Market Flooded With Cancer Drugs

“Underground Cancer Cures Still Popular” by John Brennan (April 2) is most enlightening and instructive despite some inaccuracies.

These underground “cures” emphasizing the “nutritional,” “holistic,” “mega-vitamins” and “metabolic approach” are more popular than ever. However, they are best described as “preventions,” “controls” and “insurance” to keep/get our immune systems functioning properly. If one waits until a cure is required, it is already too late in many cases, particularly if one has already submitted to the cancer drugs that do indeed have severe side effects causing patients to “complain that the suffering from the drugs is worse than the disease.”

Brennan also states “pharmaceutical companies are developing new drugs faster than physicians can test them.” Perhaps drug companies should slow down. There are already 42,000 drugs being sold today (10% introduced before 1938), according to Margaret Heckler (Times, March 22, “Stiffer Drug-Effect Monitoring Proposed”). Which 42,000 diseases really require this astronomical variety of drugs? What drug testing methods are used to ensure safe, effective consumption by consumers?

SANDEE HOGAN

Hawthorne