Doubled, Not Defeated
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin / Unsplash
A new drug roughly doubles survival in metastatic pancreatic cancer. The scriptural question is what to do with added time when it has been given to you.
What's happening
On Wednesday the New England Journal of Medicine published Phase 1/2 results for daraxonrasib, an experimental drug that targets the RAS protein implicated in more than 90% of pancreatic cancers. Patients with metastatic disease who received the drug with chemotherapy lived a median of 15.6 months, against the 6-month median typical of standard care. Phase 3 data, to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology this month, show similar results. The FDA has fast-tracked the drug. Pancreatic cancer's five-year survival rate at the metastatic stage is about 3%. Oncologists are calling the trial a "watershed moment."
What the Text says
The fifteenth chapter of 2 Kings ends with a king at the wall, weeping.
2 Kings 20:1-31In those days was Hezekiah sick to death. Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, "Thus says Yahweh, 'Set your house in order; for you shall die, and not live.'"2Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed to Yahweh, saying,3"Remember now, Yahweh, I beg you, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in your sight." Hezekiah wept bitterly.
The text continues: Isaiah, who has just delivered the death sentence, is told to turn around at the middle court of the palace and deliver a different one. Hezekiah is given fifteen more years. The Hebrew yasaph, "to add," is the verb of unexpected extension. The chapter does not soften what came after. Hezekiah's added years included a son who would erase much of his work and a foreign envoy he should not have welcomed. The added time was real. It was not safety.
The reflection
A pancreatic-cancer diagnosis at the metastatic stage is, in 97% of cases, a clock counted in months. Doubling that clock is not a cure. It is a reprieve. About half the patients in the trial still died inside two years. What changes for the half who do not is the shape of what they get to do. There are conversations at month nine that do not happen at month four. There are weddings, reconciliations, books finished. Hezekiah's added years held both his best work and his worst. The text never pretends more time is more than that.