Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 4, 1994 TAG: 9405040158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WASHINGTON - Energy Department officials acknowledged Tuesday that for years they hampered a promising treatment for a usually fatal brain tumor, but say they're now on track - turning idle nuclear reactors into cancer killers.
``We got off to a slow start,'' Martha Krebs, research director for the Department of Energy, told a Senate hearing. ``We are definitely trying to change that.''
DOE is renovating an idle reactor at Long Island's Brookhaven National Laboratory so that its neutron beam can pulverize inoperable brain tumors - a technique used for 20 years in Japan.
The agency is about to lease the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory's reactor to private brain-tumor researchers, and could refit some 25 reactors for medicine instead of energy if this tumor treatment proves safe and effective, Krebs said.
But DOE's new $8 million program on Boron-Neutron Capture Therapy, or BNCT, isn't aggressive enough, senators charged Tuesday. The agency should immediately start clinical trials that treat patients, said members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
``You're talking about levels of safety and toxicity - if you're already dead, what difference does that make?'' said Sen. Malcolm Wallop, R-Wyo.
Some 7,000 Americans die each year from a virulent brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme, known for killing such people as Republican political strategist Lee Atwater and entertainer Ethel Merman.
- Associated Press
FDA broadens use of cancer drug
WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration has approved wider use of an experimental drug for treating advanced lung cancer because it may slightly prolong survival.
The drug, Navelbine, is undergoing clinical trials in people with advanced small-cell lung cancer whose disease has so spread that surgery or radiation offers no hope.
The medical trials are not complete, but early results indicate that Navelbine may increase survival time - although probably by only weeks.
The FDA notified doctors Tuesday that they may give the drug to other patients who have that deadly form of lung cancer but aren't enrolled in the trials.
- Associated Press
by CNB