On the challenge of treating older cancer patients using clinical trial data.

But the problem is, we're getting clinical trial data in very fit patients, either younger or even older patients who are very healthy. And then we don't know when we have the drugs come on market, what is the safety and efficacy for the patient that's sitting in front of me in the clinic who has a disability, has heart disease, has real insufficiency, lives alone, is having trouble taking their medicines, and may not be as fit as the people that are in the trials. And then we're just guessing. It's really crazy in medicine how much guessing we do.

On the way people often make decisions based on anecdotal evidence from their friends and not science.

Even my mother does this too, for example, about knee injections. She said ‘All my friends told me not to do this one. They told me to do that one instead.’ I'm like, ‘mom, I'm a physician. This doesn't matter. This is what the data shows. I appreciate that this bad thing happened to your friend, but it's not necessarily going to happen to you.’ But people will use anecdotal information to drive decisions more than evidence.

Despite preventative measures, people still get cancer.

Screening is really important and will detect things. But unfortunately, no matter what you do, there are patients who will get cancer because of genetics, or for reasons we just don't know. It's unfortunate, but there is an existential thing that I believe in: we can't control everything. The world functions in a way that, as human beings, we just can’t explain, and we cannot control. And we're not going to be able to explain it. So when patients come to me and say ‘why me’? They want to know why. I can say sometimes we just don't know why and it's not up to us. Something happens, the universe exists. So we have to move forward and help with what we can help.