By keeping the focus on better health for real people, perhaps we’ll develop both the humility to recognize how little we still understand as well as the drive to ensure — and emphatically demand — that our advances ultimately wind up not only in papers, but also in patients.

Biologics are essential to oncology care. As patents for older biologics begin to expire, the United States is developing an abbreviated regulatory process for the approval of similar biologics, which raises important considerations for the safe and appropriate incorporation of biosimilars into clinical practice for patients with cancer.

In his new book, “Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines,” Roger Bate explores the underground trade in illegal medicines that kills over 100,000 people per year and supplants billions of dollars of real products.

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) are the newest tool of the FDA to help manage and ensure safe drug use. REMS are a particularly important issue for oncology, because a disproportionate number of drugs with complex REMS are used in patients with cancer or hematologic disorders.

Two recent experimental drugs demonstrate that new scientific principles are faster becoming superior medicines, but bad government policies threaten to reverse this trend.

When an imperious bully like Fidel Castro starts to fear, his instinct is to try to sow fear among his enemies. Today, with his student and benefactor, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, dying of cancer, what the Cuban dictator fears most is that his bankrupt regime in Havana is about to lose billions in critical aid and oil.

Think the contraception decision was bad? Wait until bureaucrats start telling your insurer which cancer screenings to cover.

Could regulations restricting the use of certain drugs curb U.S. cancer survival rates?