My Malignant Melanoma

The Australians have been using radiotherapy after wide area excision of melanoma for quite a while, and include it in their equivalent of the NICE guidelines. No surprise then that the latest study showing a certain degree of qualified success with radiotherapy comes from there.

None too impressive results though: Though by the end of the study, 19 percent of the radiation patients had experienced a local nodal relapse of their melanoma, compared with 31 percent of patients who did not undergo postoperative radiation treatment, overall survival was not affected.

Labels: Australia, Melanoma, NICE, Radiotherapy

Just seen a new article in the Mail about a new Melanoma vaccine. Two annoying things are immediately obvious.

The first is describing melanoma as "the sun-worshipper's killer". The second is allowing anti-vaccination muppets to post comments describing vaccines as "poison".

Now I know the Daily Mail isn't a reliable source of medical information. I personally wouldn't wipe my arse on it. But its readers don't know this.

Let's have a look at whether this vaccine really is five years from use.

What the university theseselves actually say is that they have had encouraging results in small scale human clinical trials. These encouraging results are similar to that given by chemotherapy, without the side-effects. Since the chemotherapy available only has a detectable response in about 15% of cases. Not too spectacular. Compare this with the 50-60% response obtained by Rosenberg's ACT technique.

The university's account also says that the research group will carry out over the next three years test -tube studies with the aim of improving the vaccine, and that they intend to spend A$104,000 on the project over three years.

That isn't even one year of one researcher. For a vaccine which might be given to every person in Australia, and used by every hospital treating stage 4 melanoma if it worked. What a money-spinner that would be. Does this suggest that anyone thinks it is five years from market?

Another worthless puff-piece written by a collaboration of lazy journalism and an academic looking to boost their profile. Of course the Mail played a major part in the MMR scare. It's got previous.

Labels: Australia, daily mail, Melanoma, vaccine