She sits in the tiny consult room, with her husband at her side, fingering the stitches on her purse as her oncologist describes what he sees in her CT scans. “There’s no change,” in the lung cancer from the last time she was scanned. This is good news, he tells her, and she nods her head, but her fingers, still working, betray her lack of confidence in his response. She has already been on five different therapies, all of which failed to stop the spread of the disease. As the oncologist starts describing the clinical trial she is about to enter, in which she will try a new drug designed specifically for her type of cancer, however, her fidgeting begins to ease.
On the evening news, she had heard about a promising new therapy for lung cancer. It appeared to be extremely effective, but only for patients with a specific ...
