CancerActionNow.org...
Advocates for cancer treatments that work
Cancer ActionNow.org helps cancer patients identify treatment options to consider if standard treatment for their cancer does not help them.
The Marti Nelson Cancer Foundation/CancerActionNow.org works to make effective and safe cancer treatments available to cancer patients. Check the links under "Advocacy" in the menu to the left to see what we’re doing.
Important News
Visit the Cancer Action Now! Blog
Visit our blog (linked in the sidebar menu to the left)for the latest alerts and updates. We will post a headline on this page whenever something new comes to our attention, but our discussion and expanded information will be posted on the blog.
Expanded Access Rules - 08-12-2009
The FDA announced its final rules for Expanded Access to Investigational Drugs for Treatment Use and Charging for Investigational Drugs. Click here to see the announcement and additional links.
Information Project
We appreciate the generous financial support from several individual contributors and from Bosom Buddies of Solano County, Genentech, and Genomic Health, which has enabled us to redesign, rebuild and expand CancerActionNow.org. Our ongoing effort is to make this site a significant resource for patients, medical professionals, and regulatory agencies for information dealing with all aspects of cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. From time to time we will also highlight some of the public policy issues that may affect cancer patients and their families.
We welcome your input and suggestions for ways we can make this site more useful to our visitors. Whether you are a patient or family member, a medical care provider, a patient advocacy activist, or involved in insurance or regulatory issues, we invite you to email us at: editor (at) canceractionnow (dot) org.
Pending Legislation and Regulatory Issues
From time to time, we will add current information on regulatory and legislative developments concerning all aspects of cancer research and treatment. We will carefully monitor many of the political initiatives that may enhance or hinder access to effective medicine.
Inadequate control of cancer pain is a long-standing problem for many patients, but for a very large percentage of people with cancer, there are effective pharmaceuticals for controlling pain and improving the quality of life. Unfortunately, in the past many physicians have been reluctant to prescribe adequate amounts of pain medication out of fear for government oversight and regulation of their medical practice. An initiative by the families of victims of drug abuse is making the situation much worse for many cancer patients. Although we sympathize with the people harmed by drug abuse, we have taken a public position in opposition to additional regulation of the use of opioid drugs via the mechanism known as REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies). You can see the FDA's announcement of a public meeting on the topic here: Federal Register Notice -- FDA Proposal on Opioids REMS, and our public comments here: MNCF Comments on FDA Opioids REMS Proposal.
Read a thoughtful proposal endorsed by the Marti Nelson Cancer Foundation regarding how Comparative Effectiveness Research can be conducted to benefit cancer patients. You can read or download the PDF at this link to the Friends of Cancer Research website.
The Marti Nelson Cancer Foundation endorses stem cell research conducted for the benefit of cancer patients: http://www.cancerleadership.org/policy/cancer_research/050520.html.
Thank you for your support
In the past year, we worked to increase the treatment options available to cancer patients. Your support made our work possible.