2. Ultimately, reform and speed FDA approval for fatal diseases like recurrent / metastatic head and neck cancers: https://jakeseliger.com/2024/01/29/the-dead-and-dying-at-the.... A drug like petosemtamab (MCLA-158), which I was on from Sept. 27 2023 to March 29 2024, should already be approved, instead of continuing to wander around in clinical trials.
Hacker News, thank you for all the links and all the great reading. Now I have to say goodbye.
I’m with my wife Bess (https://bessstillman.substack.com/) and my brother Sam, and crying, but it is okay. At the end of Lord of the Rings Gandalf says to the hobbits, "Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” And that is how I feel now. Ending prematurely hurts, but all things must end, and my time to end is upon me.
My wife and I use a countertop induction stove called a Breville Control Freak, and, apart from the name it's incredible. Way better than legacy gas or electric stoves.
Dying from cancer makes me feel that way too: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=40970295 In my case, I can't really speak any more. Until mid-June I could eat pureed foods, and now I can't even do that.
You only live once. Make some changes. Deepen friendships. Focus on romantic partner. Life is not about you, it's about the people you're with and who are around you.
One of the options for a next trial is from TScan, "A Basket Study of Customized Autologous TCR-T Cell Therapies." https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05973487?term=tscan0.... On the one hand, it looks very promising; on the other hand, lots of promising treatments fail during dose-escalation, first-in-human trials. To my knowledge, the first humans dosed with TScan's TCR-T therapy got it a few months ago.
I got lucky, too, in that a slot for BGB-A3055 with Tislelizumab, an immunotherapy drug and trial, opened up at NEXT Oncology-Dallas: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05935098?term=BGB-A3055&.... One challenge, however, is that I received a bispecific antibody called petosemtamab from Sept 2023 to March 2024, then PDL1V (an antibody drug conjugate), and they're considered immunotherapies, so there's a question of whether continuing to pursue immunotherapies makes sense. By now the number of lines of therapy I've gotten make me ineligible for some trials: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/the-drugs-killing-dying-..., and I've also blown through the more promising drugs for what is a difficult-to-treat cancer type.
It took just five years to get from their first promising results to FDA approval
This sentence is insane. "Just?" It should be happening in months, not years. These are people with fatal diagnoses. Having the FDA hold up therapies like this is criminal.
I can't speak for everyone, but ours was great. The other day the car threw an error message about the battery; we brought it to a service center, which swapped the whole battery free under warranty and without bother. Tesla gave my wife $100 in Uber credits per day until they got a loaner a few days later.
Perhaps the best part of the "service experience" is not having to go in for oil changes, brakes, and all the other stuff legacy cars require.
One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!)
We could and should be moving faster. I'm dying anyway, so if a treatment doesn't work or even harms me, I'm not much worse off than I was before the treatment.