Its a claim I found a few years back. Though looking for the evidence now, I can't find any. Chemotherapy does at times kill off a
significant chunk of patients
This is talking about end of life cancer patients and only accounts for 2% of all cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. From the link provided:
The report, titled ‘For better, for worse?’, examines the quality of care provided for this selected group of patients (estimated at 2% of those receiving chemotherapy)
For the most part, these were patients who were so far along in the malignancy stage that they were going to die either way. Chemo was a last ditch effort to save them/prolong their life. In 19% of those cases chemo shouldn't even have been used because there was no conceivable way that it was going to improve those patients lives.
While that's important, it isn't as important as the other 98% of cancer patients who were receiving chemo. That 27% death rate looks large by itself, but it's a manipulated statistic. It's 27% of the 2% of patients at end of life and also didn't include cancers that are most responsive to chemo, such as leukemia and breast cancer. It's actually the exact study that the first link I listed is discussing.
What it's really saying is that if you have 10,000 people being treated with chemo, we're only going to look at the 2% of those patients who are at end of life stage and do not have x,y,z type of cancer.
When put in that context you're actually looking at a study/review that encompasses 200 patients. Of those 200 patients, 27% or 54 of them would have died due to complications with the chemo. While that is terrible for those 54 people, in the larger context of all people being treated with chemo, those 54 people that died only account less than a percent of all chemo patients.
It's a study (and it was actually just a review of cherry picked literature) that is put forth with an agenda.
For the record, I'm not arguing that chemotherapy doesn't suck for people having it. It's painful and generally makes you feel much worse before it makes you feel any better. I've seen too many family members and friends go through chemo to say otherwise. But by and large, it is effective when the cancer hasn't progressed beyond stage 2, again depending on the type of cancer you're dealing with.
If we discuss whether chemotherapy is a viable treatment, it also depends on the kind of cancer:
The contribution of cytotoxic che... [Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol). 2004] - PubMed - NCBI
Of course it is, that's why I said depending on the type of cancer. That's also why the review you linked to is ineffective when determining the viability of chemo as a treatment. It only looks at end of stage, chemo wasn't appropriate in 19% of the end of life patients the study accounts for, and it also excluded the types of cancer that respond best to chemo.
With a estimated 2.3% survival rate of using cytotoxic chemotherapy, its almost a certain death.
This is only the case in the very limited scope of the review you linked to. This is the same statistic that the my first link and the one that followed discusses.
In addition to that, almost no cancer patient is treated with chemo alone. They have surgery, radiation, and a multitude of other treatments as part of their treatment protocols.
A. There is no medical cure for the common cold, our bodies takes care of it. Our immune system cures it for us. By the way, which conventional medicines (drugs) boost immune system?
Quite true. But when people speak of cures, they aren't talking about the body naturally fighting infections, they're talking about taking a pill or having a procedure to immediately get rid of the problem. Of course our immune system fights off the common cold, otherwise we would all die before we reach adulthood.
As for the conventional medicines and immune system. Good on you. That was lazy on my part. For a common cold you aren't going to get any medication that is going to boost your immune system.
However, for immune disorders or things like pneumonia, you will receive medication such as antibiotics or immunoglobulin therapies (immune disorders not pneumonia) or another form of treatment within the field of immunology, all of which are designed to help your weakened immune system fight off infection and thereby allowing your immune system to strengthen.
But again, good call. That was lazy on my part and I should have been called out for it.
B. Is that how people really define it, as immunity to cancer for life? I don't believe any one off treatment will do that, ever. However, I don't believe we have a cure at the moment either. There are too many uncertainties to the outcome of treatments, risks and detrimental side effect involved.
I agree. And that's why I said I don't think there will ever be a "cure" for cancer. I don't see a way to eradicate it, though there may be at some point. Who knows. But when most people talk about curing cancer, yes that's what many of them are talking about, a day when no one gets cancer ever. And that's the pipe dream.
