Greetings from ESMO in Milan
Oh my, I can't believe I slept for 9 hours solid last night and woke up with no jetlag and access to the New Twitter interface, finally! It must have been the long walk I took around the Duomo and Brera districts or perhaps the Negroni apperitivo, but hard to believe that is a logical anti-jetlag solution!
Today is Super Friday at ESMO, in other words, the corporate symposia. There are a lot of interesting presentations that I'm looking forward to, but they are rightly embargoed and I can't talk about them yet. Thus we have a whole day of corporately sponsored 'educational sessions'. I may not tweet these events, except perhaps two; one from Roche at 3pm on angiogenesis and another from J&J at 4.30pm discussing advanced ovarian and prostate cancer.
Sadly, I'm not as big a fan of Super Fridays as I used to be. Why? Because they used to be educational events, now many seem more biased and shilling a company's drug without fair balance or context. Am hoping that's not the case here, but in the last couple of years, the focus has definitely drifted too far at some meetings.
For me, I'm much more of a purist and a fan of sessions that address pros and cons, controversial issues and with fair balance, then let the audience vote and decide before and after the presentations as that often keeps the presenters on their toes.
Ah well, times change, like Mrs Thatcher famously said, this lady's not for changing on the issue for now ;)