The War On Cancer Is Far From Over, a new PBS special says. Here's my take: By Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg)— Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, and while Nixon’s long gone (taken out by a stroke) cancer is very much with us and not likely to surrender any time soon. So says “The Truth About Cancer,” which airs on PBS April 16 at 9 p.m. New York time. The film opens in a graveyard though the news isn’t entirely grim. Various drugs are giving patients extra months and even years, while some forms of cancer, such as childhood leukemia, have high survivability rates, the show says. Yet several “stars” of the 90-minute film die before the credits roll, including Larry D’Onofrio, husband of filmmaker Linda Garmon. Garmon initially hoped her film “could have a happy ending” yet she and her husband soon realized a starker reality: “Cancer isn’t for sissies.” There’s no sugar coating here, with D’Onofrio’s case illustrating a disheartening fact: He did everything right – watched what he ate, exercised regularly, yet was ravaged by mesothelioma, which Garmon blames on exposure to asbestos during summer construction work. Says Gorman: “You can follow all the rules and just have bad luck.” A doctor tells of the look of “betrayal” on many health-conscious patient’s faces when they first hear their diagnosis. A patient named Jamie Klayman had her first indication of luck gone bad when she felt a “funny kind of pain” in her stomach. Her diagnosis: pancreatic cancer. She tells Garmon she quickly realized the “numbers were not in my favor” yet like many patients she, and her family, hoped for a “home run.” Her story illustrates the devastation cancer wreaks on both patients and family members, who in one segment bicker about what a doctor may or may not have said about survivability. Over the course of the film, which includes patients with breast cancer and leukemia, the disease ravages her body and eventually her hope. She finally concludes that “nobody’s hiding the secret magic beans” that could save her. Viewers with experience in the cancer wards will see many familiar sites: dripping chemo bottles, CT scanners, and hopeful messages scrawled on colored paper hung round a patient’s room: “Pray, hope and don’t worry.” Sometimes the news is good, as when patients respond well to the drug Gleevec. One doctor says news of the drug’s success resulted in 600 emails a day from patients wondering if the drug could help them. Yet the news is often grim. Patients have “little chance of surviving more than five years” once a cancer metastasizes, the show says, and screening efforts often fail to detect the presence of the disease. Dr. David Nathan, author of a popular book on cancer treatments, says cardiologists play a role by keeping patients ticking into old age. If we live long enough, he says, cancer is all but “inevitable.” All we can do, he adds, is “treat it, and treat it well.” Viewers of a fatalistic bent may be reminded to live fully while we can. It’s also hard not to be impressed by patients who seem to fight hardest when there is little life left, including Jamie Klayman, who died Nov. 29, 2007. A film taken near the end of her life shows her bravely running the bases is a backyard ball game. There will be “no peace treaty” in this struggle, the show concludes. “More likely, we’ll see the war won one group of patients at a time.” The film is followed by a 30-minute panel discussion moderated by Linda Ellerbee, a cancer survivor whose luck is currently holding. http://pressroom.pbs.org/programs/the_truth_about_cancer Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.
