The Emperor of All Maladies. Siddhartha Mukherjee
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Название: The Emperor of All Maladies
Автор: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Прочая образовательная литература
isbn: 9780007435814
isbn:
But Frei wrangled a last-minute compromise: VAMP would be studied independently at the NCI, outside the purview of the ALGB. “The idea was preposterous,” Freireich recalled. “To run the trial, we would need to split with the ALGB, the very group that we had been so instrumental in founding.” Zubrod wasn’t pleased with the compromise: it was a break from his cherished “cooperative” model. Worse still, if VAMP failed, it would be a political nightmare for him. “If the children had died, we’d be accused of experimenting on people at this federal installation of the National Cancer Institute,” Freireich acknowledged. Everyone knew it was chancy territory. Embroiled in controversy, even if he had resolved it as best he could, Frei resigned as the chair of the ALGB. Years later, Freireich acknowledged the risks involved: “We could have killed all of those kids.”
The VAMP trial was finally launched in 1961. Almost instantly, it seemed like an abysmal mistake—precisely the sort of nightmare that Zubrod had been trying to avoid.
The first children to be treated “were already terribly, terribly ill,” Freireich recalled. “We started VAMP, and by the end of the week, many of them were infinitely worse than before. It was a disaster.” The four-drug chemo regimen raged through the body and wiped out all the normal cells. Some children slumped into near coma and were hooked to respirators. Freireich, desperate to save them, visited his patients obsessively in their hospital beds. “You can imagine the tension,”348 he wrote. “I could just hear people saying, ‘I told you so, this girl or boy is going to die.’ ” He hovered in the wards, pestering the staff with questions and suggestions. His paternal, possessive instincts were aroused: “These were my kids. I really tried to take care of them.”
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