"I strongly disagree and suggest that he survived despite the chemotherapy. The most important thing that he did was to quit smoking."
Wow!!!! A person has lung cancer with only 30 days to live and they quit smoking and do nothing else and their cancer goes away? I know personally that that isn't true.
From the responses on this thread I truly believe that most of the people who are posting are suggesting that we have death panels and provide some sort of alternate to chemo to anyone with cancer. Yet as I posted elsewhere in this thread that 65% of all breast cancer patients survived for 20 years. You know for a fact that 90% of them had chemo.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BA2E220091211
"(Reuters) - Chemotherapy helps improve breast cancer survival in post-menopausal women, adding to a long-standing debate about how best to treat these women, U.S. researchers said Thursday.
Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:36pm
A gene-based test called Oncotype DX made by Genomic Health Inc may help identify a small group of women who are not likely to benefit from chemotherapy, a second study found.
The main study proves that adding chemotherapy to treatment with the estrogen-blocking drug tamoxifen can help prevent cancer from coming back in women with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancers, the most common kind in which a hormone is driving the cancer.
"We have a survival benefit that lasts for a very long time ... for women who got both modalities of treatment versus women who just got tamoxifen," said Dr. Kathy Albain of Loyola University Health System in Maywood, Illinois.
She presented findings from both studies at the American Association for Cancer Research San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
"It is considered a landmark study in the clinical trials literature because it is the only one really demonstrating the survival advantage of chemotherapy added to tamoxifen," Albain said in a telephone interview.
"Up until this trial, studies adding common chemotherapy drugs to tamoxifen or tamoxifen alone were essentially negative."
For the study, the team followed nearly 1,500 post-menopausal women with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancers that had spread to at least one lymph node.
Some of the women got both tamoxifen and a chemotherapy drug known as anthracycline, and some got tamoxifen alone.
The team found that the women who got the chemotherapy were 24 percent less likely to have their cancer come back.
They were also 17 percent less likely to die during the 10-year study period, but this finding was just shy of meeting statistical significance.
The team also found that giving tamoxifen after chemotherapy ended instead of during chemotherapy improved a woman's survival chances.
In a second study led by Albain, published in the journal Lancet Oncology, the team evaluated whether the Oncotype DX test can predict which women would benefit from chemotherapy.
The test examines 21 genes from a tumor sample to see how active they are, and produces a score that predicts chemotherapy benefit. It is most commonly used in women with estrogen-fed tumors whose cancer has not spread to a lymph node.
But Albain's study suggests it may also be useful in identifying women whose tumors had spread that would not benefit from chemotherapy.
Albain said a large clinical trial is getting started that will confirm whether the test is effective, but that will be expensive and take many years.
Meanwhile, she said, some doctors like herself plan to use the test on certain patients to give them more choices about their breast cancer treatment options."
Note that this doctor, like most that I'm aware of, gives the patient the choice regarding cancer treatment options - including no treatment. Treatment is in the hands of the patient in every case that I'm aware of.
Tony, that's true to a certain extent. What isn't included in that article is the fact that all a patient has to do is to refuse treatment. It's that simple.
Actually it is not that simple.
I had a friend who was admitted for kidney failure caused by a single dose of ibuprofen. He was uninsured so he ended up in County. During the admitting x-ray they found a spot on his lungs which he informed them was scar tissue from Valley Fever and this was documented in his medical records. They insisted on doing a biopsy anyway. they came back several days later and told him he was correct and that it was scar tissue. Then they came back a week later and said they made a mistake and that it was really cancer and they had to operate right away. He initially refused since he knew they were lying. They told him that if he refused the surgery that he would get stuck with the entire hospital bill since he was refusing doctors orders. So they coerced him in to the surgery.
And how many times have we seen families charged or had their children taken away because they refused chemotherapy for their child's cancer even though the chemo is a known carcinogen and they have never really been shown to work? All they have to do is to declare the person unfit to make rational decisions, which they can actually do with anyone if they really want to push it.
Gleevac only works for some cancers and, like most man-made unnatural compounds, comes with a host of side effects and some of them are quite nasty. Most people who take Gleevac for any length of time do experience one or more side effects.
Unlike oleander combined with a healthy diet and lifestyle and other important immune boosting and cancer fighting natural supplements, Gleevac does not cure cancer but rather turns it into a chronic disease that must be treated for life. $3000 a month for life . . . cha ching, cha ching, cha ching.
Thanks for the heads-up. I went to the Dr. Oz Fans website and posted a comment under an article about Oz and Gleevac.
Until a few years back, DCIS was considered a pre-cancerous condition and was not even included in cancer statistics. If you took DCIS out of the breast cancer stats most of the much ballyhooed success against breast cancer would evaporate. Now, add to that the fact that the "gold standard" of breast cancer chemo, taxol/tamoxifen, has been proven to actually spread cancer cells throughout the rest of the body and increases the chance of future cancer and you get a much truer picture of how poorly mainstream medicine performs against breast cancedr.
It gets even worse, when you look at the overall picture. Despite studies and recommendations that say mammograms likely cause more cancer than they prevent, women are still advised to have annual mammograms. Horrifyingly, women are also still being advised to cut off their breasts when studies have shown that in most instances such surgery is either not needed or else ineffective.
In another example of the sick joke that is played out on women and how greed guides the so-called "war on cancer", the major foundations involved with breast cancer are either controlled or beholden to many of the same entities whose toxins and unhealthy products cause cancer and illness. Look at what is happening now with the Komen foundation and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Far even darker examples, look at Breast Cancer Awareness - a movement created by the Imperial Chemical Company (Now AstraZeneca) to steer research away from toxins, which it has successfully done ever since its inception.
So, if you are a woman:
1. You are encouraged to take annual tests which flatten and radiate your breasts, may increase your odds of getting cancer and may spread any existing cancer you do have in your breasts,
2. When you do have a lump in your breast you are likely to have a biopsy performed - which can also spread the cancer due to sticking a needle into the cancer cells and causing the release of viral replicators into the blood stream,
3. You may well be encouraged to have one or both breasts removed needlessly.
4. You will likely be given one or more chemotherapy drugs whether or not you elected to have surgery and quite possibly you may be given radiation as well if you continue to test positive for cancer.
5. The chemotherapy you are given may spread the cancer futher and lead to further cancer down the road. The radiation will destroy your immune system and prevent the only way cancer can be completely cured and eliminated from having being able to function as it was designed.
6. You will not be told about the dangers of toxins or to change your diet and lifestyle significantly. Nor will you be told of the foods, herbs, vitamins, minerals, etc., which could help you boost immune function, fight existing cancer and prevent future cancers.
7. Your chances of success will be much, much less than you were lead to believe when you were shown the misleading breast cancer statistics that included DCIS and were told about positive "response rates" and "tumor reductions" without being told that positive responses and initial tumor reductions are common, whereas true cures and the prevention of cancer ever returning are not - at least not when it comes to mainstream treatments.
Surgery and radiation are big cash cows for the $300-$400 billion cancer industry. However, they pale in comparison to chemotherapy, where oncologists buy the chemo they prescribe and take huge markups and make the large bulk of their profits from.
What do surgery, radiation and chemo have in common? They are all controlled exclusively by mainstream medicine. Diet, lifestyle, vitamins, minerals, herbs and nature itself are not. Thus you see what we get for cancer treatment.
Professional? I am merely a self-educated amateur, my friend. I have, however, learned to use a few extra fingers on the keyboard.
Thanks nevertheless.
That would make quite the sensational story if you could provide references, quotes, etc. It's a story I would write if pointed towards such references so that it could be verified.