Whilst the article Charm refers to in his quote and that DavidCPA provides a link to is talking about HPV and oropharyngeal SCC, nowhere does Posner make any statements, either positive or negative, about cetuximab and its effects on HPV caused SCC.

The quote that Charm has shared refers to Dr Posner's comments in relation to the RTOG 0522 trial where he says it is important to wait for meaningful results and whilst 3 year results may be interesting, the 5 year data will be the most important.

He cautions that drawing conclusions based on interim results are premature. This is what he is referring to when he says "a number of trials with drugs like cetuximab have not shown positive results early on". He is saying that a number drugs do not show good results in the first 12 months of trials and he goes on to give reasons why. The reasons he gives have nothing to do with the treatments. I guess this is why we measure success based on 3 and 5 year data.

He also says that when the results are final, analysis should include stratification by HPV status as HPV +ve cancer is biologically quite different and is known to be more responsive.

Unfortunately, the link DavidCPA provides took me to the first page of the article but allowed no access to pages 2-5 (for me anyway). I found it by logging on to Medscape and then searching within the site for Posner. The article titled Management of Oropharyngeal HPV positive Cancer should pop up first