8 March 2017 - People with cancer face many challenges, including the symptoms of the disease, the toxicity of the treatment, financial costs, and social expectations. 

Here’s a new threat: navigating their care in an ocean of hype.

Cancer drugs are all too often hailed as miracles, breakthroughs, game-changers, or even cures, even when they are no such thing. We recently reported in JAMA Oncology that these words were used 50% of the time to describe drugs not approved by the FDA, and 14% of the time to describe drugs that had only worked in mice. The leap from helping a mouse to saving a human is uncertain, long, and overwhelmingly unsuccessful.

Even when we do have drugs that work, hype may mislead us about how well they work and how many people they will benefit.

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