Keytruda® is the latest drug to be registered in Australia for the treatment of widespread melanoma. But we must wait to see if it meets the cost-effectiveness targets for PBS subsidisation.
It’ll take more than a handshake to set the record straight.
Rui Vieira/PA Archive
Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease. With a ten-year survival rate of just 1%, it has the poorest prognosis of all solid tumours. The main reason for this is that tumours of the pancreas largely…
How can doctors manage drug shortages ethically?
IV via drpnncpptak/Shutterstock
Four years ago, just before Christmas, my hospital ran out of cytarabine, an essential drug used to treat and cure certain kinds of acute leukemia. This drug was suddenly in short supply across the nation…
The answer’s in there somewhere …
Bunches and bits
Imagine trying to follow a complex novel many times longer than War and Peace with hundreds of characters and twists. With every cancer having a unique story hidden inside its genetic code, this is similar…
Mammals display an incredible diversity in size. The largest mammal, the blue whale, can grow up to 30m long and weigh up to 200 tonnes. Now compare that to the Bumblebee bat, which is 3cm long and weighs…
Prescriptions for pain relief are easy to get in the UK but not if you live in certain countries.
PA/Julien Behal
Ten percent of the world consumes 90% of the morphine. At first glance that’s just another statistic about haves and have nots. But it’s more stark than that - particularly if you have cancer in a country…
TRANSPARENCY AND MEDICINE – A series examining issues from ethics to the evidence in evidence-based medicine, the influence of medical journals to the role of Big Pharma in our present and future health…
Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, AMREP Department of Medicine, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne & Senior Medical Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician, Melbourne Oncology Group, Cabrini Haematology and Oncology Centre, Wattletree Road, Malvern, Monash University