A recent study from the National Cancer Institute has found that most cancer drugs are not worth the money. For instance, Erbitux, the drug used for the treatment of lung cancer, extends life by only an average of 1.2 months, hardly worth the expense of $80,000 for treatment. The authors calculated that extending life by one year for the 55,000 Americans who die of cancer would cost $440 billion. Other examples of basically useless treatments that will cost you the farm include Avastin and Nexavar, both costing more than $34,000 for a course of treatment.

Of course the usual suspects were trotted out in the form of doctors who stated that for some patients Erbitux is a miracle.

More egregious practices mentioned included doctors using drugs off label or aggressively treating people with Mercedes like drugs who had advanced stages of cancer. Of course Americans don’t like to talk about rationing of healthcare, which Rick Lippin MD has been talking about in the email circuit as well as the fact that more care can be worse care, and that profiting off of the dying should be prosecuted as a crime.

Hear, hear! (or is it Here, here?)

Maybe we as doctors should teach people to grieve their dead and dying, rather than enable them to flee from reality by throwing our expensive technology at their loved ones and colluding in the myth that everyone can live forever (e.g. “Aunt Mabel is fighting her cancer and gonna win” kind of nonsense).

Hat tap to John Mack (@pharmaguy).