Cetuximab -- one of the drugs Cordain mentions is another name for
Erbitux. Now maybe the drugs have been improved -- but below is a link to
a 2002 Townsend Letter article which details the early disappointing
failure of EGF blocking drugs in actual patients. I think this EGF thing
may be a big red herring that will translate into big bucks for big pharma -
- sounds great on paper and works in a petri dish -- but fails with respect
to actual tumors in actual patients... Thoughts? One particularly
interesting quote:
"So, while on Saturday oncologists were applauding Dr. Mendelsohn for his
brilliant insights, on Monday they were hearing that a treatment based on
these insights simply did not work. If it were true that EGF "plays a
critical role in the process that regulates tumor cell growth and
survival," as ImClone still claims on its website, then one would expect a
treatment that targets EGF to yield significant clinical results. It
doesn't."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_2002_August-Sept/ai_90794440