research! The Downside to Clinical Trials.

As the practice of medicine has moved from a profession to an industrial undertaking, this most human of experiences has fallen prey to the dictates of the American business model. Patients are no longer the purchasers of medical care and services, but instead, the consumers of those goods and services that meet the needs of the purveyors. Whether this is a governmental entity, academic institution, or pharmaceutical company, individuals have become cogs in the wheel of the medical-industrial complex.

This has become glaringly apparent in the field of cancer research. Cancer patients were once, for better or worse, in charge of their own destinies. They could choose their surgeon, oncologist, and institution, even to some degree the treatments that they wished to undergo. As the HMO model came into play, patients were increasingly told what doctor, what treatment, and what hospital. The capacity of individuals to make decisions was eliminated in favor of standardized care, cost guidelines and treatment protocols. While much of the academic community described this as progress with adherence to standardized protocols, these protocols have not provided superior outcomes in most settings. Instead, they offer hospital administrators the opportunity to anticipate costs, allocate resources, codify drug administration and regulate care delivery.

Recent experience has brought several disturbing examples to the fore. Working in the laboratory, we have been able to select candidates for new combinations, sometimes years before these regimens became broadly available. We then identify centers with access to these drugs under protocol. Many of the drugs have well-established safety records from prior phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, but have not achieved full FDA approval. When several of our patients with lung cancer revealed sensitivity to a regimen that we had identified years earlier (Kollin, C et al Abs 2170, Proc AACR, 2005) we immediately explored sites offering this combination of an oral agent with an IV antibody. The closest we could find was in Colorado. The injection, a widely established monoclonal antibody, FDA approved for gastrointestinal cancer, was not yet approved for lung cancer while the pill had been administered safely in hundreds of patients. Indeed, the combination had also been safely administered to dozens of patients by the time we inquired. Nonetheless, to participate in this potentially life-saving treatment my patients were forced to commute from LA to Colorado every other week.

It would have been quite easy, once the patients were formally accrued, for them to return to California and receive the same drugs under our care. After all, we were the ones who identified them as candidates in the first place and we were very familiar with the trial. Despite this, the rigidity of the protocol forced these lung cancer patients to become frequent fliers. The good news was that the treatments worked.

More recently a patient, who had failed experimental therapy for advanced uterine carcinoma at a large academic center in Texas, returned to LA five years ago to seek my assistance. A lymph node biopsy at the time revealed exquisite sensitivity to a drug combination developed and published by our group and she achieved a prompt complete remission. She has since relapsed and required additional chemotherapy. My concern for her long-term bone marrow tolerance, with repeated exposure to cytotoxic drugs, led me to seek alternatives. Her EVA-PCD functional profile had revealed excellent activity for PARP inhibitors. Here, I thought, would be the solution to her problem. After all, the PARP inhibitors had been in development for years. Several had revealed compelling activity in clinical trials and they are well tolerated. Despite this, no PARP inhibitor has been FDA approved.

When we pursued opportunities to accrue the patient to one of the PARP inhibitor trials, however, she did not qualify. Having received low dose Carboplatin several months earlier she ran afoul of an exclusion criterion in the protocol that dictated no platinum exposure for six months. “Six months?” I exclaimed. Few cancer patients can wait six months to start treatment and virtually no cancer patients can wait six months once they have relapsed. I was flabbergasted.

What exactly were the protocol designers thinking when they demanded a six-month wash out, fully four, five or six times longer than any protocol I’d ever encountered?  The absurdity of this demand virtually eliminated patients-in-need from consideration. As I considered the dilemma it became increasingly clear. When one examines the thinking behind clinical protocols it becomes evident that they are not designed to help patients or cure cancer. Instead, they are created to answer specific questions. In so doing they further the careers of investigators, expand medical center market share, standardize treatments and simplify the activities of clinical research organizations. Patient outcomes, well-being and convenience are far down the ladder of expectations.

As I pondered the inconvenience, hardship and lost opportunities associated with clinical trial participation for many patients around the United States, I began to wonder whether patients should throw off the yoke of this oppressive system. After all, it is not the academic centers that own the process, it is the patients. It is those brave individuals willing to participate in these studies. It is the patients whose tax dollars support these institutions. It is the patients who purchase either directly or indirectly the drugs they receive and it is the patients that are necessary for the process to succeed.

Patients should demand more user-friendly, convenient, patient-centric therapy programs. Perhaps patients should simply refuse to participate. A ground swell of patient advocacy could re-orient the discussion away from the convenience and ease of the treating physicians and toward the good outcome and ease of the treated patient. While we applaud the investigators for their brilliance and prowess, we forget that no clinical investigator would receive accolades were it not for the hundreds or thousands of patients who martyr themselves at the altar of clinical research. Patients, not their doctors, are the heroes.  Perhaps it is time for cancer patients to stand up to cancer research.