Hey Chris, on your what if-- I think the question may be who is approached. The other factor is that in the cases that are not impacted by the TAXOL regime, there are alternate treatments, THAT IF started early enough can be beneficial. If the ability exists to determine that a regime will not be effective, and you decide to use that regime anyway, and the patient loses the battle, you have definitely opened yourself up to major medical malpractice. Now I'm not familiar with this area, (Thank heaven) and I hope I never do gain any familiarity, but if I was the practioner who was aware of the science, and I averaged three non responsives a year who succumbed, I'd like to save three extra next year and damn the cost. When you have a chance for life you take it. Doctors know that some patients don't responfd to some treatments. They find out after the fact. (Medical practice right?) Now here comes Doctor Frudakis with a way to make treatment more effective and lose less patients. Okay the salesman for taxol may be annoyed that not all the patients are on his drug. He may smile a little bit though when they tell him that after 12 months of prescreening they have increased his medicines sucess rate by 25%. (guessing at figure). Acceptance is a long hard road, but the test can be given as a trial with no harm to the patient. After a year, when the diagnostic value is proven, Would you ever consider prescribing the wrong treatment for a patient? Now they see the non responsives after how long? Well I'm afraid the answer in some cases is "after it's too late." I'm not the guy who has to face the family and say "I'm sorry". Could you even imagine doing that if you had known beforehand that the treatment you prescribed was the wrong regime?
No Chris, I think the problem you cite will occur. But there is some Doc out there who is already a believer, and he'll tell others. Word of mouth you know. Will the Taxol people like it? If they play the cards right, they'll love it. Look how effective we are when the patient is prescreened. We saved 5% more people when we went to this DNA screening. Now our drug is twice as effective across all cases. Hoorah?
It's not the cards your dealt, it's how you play 'em.
Now imagine 60 Minutes doing a story on how big pharma "kills" patients by forcing the wrong treatment on them...
Stakddek
