Ally Bruno
Mr. Ippolito
AP Biology D Even
December 20, 2018
Grady, Denise. “How Can We Unleash the Immune System?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Nov. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/cancer-immunotherapy-drugs.html.
The article “How we can Unleash the Immune System” by Denise Grady delves into the idea the human immune system can be manipulated to attack cancer. Grady opens her article by acknowledging the fact that immunotherapy treatments have only been in less than half of all its patience but she remains hopeful for the future. Grady goes on to discuss the current experiments the are being performed to “fine-tune the treatments”. Grady opened her argument by differentiating between the two types of immunotherapy cancer treatments. Both Checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cells work to activate a specific type of white blood cell that can removes cells that have become malignant and cancerous. She then goes on to cite a doctor from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who is optimistic about immunotherapy research that might one out of his facility. She even includes an example of year old cancer patient who has been in remission and thriving from his treatments.
After reading Grady’s article, the reader can tell that she is clearly invested in her topic. She did a great job of evoking emotion from her readers by including and patients successes and statistics about the lives that could be saved if this treatment proves to be useful. I do not however, believe that Grady did an adequate job of providing enough information about the new research programs that are testing immunotherapy. While, she described the types of immunotherapy in a very clearly and sufficiently, she never explains what types of research is being performed to enhance the understanding of immunotherapy and possible treatment options.
Since cancer is one of the most deadly diseases in the US, any type of innovation in the treatment options is vital to the scientific worlds. The topic is so important because it discusses it gives an optimistic and positive outlook on the possibility of improving the way patients with cancer are able to leave their lives. Chemo treatments are effective today but are detrimental to the over health and lifestyle of cancer patients and immunotherapy seeks a new way of increasing patients survival rates helping them maintain stable and fulfilling lives while they are being treated.
Grady, Denise. “How Can We Unleash the Immune System?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Nov. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/cancer-immunotherapy-drugs.html.
ReplyDeleteIn her review, Ally does an excellent job of summarizing the points in the article. She simply describes the premice of immunotherapy and includes the most significant sources cited in the article. She also critiquing the author's writing very effectively and insightfully. I particularyly like her suggestion, to include some more detail into what experiments the scientists were performing. Finally, her review was overall very well written. It was clean, concise, and well organized.
Ally could have improved her review by going a little more in depth into the potential effects of these treatments and how they can influence the world. Any potential cancer treatment holds incredible possibility and she could have done slightly more to portray this. Additionally, I would have been interested to hear her own opinion on the subject. Does she believe scientits should spend much effort working to futher develop these treatments?
Immunotherapy holds incredible potential as a cure. Cancer affects nearly everyone in our world, whether it is a person who has it themselves or knows someone who does. Chemotherapy, the current most used treatment, does save lives, but at a cost. It is incredibly taxing on the body and is often more harmful than helpful. If there are treatments for cancer that can cure people of it without hurting them, we need to explore it to our fullest potential.
Grady, Denise. “How Can We Unleash the Immune System?” The New York Times, © 2019 The New York Times Company, 19 Nov. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/cancer-immunotherapy-drugs.html.
ReplyDeleteThere were several aspects of Ally Bruno’s review that were well-written. For example, Bruno’s summary is concise and easy to follow: she starts with how immunotherapy is doing in general, states very generally what the author describes afterward - fine-tuning the treatments and what exactly exists -, she then gives a general picture of what the current treatments do (“activating T-cells”), and cites some emotionally impactful examples to make the readers more emotionally connected to the issue. Being concise and orderly allows for a smooth transition between ideas, keeping the attention of the reader and giving them an incentive to read the article itself. Secondly, Bruno makes an astute observation about the major flaw of the article: because it gives simplified explanations of immunotherapy treatments, the reader is still left with the question, “If all that needs to happen is for this signal that is already known to be blocked so that T-cells and macrophages remain activated, what is holding it up?” As Bruno points out, the author could go more specifically into the research behind the mechanisms of this signal and why it is hard to block. As for the CAR-T cells, this research could be better explained: how does “reprogramming the cells to attack specific targets” allow the T-cells to bypass the signal that turns them off? Additionally, what exactly are “solid tumors,” why can’t CAR-T cells attack them, and where is research at in terms of attacking such tumors? Lastly, Bruno briefly states an insightful impact of the contents of this article beyond the immediate solutions of immunotherapy by mentioning how the debilitating effects of chemotherapy could potentially be bypassed.
One aspect Bruno could improve in her review is in her “impact” paragraph: she could forgo the first sentence about how “any innovation is good because cancer is so deadly” and instead expand upon the specific debilitating effects of chemotherapy and whether or not immunotherapy has fewer severe side effects, so that if it becomes a practical treatment for most or all cancer patients, cancer will impair the lives of patients far less. This turns a paragraph whose contents the reader could already infer at the same surface level into one that is informative and eye-opening by describing specific information the reader likely does not know about chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Although the summary was concise and easy to understand, simply stating that the “checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cells activate T-cells” does not give even a true general picture of what is going on because most of the article was dedicated to describing how two of the three treatments block a signal the cancer cells send to the T-cells and macrophages to turn them off, preventing their deactivation. This is an important point because the type of reader who would be interested in an article about cancer, for which there are many already, would also be interested in how this new treatment is different from all of the others out there, so it is important to balance being concise with not being too vague and missing important facts about the treatment.
A revelation I had while reading this article is that cancer research is just as much about increasing the variety of available treatments as it is about deeply pursuing the most effective treatments to make them suited for more types of cancers and patients. While it is important to improve existing treatments, this also has to be carefully balanced with awareness of their limitations so that entirely new strategies can be adopted for the many patients who are still left behind. Just as it is harmful to assume a treatment that exists can’t help a subset of patients before it has been fully pursued, it is also harmful to get so invested in one strategy that other completely different treatments aren’t even considered.