Zax Publishing Launches a Public Opinion Survey on Breast Cancer Research
Zax Publishing Launches a Public Opinion Survey on Breast Cancer Research
Sterling, VA (PRWEB) August 09, 2011
Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer and signed the National Cancer Act to make the “conquest of cancer a national crusade.” Yet this year 1.6 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer, and breast cancer will be near the top of the list with more than 230,000 victims.
The National Institute of Health reports that there are over 1000 studies and trials underway that address breast cancer. But for many people, the progress has been painfully slow.
The survey seeks input on the following issues to assess whether the public supports further action in the war against breast cancer:
1) Is the level of government spending on breast cancer research commensurate with the prevalence of the disease?
The National Cancer Institute, acting as the federal government’s principal agency for cancer research, estimates that it spends approximately 12% of its $ 5 billion annual budget on breast cancer research. In a 2007 study, the NCI also estimated that the cost to treat breast cancer in 2004 was over $ 8 billion.
2) Should the National Cancer Institute issue guidelines segmenting the overall breast cancer market into the relevant submarkets for research, development and treatment?
Today, the databases at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov and http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials are not set up to capture or provide segmented information. However, breast cancer is not one disease, but many. While new categories of patients have been identified such as those harboring BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, segmented data for these groups and others are not routinely collected. To address this issue, the NCI would set guidelines so that the relevant data for each category of breast cancer is routinely captured for each patient and is tracked as part of all clinical trials.
3) Should the federal government target research dollars to areas not adequately funded by private industry?
The pharmaceutical companies are in business to sell drugs for profit; these companies do not necessarily make money from cures.
One example of how these incentives operate is that no drug company has initiated a controlled trial of CoQ10 (an over-the-counter supplement), although several small studies had showed that it reduced breast cancer tumors and improved the patients’ health.
Currently, the government databases currently list over one hundred studies or trials with federal government participation from the management of therapies, to developing vaccines, to participating in trials with established drug companies. This survey question seeks input on whether the government should target its scarce resources toward research efforts on potential cures that have not attracted the interest of the drug industry.
4) Should non-profit foundations focus on specific categories of breast cancer and be more directly involved in research initiatives for these targets?
In the field of Parkinson’s disease management, the Michael J. Fox Foundation has funded specialized research that the drug companies have ignored. In this field, a breast cancer foundation or foundations could raise funds, for example, for a controlled COQ10 study — and track the results for the various categories of breast cancer patients. Similarly, a breast cancer foundation could pursue research on a vaccine for a particular type of breast cancer. This question raises the issue of the role of non-profit organizations in the war against breast cancer.
5) Should the breast cancer foundations pursue strategic relationships with genetic research companies to enable the creation of a confidential database of patients’ genetic information?
In the field of Parkinson’s disease research, a major non-profit foundation partnered with the company named http://www.23andme.com to offer genetic testing for $ 99 per person for its members. The data collection has already born fruit in terms of new research findings.
Looking to the future, different types of breast cancer are likely to be cured through the development and deployment of highly targeted, nontoxic chemical therapies based on genetic science. Yet getting genetic information from breast cancer patients is often an afterthought. For example, one family with five sisters suffered three instances of breast cancer before being directed to take genetic tests. It turned out that all five sisters harbored the BRCA1 mutation, yet only two could plan proactively.
A collection of genetic information in the field of breast cancer could yield a very powerful and secure database for researchers to track the cause and effect of the patient’s DNA structure, and ultimately the means to modify it as appropriate.
The public opinion survey for these and other issues has been set up at http://www.zaxpublishing.com. The results of the survey will be published and sent to the National Cancer Institute and all of the national breast cancer foundations.
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