EXPERIMENTING WITH HUMANS. This article is about a report in Lancet Oncology about a randomized study which compared treatment of patients with non-small cell lung cancer with Erbitux and chemotherapy. The control group received only chemotherapy. The study found that the patients taking Erbitux who developed a rash in the first three weeks did much better than the others: “Compared to other patients, those who developed the rash lived longer (15 months versus 8.8 months), had a better progression-free survival (5.4 months versus 4.3 months), and had a higher response rate (44.8 percent versus 32 percent).” Could the rash be a marker that could be used to tailor Erbitux treatment?
What is astonishing is the commentary accompanying the report in which a doctor says: “The only way to verify the hypothesis that skin rash predicts the benefit of cetuximab is a randomized trial that compares interruption versus continuation of cetuximab in patients with skin rash after three weeks of treatment with cetuximab and chemotherapy.”
It seems that he is proposing that a drug that seems to extend the lives of certain patients by over 6 months be withheld from some of them to test whether they will die more quickly.