Response: Re: Vitamin A Analogue for Breast Cancer Prevention: a Grade of F or Incomplete?

Extract

It's not often that a favorable editorial gets taken to task by the recipient. I hope that other readers did not miss my points or get them backwards, as Veronesi et al. did. Careful reading, time to digest, and perhaps even e-mail might have prevented their perversion. In any case, I will ignore the ad hominem in their letter in favor of the following comments. Dr. Meyskens objects to the title alone, but oddly didn't reconsider it, even after finding the content “thoughtful.” His concerns are obviated below.

First, the title. It clearly interrogates “vitamin A analogue” (fenretinide) as a drug, not the fenretinide trial or the work of the authors. Since when is querying the efficacy of a drug considered “sensationalist” and “yellow journalism”? It is only because the trial was well done, as I said explicitly, that one can make inferences about the drug. The reasonableness of this title is further emphasized below.