After Van VanderMeer was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, the results of a genetic test offered some hope. Last year, the 64-year-old lawyer learned that his cancer featured a genetic rearrangement that might render it vulnerable to a drug being tested in clinical trials. But because the experimental drug, crizotinib, was being given only to patients who had failed chemotherapy, VanderMeer had to wait for more than a year to gain access to the drug. Even though VanderMeer's tumours had by then spread to both of his lungs, crizotinib vaporized them within two weeks.
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