THE RECENT $13.5 million award against two cancer doctors at Dana-Farber is a travesty ("$13.5m awarded in hospital death," Metro, Nov. 6). It is always sad when a cancer patient dies. Amy Altman had an extremely rare and difficult-to-treat tumor known as Ewing's sarcoma.

I am sure as a participant in a clinical trial, she signed an informed consent and acknowledged beforehand that severe complications, including death, could occur. Unfortunately, she died from the adverse effects of chemotherapy and her weakened immune system. To argue, as the patient's lawyers did, that her cancer doctors "wrote off" her diarrhea and that her death could have been prevented is untenable.

There is a real downside to cases such as this one. There has not been a new drug approved in the United States for sarcomas in over 25 years. The only way in which breakthrough medicines will be approved is through rigorous clinical trials. Without patients participating in trials, drug development will stop, and progress toward curing cancer will end. If this unjustified lawsuit scares patients and doctors from taking part in clinical trials, great harm will come to cancer patients in dire need of new treatments.

Misguided malpractice lawyers should think twice before they destroy the very system of clinical care and research that is needed to develop new cancer drugs. One day, they may also be patients.

HARVEY J. BERGER, M.D., Cambridge
The writer is chairman and chief executive of ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology are participating in clinical trials of a drug developed by the company for those with sarcomas and other solid tumors.