Seeking Cures – the Road from Discoveries to Cures or the Valley of Death

It is truly amazing and very shocking, from 1996 to 1999, the U.S. food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 157 new drugs. Compared to the period of 2006 to 2009 the FDA approved 74 drugs. However, NOT one of these approved drugs provided a cure for any serious illness! Diseases that destroy lives, diseases like [...]

Harold E. Varmus, M.D. Nominated to be the Director of the National Cancer Institute – Is It Good or Bad for Cancer Survivors?

President Barack Obama has nominated Harold E. Varmus, M.D., the Nobel Prize-winning scientist for studies showing how certain normal genes could cause cancer when they went awry; to serve as the 14th director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Varmus served as director of the National Institutes of Health in the 1990s, a period [...]

Vaccine Therapy for Patients with Progressive Stage D0 Prostate Cancer

In yesterday’s post, Provenge, Its Future & A Clinical Trail Alternative for Men with Hormone Dependent Prostate Cancer, I said that I attempted to get into a vaccine trial, but was rejected because I have a history of an autoimmune disease and I have had evidence of some lymph node involvement (stage D1). I want [...]

We Deserve Faster Access to Drugs that Might Extend or Save Our Life

The FDA did introduce its Critical Path initiative in 2004. But, even these expedited processes have become bogged down. The FDA has responded to the political winds and become cautious after the negative publicity it received from the withdrawals of drugs like Rezulin and Vioxx. The best and most recent delay in the prostate cancer [...]

The Cures Acceleration Network and National Institutes of Health Reauthorization Act of 2009.

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) introduced S. 914, the Cures Acceleration Network and National Institutes of Health Reauthorization Act of 2009. The bill has three main components: 1. Establishes a new, independent federal agency, to be known as the “Cures Acceleration Network” (CAN), which would award grants and contracts to accelerate the development of cures and [...]

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