May 29, 2013

Two graphs, three trends

First, the serious one.  Nature News has a story about new immune-based cancer treatments (like Herceptin for breast cancer), some of which are very effective, but which are increasingly expensive.  In contrast to previous `small molecule’ drugs, these won’t necessarily get cheap when the patent runs out, since generic  (technically, `biosimilar’) versions are harder to make and test.

ASCO-cancer-graph

 

Now for something completely different

iemurder

 

By @altonncf — via various people on Twitter who don’t cite original sources. Pro tip: Google Image Search is quite good at finding originals.

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »