a little good news about Gleevec

Gleevec is the drug that gives my wife a normal life. She has CML, chronic mylogenous leukemia. Gleevec puts this disease in remission and keeps it there with little to no side-effects.

Today, a story about another disease, neurofibromatosis, which affects one in 3500 births. Research is being conducted to see if this disease, which makes the patient disposed to very difficult to treat cancerous tumours, can benefit from Gleevec. This story contains this hopeful little paragraph:

While the research was being conducted in animal models, a critically ill three-year-old patient presented at Riley Hospital for Children with a plexiform neurofibroma that was compressing her airway. With Gleevec administered under a compassionate use protocol, the patient’s tumor was reduced by about 80 percent, Dr. Clapp said. The patient was subsequently removed from treatment and is being followed, he said.

Again, a word of thanks to our Lord who gifted men, even unbelieving men, with minds capable of searching out these hidden things of our earthly lives. May God grant them insight to see the hidden things of their spiritual lives and find redemption in his Son!

don_sig2