New drug shows promise in fighting breast cancer
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Rating
New drug shows promise in fighting breast cancer
Our Review Summary
This was a Phase 1 study – not even designed to prove efficacy. Yet the headline talks about “promise” and the body text describes results in two out of 97 patients – only with breast cancer. It feels like a local story promoting local research without appropriate context. Would the newspaper have reported this if it occurred in another city in another state? No chance. So why does local research get promoted when it’s such an early stage that it would never be publicized if it came from anywhere else?
Why This Matters
One important part of the story was actually the interview with a breast cancer survivor who said “A lot of these things will shrink a tumor. But what we look at as advocates is overall survival.” And this research is a long way off from being able to show that.
Criteria
Not Applicable
Not applicable. Too early to discuss costs.
Not Satisfactory
Inadequate. We are told that 2 of 97 had significant tumor shrinkage but we’re not told how much and we’re not told anything about what happened to the other 95 women.
Not Satisfactory
The story did state “Patients in the study experienced diarrhea, nausea, rash, fatigue decreased appetite, vomiting, itchiness and taste alteration.”
But we weren’t told how many of the 97 experienced these. So the true scope of what was seen is not reported.
Not Satisfactory
There was no critical analysis of the quality of the evidence. The story offered a scant – but inadequate description of the first two phases of drug trials. But it didn’t describe the degree of tumor shrinkage (only saying “significant”), and didn’t describe what happened to the other 95 of the 97 women in the trial.
Satisfactory
No disease-mongering of advanced breast cancer.
Not Satisfactory
There was an important voice added from a breast cancer survivor.
But there was no independent expert perspective added.
Not Satisfactory
There was no comparison made between work on this drug and any other research in this active field of research.
Satisfactory
The experimental nature of the drug was clear in the story.
Not Satisfactory
The drug was described as “new” but we weren’t told how or why it’s new or how it acts differently than other drugs. No context of other research in this field.
Satisfactory
It does not appear that the story relied solely on a news release.
Total Score: 3 of 9 Satisfactory
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