the word magic

[Guest guest]

It seems as though Rita has been offended by the word 'magic' to

describe Gleevec. I feel that this is purely a matter of semantics

but I'll jump into the debate nevertheless.

No one is saying that Gleevec was conjured up by some witches who

put bat wings and frogs legs in a cauldron to brew up our magic

pill.

When we refer to Gleevec as being magical, it is to describe what it

has done for us....it has extended our lives! Is that not

magical? I have no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't be alive today

if it were not for Gleevec and I know I'm not alone in thinking this

way.

If you look up the word 'magic' in the dictionary, you'll see that

one of the definitions is a " feeling of enchantment " . If being

alive and functioning relatively normally isn't enchanting, well I

don't know what is.

In a perfect world, none of us would even have CML. Is Gleevec

perfect? No, of course not, and the article specifically stated that

it wasn't perfect. It didn't sugar coat the fact that there are

negative aspects to the drug and it specifically addressed our

uncertain futures so I really don't see how the article

was " deceptive " as Rita claimed.

May I suggest that Rita (and anyone else) who thinks that Gleevec is

so evil, go spend some time with cancer patients who are in stage 4

of any number of cancers, and are getting a combination of chemo,

surgery and radiation with the end result of getting a 6 month

extension to their lives. Then ask these patients if they could

hypothetically take a pill like Gleevec that would allow them to

continue to live for a few more years (possibly even 20 years), ask

them if they would consider that pill to be 'magical'.

As for the cost of the drug, no one will disagree that it's crazy to

charge this kind of money for a drug but this wasn't the point of

the article and it certainly doesn't negate what the drug has done

for us. The issue of the cost of cancer treatments was brought up

in another article in the series that the newspaper had so it wasn't

ignored by any means. The purpose of this particular article was to

show that there are better ways to treat cancer other than the near

embalming that is used for most cancers and I think it did a great

job of getting that message across.