At first blush, the news sounds at worst neutral: more life-saving chemotherapy can be administered to increase longevity. "  But, for cancer survivors who have experienced chemotherapy, it means that their remaining years are characterized by increased debilitation and low quality of life.

At the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology,"  doctors filled a huge auditorium for a debate on whether it is time to adopt maintenance therapy for lung cancer, the nation’s leading cause of cancer death. Other cancers for which maintenance therapy is being used or tried include ovarian cancer, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.(New York Times, July 21, 2009; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/health/21canc.html?ref=science)

The question by experts is whether it will prolong life. But to cancer survivors the questions need to address economics and quality of life, as well as tumor resistance. Additional costs could mount to the tens of thousands per patient."  The liver could be taxed to the point of failure, and then there are many debilitating side effects such as chemo brain, immune suppression, and kidney damage.

In the New York Times article:

• Dr. Lawrence H. Einhorn, a professor at Indiana University, said much of the push for maintenance therapy was coming from pharmaceutical companies, which want their drugs "to be used as early as possible and as long as possible."
• And executives of these companies acknowledge that the therapy would mean bigger sales. "This is clearly a game-changing opportunity," Brian P. Gill, vice president for corporate communications at Celgene, which is testing its drug Revlimid for maintenance treatment of multiple myeloma, told investors at a conference in March.

It would help cancer survivors to learn more about investor presentations by pharmaceutical companies and then compare those with oncologists' recommendations." "  It's bad enough to have cancer and"  chemotherapy:"  it is worse to be vulnerable because of it,"  and not be informed that you are"  actually in a non-official clinical trial.

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