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Extending life - even if a difficult or "suffering" one - is something many would choose over death. Who are you or I or anyone else to deny them that if they choose it?
Extending life - even if a difficult or "suffering" one - is something many would choose over death. Who are you or I or anyone else to deny them that if they choose it?
Exaggerating a bit (possibly)for the purpose of making the point joey,' YOU' might want to deny them if drugs like this became mainstream and your insurance costs were going to go up, say, $100 a month because of the cost of covering them.
Except that it's not "Exaggerating a bit (possibly)" but exaggerating to an extreme degree (absolutely). An extra $100/year is more likely, given what a small % of people this impacts and the large % of people who would help defray the extra cost. In short, no, "I" would NOT want to deny them. Sounds more like you would. And somehow I think your feelings would change drastically if it were you or someone you really cared about. To each their own.
The big difference is the drug in the op will only extend life for an extremely short time.
The title might be more appropriate if it asked, "How much is a few months of life worth" " It costs $93,000 and adds four months' survival, on average"
The answer in either case probably changes a lot depending on whether you're talking about yourself(or a loved one) or a stranger and/or whether or not you would have to pay for it out of pocket
The article might be misleading: it may extend median survival by four months, but for a select group of patients, it may let them live years longer than they would otherwise or even provide a cure. That's the way it is with some brain cancer drugs at least. Temozolomide, marketed in the U.S. as "Temodar", costs roughly $3,000 - $4,500 for a month's supply and, when combined with radiotherapy, only provides a roughly 2.5 month survival advantage over radiotherapy (15 vs. 12 mos IIRC) alone in the worst and most common brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme) - BUT it also raises the five-year survival rate to 10% (vs. 2% for the RT-only group). It all depends on how the patient responds to the drug, which in this specific case is mainly determined by whether they have a certain genetic mutation (namely MGMT promoter methylation). The future of cancer therapies lies in individualized treatments so that the astronomically expensive drugs might translate into actual results.
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