Word: melanomas
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...results were impressive for several types of cancer. In eleven of the 25 patients, tumors shrank by 50% or more. Among the patients showing this response were three out of three with kidney cancer and four out of seven with melanoma, a particularly dangerous form of skin cancer that often spreads to the internal organs. In one melanoma patient who previously had widespread tumors, all signs of malignancy disappeared. There was, however, no response at all in 14 of the patients, and the outlook, even for those who have improved, remains uncertain; none has been observed for more than...
Interferon's performance against other forms of cancer has been inconsistent, but when it does work, the results can be dramatic. It has produced complete remissions (though not necessarily permanent cures) in advanced cases of kidney cancer; in malignant melanoma, a lethal form of skin cancer; and in Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin cancer that often strikes AIDS victims. In one study reported in Houston, just five out of 52 patients with advanced melanoma were successfully treated with interferon. But this handful was extraordinary: all signs of cancer disappeared within four months, even though the disease had spread to such...
...study, which began in 1982, a team led by Dr. Barrie Cassileth at the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center in Philadelphia developed questionnaires for 204 patients with advanced cancer and another 155 who had been treated either for breast cancer or melanoma and were susceptible to a recurrence of the disease. The cancer victims were asked about such attitudes as satisfaction with their jobs and life in general, feelings about their health, and their degree of hopelessness or helplessness -- factors that some studies have shown to affect longevity. Using accepted psychological rating procedures, the team compiled psychosocial scores that measured...
...years since the study began, 154 of the 204 advanced cancer patients (75%) have died. Of the 155 people treated for melanoma or breast cancer, 41 (26%) have had recurrences. But the researchers could find no relationship between attitude and either the survival or recurrence rate. In general, the more cheerful patients showed no greater capacity than the depressed ones for fighting their cancers, and the pessimists were at no greater risk of death or recurrence than the optimists. Concluded the report: "Our study . . . suggests that the inherent biology of the disease alone determines the prognosis, overriding the potentially mitigating...
Condescension informs much of the literature about Los Angeles, or something darker (The Day of the Locust). It seems to beget in the outsider the tendency to be snide, to say, for example, that if Houston is the buckle on the Sunbelt, L.A. is the melanoma. "Double Dubuque," H.L. Mencken called it. Westbrook Pegler proposed that the city be declared incompetent and placed in the charge of a guardian...