WHEN Melissa Mahoney stood up in front of a panel of doctors and regulatory officials last September, her mere presence, she said, was a miracle. Seven months earlier, she seemed to be close to death from lung cancer. All treatments had failed and her condition had worsened. “The simple act of taking a shower wiped me out for hours.”
But then came a little brown pill, an experimental drug called Iressa. “Within days, I mean days, I felt significantly better,” Mahoney told the committee. A month later she was power-walking on the beach.
Did this drug melt Mahoney’s tumours away?…
