KCA Critical of Wall Street Journal Cancer Story

Letter to the Editor: WSJ Missed "The Real Story" in Placebo Article

(PRWEB) June 12, 2004 -- Letter to the Editor: WSJ Missed "The Real Story" in Placebo Article

The Wall Street Journal, Letters to the Editor, Via email: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com

Dear Editor:

As a cancer survivor, I am concerned that Amy Dockser Marcus article (Fighting Cancer With a Sugar Pill, WSJ, June 8, 2004) inflames the sensitive issue of placebo controls in clinical trials without illuminating the core problem: 97% of eligible patients never participate in a clinical trial.

The Kidney Cancer Association is the largest organization representing patients with renal cancer and their families-60-thousand constituents in the U.S. and 90 other countries. As advocacy organizations like ours struggle to inform patients concerning how their lack of participation in clinical trials stifles research, news articles that are critical of clinical trial design approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration might only result in stopping important research projects.

Ms. Marcus article also fails to make it clear that while a few institutions make ethical objections to placebo controls, there is no consensus on this controversial issue (upon which our organization has not rendered an opinion). I believe many respectable researchers would argue that such controls are essential to the responsible and swift approval of life-saving therapies. Should organizations like the Kidney Cancer Association devote precious financial resources to the analysis of bioethics rather than putting these funds toward sponsoring research? This too is a difficult question.

I am concerned that news stories that inflame rather than inform do little toward helping the public to better understand the complexity of the drug approval process. If clinical trials fail to accrue sufficient numbers of patients, many useful cancer-fighting drugs will never get into the marketplace. This is the issue that should receive widespread publicity-and it is critically important to research in rare and deadly cancers such as kidney cancer.

Yours very truly,

Bill Bro

Chief Executive Officer