Parts Catalog Accessories Catalog How To Articles Tech Forums
Call Pelican Parts at 888-280-7799
Shopping Cart Cart | Project List | Order Status | Help



Go Back   PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum > General Discussions > Off-Topic Discussion

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 07-21-2025, 12:09 PM
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2023
Posts: 409
Phase 1,2 and 3 Clinical Trials; Cognitive Dissonance?

As some of you know, I recently lost my lovely wife of 32 years to the deadly disease, pancreatic cancer. Several major things have come out of her painful struggle, however. One big one is the hows and whys of how clinical trials are carried out in these United States. TALK ABOUT A WAKE UP CALL FOR MY WIFE AND I!!!

When she was first diagnosed (that's another story for another time....) her doctors met with the tumor board at the hospital and they recommended two courses of treatment for her:

1. Chemotherapy

2. Radiation therapy.

which "might" hopefully lead to....

3. Surgery

I believed there might be a better course of action so I found the RenovoRx program for treating pancreatic cancer. I contacted RenovoRx concerning my wife's situation. RenovoRx approved her for their Phase 3 clinical trial. I called and made an appointment for my wife. For some reason, the pancreatic cancer created periods of high anxiety for my wife.

The day of her appointment she woke up and said she did not feel up to traveling the three hour drive to the appointment. So, I called the clinic and cancelled and said we would reschedule.

Right after that, the pain from the tumor pressing on the nerves in her back became overwhelming along with severe AFIB so she went into the hospital. During her hospital stay, I managed to get her another appointment with the clinic carrying on the phase 3 renovorx clinical trial.

After she was discharged from the hospital myself and a friend transported my wife to the clinic carrying on the phase 3 renovorx trial on the day of her appointment. The doctor was VERY excited about getting her started on the Phase 3 renovorx clinical trial. My wife was excited and so was I.

We came back home, three days later I received a call from the clinic. Renovorx had decided to DROP/DISMISS my wife from the phase 3 clinical trial!!! Why? Because they said it had been more than 11 weeks since renovorx had FIRST referred her for the phase 3 clinical trial!! What?

I still have all the emails from Renovorx, no where did they say there was an 11 week time deadline to get my wife in to be seen. Thinking back on it, what they should have said is this: "We are sending an ambulance to your house to take your wife to the clinic so they can begin treatments TODAY"

CANCER IS A 911 EMERGENCY, do not let anyone fool you, CANCER WAITS FOR NO ONE. And yet, the health care system treats it as if you just got a bump on your big toe.......We have an opening in our schedule three months from now, will that work for you??

I really did not want to relay the message to my wife because I knew it would be emotionally overwhelming to her.....however, I knew I needed to. She was devastated by the news....

As luck would have it, she was hospitalized yet a second and third time at a different hospital for the severe back pain caused by the tumor pressing on the nerves in her back along with severe AFIB. During her stay at that hospital, I ran into a doctor who was affiliated with the clinic involved with the RenovoRX Clinical Trials programs. Here is what she shared with me:

"ANY patient can be dismissed from ANY clinical trial for ANY reason at ANY time - it doesn't have to be a good reason, either".

Re-read that one. In these United States, $1.4 billion dollars is spent annually TRYING to recruit new patients into clinical trials. Clinical Trials are how medicine better learns how to treat diseases and ailments, right?

And yet, after spending $1.4 billion dollars to RECRUIT new patients, they can and do summarily dismiss patients from their clinical trials!!!!!

Pavlov's Dog experiments come to mine. Promise the patient a possible solution to their health problem. Then, drop them like a bowling ball.

One thing for sure, if I ever find myself fighting any cancer, the last place I will turn to is a Phase 1, 2 or 3 clinical trial.....
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 07-21-2025, 03:15 PM
He/Him
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: DC Metro/Maryland
Posts: 15,415
If you, as a scientist, cannot ensure the viability of your test subjects, why would you risk including them?

Its not that you are worried about making money, most of these researchers aren't making gobs of money. There's only so much budget to go around and you aren't getting a bigger one mid trial. You have one or two shots to get the right subjects on your treatment regimen and you're hoping the results come up clean enough to get your treatment approved. That's the goal, you want your lifesaving/life improving/disease preventing/etc treatment out to the world so that people can benefit from it.

Anything can jeopardize your treatment getting approved. You find out midway through a trial that someone has lied about another condition they had, they suddenly start a treatment for another illness, they lose their job and start missing meals, etc. If your trial subjects aren't the squeaky clean examples that demonstrate that your treatment to be the single variable making the improvement, then the trial might be worthless.

Remember, the folks doing the trials are scientists. They want the treatment they've worked on to be approved for general use so that it can benefit everyone. They are stuck between the pharma folks who are funding the research and the trials (who want to make money) and the FDA (who want to make sure the public isn't getting endangered by this treatment). The decision to kick someone out of a trial might end up being fatal for that person, but keeping them in the trial might risk the treatment being denied for thousands of others.
__________________
Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat

I recondition w123/w126/w124/w140/r107/r129/ steering boxes!


1984 300D "Elsa" odo reset 6/2011 147k
1983 300TD "Mitzi" ~268k OM603 powered
1995 E300 "Adelheid" 262k [Sold]
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 07-21-2025, 10:51 PM
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2023
Posts: 409
This was a very interesting journey for both my wife and I. During this time frame, I was put in touch with two other adult women who were fighting pancreatic cancer at the same time my wife was. I was in constant touch via text messaging with both of them as they struggled to regain their health (which never happened).

You see, there is this thing called 'standard-of-care'. 'Standard-of-care' does NOT mean State of the Art. 'Standard-of-care' means soviet style medicine. You get the same old same old, the B.S. that doesn't work, guaranteed to kill you sooner than later, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.

The one woman had been on chemo and radiation for four straight years. She had also participated in a clinical trial that was run by the same clinic that had dumped my wife. She even flew to Rochester, Minnesota to meet with one of the world's best pancreatic surgeons, Mark Truty. After he looked at her Cat Scans and MRIs, he told her there was nothing he could do for her, go home and get your final affairs in order.......

She told me that after four years of STRAIGHT chemo and radiation PLUS the clinical trial, her pancreatic tumor had actually grown LARGER!!!! She passed a few months before my wife passed away. I still review her text messages to glean any more details that may help someone else in their journey.

The other woman and I texted concerning her treatment for her pancreatic cancer while my wife was in the hospital for the fourth time. In July of 2024, I sent her a text and there was no response so I sent another text and still no response. I decided to go online and check the obituaries and found she had just died.

We also met with a top notch oncologist who told us he had treated 300 pancreatic cancer patients using chemotherapy. He told my wife and I that after one year of chemo therapy treatment, only two patients survived, both under the age of 40. The other 298 were DEAD DEAD DEAD within one year of starting chemotherapy.

Crank up the chemo therapy machine.....

Last edited by qualified-merc; 07-23-2025 at 11:54 AM.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On




All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:14 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0
Copyright 2024 Pelican Parts, LLC - Posts may be archived for display on the Peach Parts or Pelican Parts Website -    DMCA Registered Agent Contact Page