Linda at a quilt retreat in 2010. Cancer might take her hair, but it couldn't take her smile. So beautiful.
Thursday, March 8th, 2012. The Wall Street Journal for today (p. A3) contains an article entitled "Personalized Medicine Hits a Bump", which is both discouraging and encouraging. It transcribes the contents of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine into language that even I can understand (I think). It appears that our heroes, the cancer researchers, can at times design drugs that are specific to the kinds of mutations expressed by an individual's genome - in other words, designer (personalized) medicine. However this article says that there are problems involving the complicated and varied makeup of the genomes of these cancers. Caution is urged. Well, too bad the process (of fitting the drug to the specific cancer of a specific person) isn't simple and straightforward - I guess, that's discouraging. But, the mere fact that there is some hope - I gather, rather strong hope - of eventual success is encouraging, at least to me. Now I think I'll try to read the original article. I need something to fill my spare time for the next couple of weeks.
Personalized therapy has come a long way in the past few years - but we are not there yet.
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