Cancer Treatment

Doctors had hoped to operate on the cancer in Rhio Weir's lungs that January morning almost two years ago. But when Weir, a 63-year-old underwriter for a title company, awoke, he was told the tumors were in the lining of his lungs and couldn't be removed. "The doctor told me the news was very bad, that the only thing I could do was radiation and chemotherapy," the Los Angeles man recalls. But there was something else Weir could do - and did. He stepped outside the circle of conventional cancer therapy for aspects of his treatment.

Health officials launched a program yesterday to offer free cancer screenings to up to 20,000 Baltimore residents a year, using money from the state's settlement of a lawsuit against the tobacco industry. During an opening ceremony at a health clinic in Park Heights, Dr. Janet Yellowitz gave an oral-cancer screening to state Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, shining a flashlight into the crevices between his cheeks and gums and probing his neck with the tips of her fingers. "Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the state, and among African-American men over 30, it is the leading cause of death," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, the state health secretary.

Spencer J. Volk has retired as president and chief executive officer of Celsion Corp. and resigned from its board of directors, the company announced yesterday. Volk, 67, was replaced as CEO by Augustine Y. Cheung, 53, founder of the Columbia developer of heat treatments for prostate disease and cancer. Cheung relinquished his position as chairman of the company. Max Link, 60, a Celsion director since 1997 and the former CEO of Sandoz Pharma and Corange Ltd., has taken over as chairman.

North Arundel Hospital plans to break ground today for a $15 million cancer center, billed as a comprehensive diagnostic, treatment and education facility to meet the needs of cancer patients in the county, especially those who now travel long distances for care. The 44,000-square-foot, three-story building, to be named the Comprehensive Cancer Center, will be constructed on the west side of the hospital's campus in Glen Burnie. The center will house radiation and medical treatment services, a linear accelerator that delivers radiation treatments, examination rooms and suites for patients receiving chemotherapy.

EntreMed Inc. has raised $24.3 million by selling the last of its rights to a once-reviled drug now making a comeback as a cancer treatment. In selling its rights to future royalties from the sales of thalidomide, Rockville-based EntreMed brings in much needed money to pay for development of its other experimental drugs. The company also avoids resorting to a stock sale during a down market, something analysts said surely would have further dampened the price of its shares. "I'm very pleased," EntreMed Chief Executive Officer John W. Holaday said yesterday morning, just after the company announced the deal with Royalty Pharma AG. Aside from receiving the $24.3 million, he noted, EntreMed stands to get another $3 million if certain, undisclosed sales milestones are achieved.

Federal prosecutors are seeking a court order to stop a Baltimore businessman from continuing to sell aloe vera treatments to critically ill customers, pending his retrial in a major alternative-medicine case. Among the reasons listed in court papers, investigators said that a California woman died Sept. 3 after receiving intravenous aloe vera injections for her cancer and that other patients also have continued receiving the untested and possibly dangerous treatment. The woman paid Allen J. Hoffman $15,000 for the treatment, which he administered to her in the Bahamas, court papers say. Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to issue an injunction blocking Hoffman and his business, Astec Biologics Inc., from selling or shipping the aloe products.

Scientists have developed a genetic test that could help doctors predict which patients suffering aggressive brain cancer are most likely to benefit from chemotherapy. The test, developed at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, reflects a growing understanding of the subtleties that make some tumors responsive to treatment - and others not. "What this may do is allow you to tailor treatment closer to the biology of the cancer," said Dr. James Herman, the oncologist who headed the research.

The drug mifepristone, widely known as the abortion pill, has been found to be effective in treating certain types of cancer, including fast-growing brain tumors, but its approval for use in this country has been stalled by highly charged abortion politics, Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said yesterday. "It is outrageous," said Smeal, at a news conference during Feminist Expo 2000 at the Baltimore Convention Center. "Medical research has been held up not only in the United States but for the world because of abortion politics."

Maryland would spend millions of dollars to fight smoking-related heart and lung disease and send new state aid to suburban Washington hospitals under a plan approved by two House committees in Annapolis yesterday. The committees' plan for distributing Maryland's share of the national tobacco settlement is substantially different from the approach favored by Senate leaders -- assuring a showdown between the two chambers in the remaining three weeks of the legislative session. The Senate plan, approved by a key committee Friday, would direct much of the money to cancer prevention, treatment and research.

BOSTON -- This time, the insurance company is right. This time, the folks whose minds are often clouded by dollars are making sense. And this time, the old familiar scenario -- a patient fighting for payment of life-saving therapy against uncaring insurance company -- is temporarily turned on its head. The Aetna insurance company has announced that it will no longer pay breast cancer patients for bone marrow transplants unless the patients are part of a federally funded experiment. Two weeks after the discovery that a South African researcher phonied up research showing that transplants were more effective than the standard treatment, Aetna stopped funding the therapy that has sent 30,000 women into a roller coaster ride of risk and hope, for very little benefit.