Great article kbear, thanks for posting. Even if it's anecdotal,...

Great article kbear, thanks for posting. Even if it's anecdotal, it's nice to hear positive stories.


One thing that confuses me slightly in the discussion around the Four Corners story is everyone's description of survival benefits as an "average".

I'm almost certain Yervoy's approval was based on "median" data. And, unless all the patients have died, I'm not sure how they've arrived at an average figure.

"Average" undersells the benefit of immunotherapy which typically has a long survival tail. Just like CVac's trials will be measured, using medians, all it tells us is that the patient population (as tested) has a 50% chance of living longer than the median amount. It could be 1 day or it could be 50 years.
The survival curve isn't symmetrical, the distribution of events are concentrated quite closely in the first half of patients but extend out quite far in the second.

Every time I hear 'average survival' bandied about it makes me wince at the thought of people misunderstanding the actual data.