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Measured Responses: British Clinical Researchers and Therapies for Advanced Breast Cancer in the 1960s and 1970s

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Book cover Cancer Patients, Cancer Pathways

Part of the book series: Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History ((STMMH))

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Abstract

After the Second World War, newly developed systemic treatments for advanced breast cancer — endocrine therapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy — promised to improve and extend the lives of women with metastatic disease, while providing new insights about the nature of the disease itself. But clinician-researchers in Britain, North America and Europe quickly found that the benefits of these new interventions were unevenly distributed, and that the risks associated with them were substantial, sometimes even deadly. Given this unpredictable calculus of benefit and risk, these experts wondered how they could assess the utility of these therapeutic tools. Did endocrine therapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy work, they asked, for women with advanced breast cancer?

… [L]et us hope that, when all the differences have been quantified, there will be enough evidence for us to decide that some differences are important enough for one method to be preferred to another in some groups of patients. Alternatively, let us hope that the evidence will allow us to conclude that the results of some methods are so alike that it does not matter which we use.1 — R. B. Welbourn, 1970

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  1. Elizabeth Toon
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  1. University of Manchester, UK

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© 2012 Elizabeth Toon

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Toon, E. (2012). Measured Responses: British Clinical Researchers and Therapies for Advanced Breast Cancer in the 1960s and 1970s. In: Timmermann, C., Toon, E. (eds) Cancer Patients, Cancer Pathways. Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137272089_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137272089_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44480-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-27208-9

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