Every Womans Battle

One woman's battle for access to cancer drugs

When Shannon Morgan was diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer, spread to her abdomen, her doctor said she had only a year or two to live.

That was three years ago.

The 53-year-old Charlotte woman credits her continued good health to a drug called Avastin. She gets a 2 1/2-hour infusion every two weeks and works full time as an administrative assistant for an insurance brokerage.

But she and her husband, Pat, worry that her good fortune will end if the Food and Drug Administration revokes approval of Avastin for breast cancer patients.

The Morgans and her oncologist, Dr. John Powderly of Carolina BioOncology Institute in Huntersville, will be among those testifying today at an FDA public hearing.

While they realize Avastin doesn't work for all breast cancer patients, they say the FDA shouldn't take away one of the few options for Shannon and other patients diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.

"Avastin keeps me alive and well, and I have virtually no side effects," she said. "There are many days that I don't even think about having cancer because I feel so good. If they take me off of Avastin, they'll just be giving me another death sentence."

A change in FDA approval wouldn't take the drug off the market because it's already approved for other cancers. It would be available to breast cancer patients on an "off-label" basis, but that would likely mean the drug, which costs up to $90,000 a year, wouldn't be covered by insurance.

"If they take this off-label, this is a death sentence," Pat Morgan said. "We do not have $90,000 a year ..."

Avastin is taken by some 18,000 women with breast cancer in the United States - and many more in Europe. It works by cutting off the blood flow to tumors. The drug hit the market in 2004 for treatment of other cancers, and in 2008, the FDA approved it for breast cancer, subject to further study.

Last December, the FDA announced plans to revoke that approval because new studies did not show the drug was helping women to live longer or to delay the progression of their cancers very long. It was also exposing them to dangerous side effects.

Dr. Gary Lyman, a breast cancer oncologist at Duke University Medical Center, was a member of the FDA advisory committee that recommended reversal of Avastin approval for metastatic breast cancer.

"There was some disagreement on the panel," he said, but research by Genentech, the company that makes Avastin, failed to demonstrate improvements in survival time or quality of life. And side effects, such as high blood pressure, blood clots and intestinal perforation, are significant.

Every Womans Battle - News

One woman's battle for access to cancer drugs

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Virtuous Girlhood » Blog Archive » Every Single Woman's Battle ...

Reading through this workbook made me really think about some of my thoughts, and it also made me want to read the other books by Shannon Ethridge. I honestly, don’t know what else to say about this book since I haven’t read the “book, book”, but it looked really good! I would recommend this book if you have read the book first and then you could use the study guide with it!

You can buy this book on CBD.com here.

Virtuous Girlhood received these products in exchange for writing a review. I was under no obligation to review them if I so chose. Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review. This review is my honest thoughts of the products and company. All opinions are my own and not impressed by monetary compensation. Virtuous Girlhood does not endorse nor agree with everything at the websites featured.

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