31–40 of 62 posts
So pancreatic cancer is basically a genetic disease for most patients instead of environmental?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s like talking about the ROI of a winning lottery ticket. We can’t know ahead of time which medicine works so you need to fund many teams at the beginning.
The pharmaceutical new drug development R&D market saw about $200 billion invested in 2025. https://hardmanandco.com/research/corporate-research/2025-ph... > Total VC tech investment in 2025 was $425 billion. https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/funding-data-third-large... >
> More than 90% of patients with the most common form of pancreatic cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC), have a mutation in the Kras gene. So pancreatic cancer is basically a genetic disease for most patients instead of environmental?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, it seems that this just provides an extra year of life or so. Of course this is better than nothing, but it is not a cure. Moreover, the link provided by another poster to an article that discusses the side effects, shows that they are unpleasant. Still, an extra year of life may provide a chance to survive until the appearance of a better solution.
It's an extra 6 months or so, and it's almost certain a better solution won't be come available in that 6 months, and even if it did you are very close to death and unlikely to recover even if a miracle cure is developed. In the meantime you are in intense pain and suffering wild side effects.
Therefore those well above the median might have reached an extra year of life.
I agree however that because almost all of them (96%) had severe side effects, many people would prefer to not choose this kind of life extension.
My own parents were such people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s like talking about the ROI of a winning lottery ticket. We can’t know ahead of time which medicine works so you need to fund many teams at the beginning.
The pharmaceutical new drug development R&D market saw about $200 billion invested in 2025. https://hardmanandco.com/research/corporate-research/2025-ph... > Total VC tech investment in 2025 was $425 billion. https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/funding-data-third-large... >
VC funding includes firms inside of the medical industry, but also companies operating across most of the economy. It’s not just IT, but food, solar, EV’s, rockets, etc.
So, IMO these numbers are pretty reasonable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The company says that the drug was generally well tolerated, but that’s on the oncology scale. > ... > He’s been on daraxonrasib since early this year, and describes it this way: “. . .it’s a nasty drug. It causes crazy stuff like my body can’t grow skin and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t be bleeding” If you go to that link above, be prepared, because he also looks like he’s had a…
I am in the enviable position to not be actively dying from an untreatable disease, so obviously haven’t seen things from the other side of this sort of situation. But to me, that doesn’t sound like a life worth living. Obviously different people will have different thresholds for when to throw in the towel, and I’m glad that we are finding medicines to allow people to make the choices that align with their own drive…
Insensitive comment in general. "Throw in the towel" really pissed me off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am in the enviable position to not be actively dying from an untreatable disease, so obviously haven’t seen things from the other side of this sort of situation. But to me, that doesn’t sound like a life worth living. Obviously different people will have different thresholds for when to throw in the towel, and I’m glad that we are finding medicines to allow people to make the choices that align with their own drive…
This may sound condescending but: you sound young, not disabled, and extremely sheltered from being exposed to disabled people. I am in a position to be intimately familiar with illness. I will say that health is a spectrum and the mind is incredibly resilient. You will surprise yourself as you inevitably age how much your mind will adapt to always hurting. There is more to life than body discomfort. This patient sou…
Doctors tend to choose the treatments that bias quality of life over quantity of life. That’s all I’m getting at here. I personally hope that if it ever comes to it, I will have the strength to choose something like three months of high QoL over one year of grinding daily misery as I have personally seen others do.
Having your skin fail to regenerate, bleeding everywhere, and having skin that looks like you’ve had aqua regia poured over it seems to me like a poor quality of life. It sounded like a life of pain and one in which it would be difficult to do a lot of the things that bring me joy. Perhaps it’s not as bad as it sounds, and this is a poor example of it. I’m not judging this guy for his choices; they’re his to make. And maybe I’ve overestimated the amount of pain he’s in. But from the description above, it sounded awful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am in the enviable position to not be actively dying from an untreatable disease, so obviously haven’t seen things from the other side of this sort of situation. But to me, that doesn’t sound like a life worth living. Obviously different people will have different thresholds for when to throw in the towel, and I’m glad that we are finding medicines to allow people to make the choices that align with their own drive…
Well, I am in the situation you are so afraid of. Chemo, radiation and other treatments suck big time, let alone the effects of the cancer itself. BUT ... this is not a binary situation, where suddenly life becomes unbearable. There's so much worth living for. And not just the obvious big things in life (kids, family, friends), but also many many small things. Man, that first cup of cappuchino once the effects of che…
I don’t think I was clear that I’m not afraid of being simply uncomfortable in my final days, but that there are absolutely medical treatments that can extend one’s life at extreme cost to quality of life. And there’s a threshold where I hope I’ll choose quality over quantity.
Sometimes you don’t know what that cost will be before starting treatment. Sometimes you’re holding out hope that the treatment will help you actually make it out the other side alive and healthy again. Sometimes you want to make it through long enough to see a child graduate, or meet a grandchild on the way, or some other meaningful event. There’s a million reasons one might choose between treatment options. And I don’t begrudge anyone for making the choice that’s right for them.
I’m sorry to hear what you’re going through, but I’m glad that it sounds like you’ve chosen a path that brings you the most fulfillment possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am in the enviable position to not be actively dying from an untreatable disease, so obviously haven’t seen things from the other side of this sort of situation. But to me, that doesn’t sound like a life worth living. Obviously different people will have different thresholds for when to throw in the towel, and I’m glad that we are finding medicines to allow people to make the choices that align with their own drive…
Sasse is a bad example of the drug. Entire institutions, at least the two I'm working with as a caregiver, have gone through the trials of 6236 without a single case of the rash as bad as his. Insensitive comment in general. "Throw in the towel" really pissed me off.
Obviously I am not saying that people should choose to forego treatment to avoid minor discomfort. I am saying that there are thresholds of quality of life where I think—given both foreknowledge of a treatment’s consequences and emotional distance from the situation—many would choose a shorter, higher quality of life than a longer, drawn out daily battle with little of the things we enjoy.
Totally naive question: is this a situation where stacking the drug with chemo might be even better?