I am Ann Fonfa, a breast cancer survivor and activist, founder of The Annie Appleseed Project which educates, informs, advocates and raises awareness for those cancer patients, family and friends, interested in, or using complementary, alternative, natural therapies. I have just finished giving NCI input on their consumer guide for Clinical Trials. In it they show that most drugs take about fourteen years to reach the approval stage. My question to this body is: why are we spending thousands of human-subject hours in constantly approving drugs that are little better than the ones we cancer patients already have access to. There is something wrong with this entire system when the best that we can do, is offer a drug that has just about the same safety profile, just about the same response/results but differs in a very minor way. We patients are therefore condemned to live out our lives, however long that may be, with NO real advances in treatments. I resent this and I am taking this opportunity to say so. Aim higher. We are all tired of crawling on our hands and knees through a field of broken glass. We want to leap over it and for that we need new drugs that are different, that make a REAL difference in our lives. Thank you for your attention. If you would like to find out more about our organization, please go to our website www.annieappleseedproject.org FYI, I completely support the idea of bisphosphonates for treatment of metastatic bone disease. Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.