Advances in Medicine

The world is burning and it is only going to get worse. Probably much of the planet will not be habitable for parts of the year by 2050. It is going to be grim. The future of most species on the planet is in doubt, possibly including our own.

But hey, if you are one of the lucky ones, you can probably live a very long time because the recent advances in medicine are freaking amazing.

A pill taken once a day cuts the risk of dying from lung cancer by half, according to “thrilling” and “unprecedented” results from a decade-long global study.

Taking the drug osimertinib after surgery dramatically reduced the risk of patients dying by 51%, results presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8 million deaths a year. The results of the late-stage study, led by Yale University, were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (Asco) annual meeting in Chicago.

“Thirty years ago, there was nothing we could do for these patients,” said Dr Roy Herbst, the deputy director of Yale Cancer Center and lead author of the study. “Now we have this potent drug.

“Fifty per cent is a big deal in any disease, but certainly in a disease like lung cancer, which has typically been very resistant to therapies.”

The Adaura trial involved patients aged between 30 and 86 in 26 countries and looked at whether the pill could help non-small cell lung cancer patients, the most common form of the disease.

Everyone in the trial had a mutation of the EGFR gene, which is found in about a quarter of global lung cancer cases, and accounts for as many as 40% of cases in Asia. An EGFR mutation is more common in women than men, and in people who have never smoked or have been light smokers.

Speaking in Chicago, Herbst said the “thrilling” results added huge weight to earlier findings from the same trial that showed the pill also halves the risk of a recurrence of the disease.

I used to find the constant coverage of advances in medicine in The New Yorker annoying. I mean, occasionally, OK, but it is like once a month. I guess they know their audience. And hey, as I near a half-century on this near cinder, I guess I am paying attention to. Now if there was only a way to not pay attention to what we have done to the planet.