Cancer Drugs

As a physician and as a cancer patient, I applaud your commentary about the therapeutic “breakthrough” in chemotherapy regimens (editorial, “Breakthrough May Be the Word for It,” Feb 26).

Many of us have already received either G-CSF or GM-CSF in clinical trials. They stimulate the body (bone marrow) to produce blood cells which help protect us against infection. This helps combat one of the most crucial risks to a patient receiving chemotherapy or irradiation therapy.

As with all drugs, there’s a flip side: complications. Fever, bone pain, pleural and/or pericardial effusion (fluid around the lungs and/or heart) occurred in many of us.

Hopefully, these infant drugs will live up to their promise as we learn to use them better. Nothing’s perfect, but in standard chemotherapy and in that which precedes bone marrow transplantation, these drugs clearly represent progress. I’m only sorry the FDA has been so (typically) slow in granting their approval.

EDWARD M. RISSMAN, MD

Calabasas