Thanks. After some thought I have realized that:
1) Patients who are highly fit, motivated, or crazy, can go to the ivory tower (i.e., not where I plan to be in a few years, anyway) for their umpteenth line of treatment.
2) After two or three lines of established therapy, really it should be clinical trial, since most 3rd line chemotherapy regimens (outside of mal heme, prostate) have single digit response rates. That said, many of the patients in the immunotherapy and CAR-T trials who achieved durable responses were heavily pretreated, and written off for dead.. so there is something to be said about getting such patients onto trials. (Though to be fair, most phase 1 trials have crappy response rates, as well.)
3) Palliative care / hospice is underused, and even after the Temel study I find that even in NSCLC arena where pall care / hospice is underutilized.
4) Malignant heme is just as bad. The transplanters will take a patient to the grave trying to clean up a relapsed leukemia or Gr 4 GVHD. So not trying to pick on the solid tumor folks, here.
5) Guiding patients to know when to keep fighting vs. when to focus on comfort is one of the most agonizing parts of the field. There's always an oncologist who would be willing to treat further.