Does chemotherapy kill more patients than it saves? And...

Chemotherapy is pretty hard on the body, but it is a bit extreme to say it kills more than it saves. The bigger question is if there is a better treatment that is more effective and not as difficult.

There really seem to be some treatments that have a higher efficacy, but that have not been fully explored. Cancer business is really big business, as the Komen Foundation knows, so only profit generating possibilities seem to get funded.

Yet cancer is not a single disease but a collection of diseases which result in uncontrolled cell growth. And various cancers respond to different treatments in disparate ways.

If I hadn’t had chemo, I would have died 15 years ago. If my aunt hadn’t had chemo, she would have died 50 years ago. If my friend hadn’t had chemo, she would have died last year. If my cousin hadn’t had chemo, he would have died in 2005.
I honestly do not believe that Big Pharma is sitting on The Cure, because there isn’t A Single Cure.
Cancer is characterized by so many different factors that it can’t really be called a disease, it is a whole lot of different diseases that share some similarities.
Chemotherapy is not a treatment, it is a catchphrase for literally hundreds of different types of drug protocols.
It’s all pretty miserable, but please don’t decide to forego medical intervention if you have cancer because some group on FaceBook has decided that it’s all some big conspiracy. I know you didn’t mention FB, but I see so much of that, there. And I am alive to notice it because medical intervention, including chemo, saved my life.

Let’s look at this realistically.
The reason there isn’t one big cure is that there are so many types. One cure does not fit all. I am a prostate cancer, PCa, survivor and know many guys with it. Even for something as specific as prostate cancer the tumors and treatments are radically different from person to person. Some guys are cured by surgery (me! Yay!), some by radiation, some by hormone therapy, some by cryo, etc. If the cancer has left the capsule it needs to be treated systemically with different forms of Chemo. Some PCa tumors are aggressive. Some PCa tumors are indolent and can be ignored. Everybody is different. And that is for just something “simple” like PCa. Now throw in other cancers like lung cancer, breast cancer, etc.
If a person is late stage, (will likely die soon), there are plenty of drugs with reliable data that show they extend life by months or years. And the drug companies get paid plenty for those months gained.

Now let’s talk about the implied conspiracy theory. Think about it. If a company could cure cancer wouldn’t they immediately become the most wealthy company on the planet? There is no reason for them to sit on a cure. They would make a fortune! Also they could not keep something like this quiet. If the President of the United States with all his security and power couldn’t keep the world from knowing he had consensual oral sex performed on him in the Oval office do you really think drug companies with 10’s of thousands of researchers and technicians and test patients could keep a cure secret? I sure don’t.
Does this help?

Hey Big Pharma! In case any of you has a cure, please let me know. I want to buy stock in your company. So would millions of other people.

Some of the chemos attack the rapidly growing cells in the body, which is basically what some forms of cancer are. Unfortunately, other systems in your body are rapidly growing. If the chemo hits those cells in addition to the cancer cells it can kill you. I lost two very good friends to the chemo treatments. Neither of them made it a week after the chemo started. But I know a lot more people that survived the chemo. Everyone’s different, it’s sometimes just a crapshoot.

There’s growing concern in the medical community about the way chemo is handed out like candy to anyone diagnosed with cancer, even when it’s a cancer which doctors know does not respond to chemo. It’s not just doctors wanting to make more money off sick people (although it’s partly this); patients don’t want to hear that there’s nothing medicine can do for them, so they pressure their doctors to give them something, anything, and doctors comply.

My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer which had also spread to her pancreas, intestines, stomach, and probably other places they couldn’t see. They gave her between six months and two years. She lasted seven years. At the end, when she was failing fast, doctors offered her chemo again even though it would probably be useless. They said there was an insignificantly tiny chance that it could extend her life by a couple of years; without it, she’d be dead inside of six months. She was so desperate that she took the chemo and it killed her. It’s the same kind of cognitive bias which makes people play the lottery, and I think it’s just as unethical to offer chemo to desperate dying people as it is to sell lottery tickets to poor people, and for the same reason.

Some chemos have been proven beyond a doubt to be life saving and ridiculous to refuse. Other chemos have been shown over time to not be necessary or effective; or, can be effective to extend life, but not cure, and then the patient has to decide if it’s worth the side effects.

If you have cancer you need to know the research for that particular cancer and survival rates with treatment.

I don’t think for a second there is a miraculous cure and it is being held back. If there was a magical cure it would be available to the public. If you want examples think of the polio vaccine, tetanus, measles, all of which often need medical care when someone gets one of them, and the medical care would give a lot more business (dollars) to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies than the vaccines do.

I’d like to know who came up with this idea of a conspiracy to withhold a cure so they can make more off sick patients. I’ve never met a doctor who’s not going 110 percent for me. Yeah there are quacks out there, but typically they don’t even have valid qualifications.

@Adirondackwannabe As much as I don’t think a cure is being held back, there is plenty of data, and my own subjective experience, where doctors do unnecessary things to make money.

Recently, a law was passed to allow patients to see their lab results directly from a lab. No more having to go back to the doctor, pay money and time for the appointment, just to find out everything is normal, or you just need a little more iron. Do you know how many doctors were doing that? A lot. Then there are also unnecessary procedures. It’s not difficult to be suspicious.

Micchon- I have wondered the same things! I was surprized by your question! Whoa.
It’s tough to sit and watch someone you care about go through it. Some get saved, some feel worse.
I honestly dont know about the radiation treatments that seem to occur around it also. I felt lousy after that. I dunno….
I wish there was a better way to go about it all. Especially for little kids.
Yes, I do believe they have found various cures for different kinds of cancer.
Drug companies snap up the patents of promising leads pretty quickly and they disappear.
I just personally believe that big $ companies get more $ by not letting knowledge out, so people will use their other products.
At least that’s what I found after I’ve read up on when trying to find something- anything to help cope and make decisions .
People should have the right to decide what is best for themselves, you know?
If people haven’t walked the walk, they don’t understand. Especially if some prefer to choose not to go through it all.
Really good question(s)!
I dont think you should ever say you’re not smart. You’re very observant. And I believe you have the compassion to see more than most.
Well- here’s to wondering about things… :)
Take care.

No, it most certainly doesn’t. I work in healthcare, and care for children with cancer many times a day. Chemotherapy is hard on the body, and at times it isn’t effective enough to save the patient’s life. However for certain types of cancer, chemotherapy has a very high success rate. For many more types of cancer, chemotherapy in conjunction with surgery or radiotherapy dramatically increases the success rates of the surgery or radiotherapy.

Sometimes chemotherapy can stress the body to the point where it cannot survive, but in those cases the patient would likely have died from their cancer regardless. Many times chemotherapy is ceased because the patient is not well enough to tolerate it.

In healthcare there is an element of iatrogenic disease – that is, disease caused by treatment. However it is a numbers game. We don’t know who will develop further disease, and we can’t prevent it without withholding treatment. So if we can save 100,000 lives while causing disease in 50, we’re not going to withhold the treatment just because it isn’t perfect.