My sister was part of an immunotherapy trial years back. She was given weeks to live; the trial gave us years. Tailored medicine is truly a marvel.

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adamsiem 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

My mother had immunotherapy treatment last year for lung cancer. It caused a lethal arrhythmia within 24 hours that they could not treat. She was dead by the end of that day. The cardiologist said this was a known side effect (he muttered 5% as she lay there). It's still not a perfect solution.

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ajross 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

To be fair, not knowing your mother's age or cancer, 5% is right around the mortality rate for major surgery in the elderly too. Things are just dangerous as you approach end of life and there are no good solutions for anything.

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hinkley 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What are the odds of chemo sucking every moment of joy out of your life and then you die anyway.

I think I could deal with 20:1 odds if I had a clean before and after. Tell everyone you love them, hope to see them soon, then take your 95% chance of having an extra few years.

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frodo8sam 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's pretty much what happens when you get a stemcell transplant. Luckily there is steady improvement in the survival rate. This is a very old therapy by now of course. But let's hope the various form of immuno therapy take the same trajectory, getting a little better every year.

	▲	hinkley 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Hank Green just did a follow-up about a question about “who has the most DNA”, where he back pedaled heavily on his previous attempt to answer. I learned, as he had, that sometimes bone marrow transplants don’t take and one option is to administer another, or several, which could make you much more chimeric than the average stem cell recipient. But I don’t understand how the marrows don’t end up fighting each other in a death match. Is that a special property of marrow?

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John23832 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm really sorry for you loss (and the way it happened).

That said, we all know that these are not perfect solutions. They save some more, they don't save all.

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sharkweek 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Friend was told he had 12 months to live maybe 20 years ago (some rare form of melanoma).

Him and his wife committed hard to tons of clinical trials and is still alive to this day and has no indication he’ll be dying anytime soon.

He’s the very first patient on a number of studies, which he thinks is pretty cool.