Submitted by Robert Ulfik, Aug 23, 2007 14:29

Dear John: In your recent opinion piece "Healthier Than You Think," you asked when was the last time someone had to leave the U.S. for treatment.

My wife had to go to Germany for a personalized vaccine to treat her lymphoma. It was not available here, although the technology was developed at Stanford in the late 1980s. The treatment, which uses the patient's tumor cells to make a vaccine, is nontoxic and has been successfully tested several times since. Yet it has never been approved.

This is because FDA over-regulation treats this therapy the same as mass-produced drugs, which require years of testing which can cost $800 million.

The simple fact is only a small company is geared to making a tailor-made cancer treatment, but only a large one can pay to test it.

My wife gets her treatment from Professor Hendrik Veelken at the prestigious Freiburg University Clinic.

Her tumors are 50 to 70% reduced.

Ironically, the Veelken team is not funded as well as they'd like and it takes money to do the testing, so this vaccine may never get approved either.

Robert Ulfik

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