How Washington Is Nixing a Cancer Cure

What if they found a cure for a cancer that afflicts half a million people, but a combination of stupid bureaucrats and greedy doctors kept patients from getting it?

It's the kind of scenario that seems like the province of conspiracy theorists or alternative-medicine wackos—but is actually happening right now with a proven treatment for certain common types of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the sixth-most frequently occurring cancer in the United States.

I'm a bit biased on this one, though the treatment in question is not yet relevant to the rare subtype of lymphoma (mantle cell lymphoma) that I had in 2004. But even if I weren't in the lymphoma family, I would still be outraged by this situation. You can count the number of truly successful cancer treatments on one hand, and one of them is about to disappear.

If there's any justice, heads will roll at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) over it. At a minimum, officials there should be facing some hellacious congressional hearings to force them to reverse a Nov. 1 "final ruling" that could doom this life-saver. Ted Kennedy should schedule hearings now.

The treatment at issue is called radioimmunotherapy (RIT), which uses a radioactive isotope to give standard anticancer agents an extra charge. The brand names for these targeted "radio-labeled" therapies, which have fewer immediate side effects than many conventional chemo drugs and need be administered in only a few doses over a two-week period, are Bexxar and Zevalin, both approved by the FDA for lymphoma.

Several clinical trials have shown that the drugs work for most patients. Some seem to have been cured (we won't know for sure for a few more years), and almost all have seen their lives prolonged, often significantly. According to one clinical trial, patients with follicular lymphoma who received standard treatment achieved remission 36 percent of the time. When Zevalin was added, the figure was 89 percent. Bexxar produced at least some response in 97 percent of patients in one study. Particularly for older patients who cannot handle a stem cell transplant, these are essential treatment options.