Sorry to take space and time away from the all-important question of whether Barack called Sarah a pig and John a fish.
I thought maybe a little light diversion might be refreshing for those whose heads might be developing brain cancer from such crucial matters.
First the good news:
BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 11 PRNewswire-FirstCall -- Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: NWBO; AIM: NWBT and NWBS) ("NWBT" or the "Company") today announced the most recent long-term follow-up data, through June 15, 2008, from its prior Phase I and Phase I/II clinical trials with DCVax®-Brain, which began in 2000 and 2003, for patients with Glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal type of brain cancer. This long-term data shows that 84% of patients who received DCVax®-Brain in these trials have so far lived longer than the median survival of 14.6 months under standard of care, 68% of the patients have so far lived more than 2 years, 58% of the patients have so far lived more than 2-1/2 years, 42% have so far lived more than 3 years, and 26% have so far lived more than 4 years, with patients surviving as long as 8 years to date. The median survival in the patients from these trials is now 36.4 months, under a standard Kaplan Meier analysis.
This autologous brain cancer vaccine has no controlled trials and won't, if ever, have persuasive evidence from controlled trials that the vaccine is efficacious. ("Autologous" means the therapeutic vaccine is made from a patient's own cancer cells.)
The bad news is that if you are an American with brain cancer, it may not matter.
Another American company with an autologous vaccine that has been utilized in brain and other cancers is approved in Russia but has abandoned, for now, any attempt to gain approval from the FDA.
You see the FDA has a thing against personalized medicine in particular. The political scientists at the FDA prefer standard treatments that don't work very well. It is a matter of egalitarianism perhaps.
Barack Obama has authored a bill to direct the political scientists at the FDA towards personalized medicine but it has gone nowhere. Americans revere their FDA political scientists who are there to protect us all. They don't do it very well but that is not to say they don't mean well.
Now you can return to the pig wars.
Sorry for the interruption.
Best, Terry