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Janine Cutting's avatar

Amazing to read about the development of chemotherapy (and other drugs) and clinical trials. I appreciated as well your "stork story," which perfectly sums up the proliferation of "opinion-y" science-sounding mis-information on the internet and elsewhere. I remember going through radiation, surgery and chemo and repeatedly coming across the prase "slash, poison, burn..." I wrote a blog post about it at the time. When you are a cancer patient, people you barely know and who have no background in medicine will tell you to "starve your cancer" or use high dose vitamin C (all ideas strongly encouraged by pseudo-scientists on the internet) but to people like me, whose life was saved by chemo, surgery and radiation, this is like rubbing salt in a wound. I am so grateful for the doctors, scientists, and patients who developed and took part in clinical trials, and those who continue to do so. Thank you so much for this amazing piece!

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Elliott San's avatar

I remember in the run up to chemo the “mustard gas origins” didn’t play as well for me as I think the doctor hoped! But great piece, and interesting to learn about the creation of the clinical trial (and how relatively new it all is!). Thank God for Zubrod.

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