My opinion – Why do people say we over react to melanoma and even Stage IV?

MY OPINION – I have a couple of qualifications that I think apply to the optimism of this article. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/835282?src=stfb

I have a couple of qualifications that I think apply to the optimism of this article.  I do not mean to cause anyone to not have hope, it is just that articles like this present a false picture of where the overall melanoma treatment world is today..—— Please read thd complete article and my response before attacking my OPINION.

The title of the article ''We Have Cure in Our Sights'” is not exactly what the Oncologist asked.—–
“He asked : "Can we now cure an incurable disease in some of our patients with metastatic melanoma?" —-

I do not know if things were so much better in Australia than they were in the US in previous days,but.

———–The article says that about 1/3rd of Dacarbazine (approved 1975) patients would be alive after a year of treatment with this drug.

———–Responses seen with interleukin-2 (aldesleukin), approved in 1988. has a one-year survival rate of 46%. IL-2 was approved by the FDA for renal Cancer in 1992 and for Melanoma in 1998 and had a positive response benefit in 15-23% of Stage IV patients receiving it (a 5-8% complete response without ever having a recurrence). Most never got it because either they did not qualify for it and also most Oncolgists were not experienced with using it..

————The statistics that were available when I went to Stage IV in Feb 2007 said that with treatment that there was about a 75% chance I would not see a year of survival.

————Article says “The data on ipilimumab out to five years show that about 20% of patients become long-term survivors, “ Again to the uninformed this appears to say that 20% of melanoma patients are long term stage IV survivors. It does not point out that these statistics really only apply to 20% of the 25% of people that may respond to the Yervoy (Ipilimumab) in the first place. This actually is 5 out of a 100 stage IV patients.

————The data ”nivolumab (Opdivo, Bristol-Myers Squibb), which has reported one-year survival rates of 73%, and for another combination of a BRAF inhibitor with a MEK inhibitor, vemurafenib with cobimetinib, with a one-year survival rate of 83%.
———— The positive response (not long term nor cure rate) to Opdivo is around 50%. so while 73% of 50% is 36.5% for a one year survival, this is good, but still a long ways from a general melanoma cure. The same for the 83% of 50% for the one year survival of the BRAF/MEK combo.

Yes, we should have hope with the Improvement in these numbers from where I started, but “CURE??” for overall “melanoma"? ———— MUCH more work to be done.
————————————————————————————————-Why shouldn't even our family and friends that read such articles think we are over-reacting to our diagnosis?-—————-