Word: interferon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cancer may be nature's most devastating army of destruction, but interferon [March 31] may be the untapped defense that the princelings of medicine-health professionals and researchers-need to increase the odds for victory...
Whatever questions remain about both the role and effectiveness of interferon as a cancer drug, most could be answered if larger amounts of IF were available. Admits Gutterman: "We don't really know what we're doing yet. It happens with every new drug. In its early days penicillin was good at treating minor infections but not the big ones, like endocarditis [a bacterial infection of the heart valves]. It took years to figure out that it would work there too?but only at very high doses. But everyone said at first it would be crazy to try that level...
...word of interferon spreads, doctors are bracing for an onslaught of pleas from cancer victims and their families. Almost every request will be rejected. IF is still quite rare; in the U.S., only a few hundred patients have received it, most of them for short intervals. All testing so far has been designed to show whether interferon is active against different kinds of cancer, not whether it can effect lasting cures. But even if there were a glut of interferon, the drug would not be handed out indiscriminately; its long-range effects, good or bad, are still not known. Those...
...breast-cancer patients, but only if surgery and radiotherapy have failed to halt the disease, 2) myeloma victims, and 3) patients with types of lymphoma that do not respond well to conventional treatment. The choice is also usually made from among patients already under treatment at a center where interferon is being tested...
Inevitably, some anguished cancer victims will suspect that interferon is being hoarded for use by favored patients. But, says one doctor, "the sad and brutal fact is that if my own mother didn't meet the protocol, she could not get interferon today...