Aside from the fact that you can hardly find any meaningful statistics on the effectiveness of chemotherapy, that which the inquiring patient can find is sugar-coated to death with very misleading words.

And when you do finally find the hard numbers…they say that chemotherapy basically doesn’t work.

“Effectiveness”

“First, effective cancer treatment is a matter of definition. The FDA defines an ‘effective’ drug as one that achieves a 50% or more reduction in tumor size for 28 days. In the vast majority of cases there is absolutely no correlation between shrinking tumors for 28 days and the cure of the cancer or extension of life. So, when a doctor says ‘effective’ to a cancer patient, it does not mean it cures cancer-only temporary shrinks a tumor.” (1)

Example: “A patient received chemotherapy which shrunk his tumor by 60% for a month. The patient died. The therapy was effective.”

“Response” Rate

“Five children with recurrent medulloblastoma were treated with Vincristine, BCNU, Methotrexate and Dexamethasone. All five patients responded to therapy. Two of the patients are alive …” (2)

Example: “A patient responded to therapy. He didn’t survive.”

“Success Rate”

“Success” means the patient is still alive 5 years after diagnosis. But this term leaves a lot of vaguery:

Example: “The cancer treatment was a success. The patient lived for 5 years and 1 day. During that time he complained of being sicker from chemotherapy. A second patient’s treatment was also a success. He also lived 5 years and 1 day. His treatment was to not receive treatment.”

“Evaluable Patients”

“Twenty-two consecutive patients with recurrent malignant brain tumors after radiation therapy and systemic combination chemotherapy with BCNU and vincristine, four of whom were not evaluable due to early death, were treated with etoposide. Response was observed in three of 18 (17%) evaluable patients…” (3)

Example: “Several patients died during treatment. But let’s not think about that. Some of the ones that lived had a “response”.”

Observational Bias:

“One hundred and thirty children less than 21 years of age with newly-diagnosed high-grade astrocytoma were treated with ‘eight-drugs-in-one-day’ chemotherapy … Of 79 patients with evaluable post-operative residual tumor on CT or MRI scans 26 (33%) were determined on institutional evaluation to have had an objective response. However, central review of scans documented responses on only 14 (18%) … ” (4)

Example: “Depending on our motivation and opinion, our institution sees either more or less “responses”.”

Early Detection and Benign Cases:

“The five year cancer survival statistics of the American Cancer Society are very misleading. They now count things that are not cancer, and, because we are able to diagnose at an earlier stage of the disease, patients falsely appear to live longer…More women with mild or benign diseases are being included in statistics and reported as being “cured”. When government officials point to survival figures and say they are winning the war against cancer they are using those survival rates improperly.” (5)

Example: “I don’t think you have cancer, but let’s treat it anyway. We caught it earlier, so your survival time will also look longer. In fact, let’s count your non-cancerous case as a cure.”

Relative Risk Versus Absolute Risk

If getting a certain chemotherapy regimen will reduce the chance of a certain cancer recurring by 50%, then the “relative risk” has been reduced by 50%.

If getting a certain chemotherapy regimen will reduce the chance of a certain cancer recurring from 4% to 2%, then the “absolute risk” has been reduced by 2%”

Example: “This new drug is miraculous. It reduces the relative risk of some cancer recurring by an astounding 50%! This translates to reducing the absolute risk of this cancer recurring from 2% to 1%. Oh, and it makes you sick as hell.”

Surrogate End Points

“Another factor clouding the issue is the growing trend for clinical trials to use what are called ‘surrogate end points,’ as a yardstick by which to measure a chemotherapy regimen’s effectiveness. This is instead of using the only real measures that matters to patients – prolongation of life as measured by overall survival and improved quality of life. Surrogate end points such as ‘progression-free survival,’ ‘disease-free survival’ or ‘recurrence-free survival’ may only reflect temporary lulls in the progression of the disease. Such temporary stabilization of disease, if it occurs at all, seldom lasts for more than a few months at best. The cancer typically returns, sometimes with renewed vigor, and survival is not generally extended by such interventions. However, trials reported in terms of surrogate end points can create the illusion that the lives of desperately ill patients are being significantly extended or made more bearable by chemotherapy, when in reality this is not the case.” (7)

Example: “This new drug made most of the patients in the study have smaller tumors and feel progressively better for the 3 months of the study’s duration. Therefore we conclude this drug must improve total lifespan, even though we have not bothered to wait and see how long these patients actually live. We won’t bother mentioning if these tumors ended up coming back with a vengeance after a year and actually shortening lifespans due to the effects of the chemotherapy. Let’s just stop now and publish our fantastic results.”

So just how effective is chemotherapy?

“The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.” (6)

In plain English, that means that if you get chemotherapy, your chances that you will live more than 5 years increases by 2.1% versus if you did nothing.

Perhaps shrinking tumors is valuable when used in conjunction with surgery, but by itself chemotherapy is on average an abysmal treatment option.

Here are the only criticisms of this study I have been able to find. Even if you were to concede all the points of criticism, it at best changes the number “2.1%” to about “5.0%”. This is still ridiculously ineffective. Thanks to the authors of this study, I think it is officially safe to say that on average, chemotherapy is a horrible treatment.

Taken from:
(1) John Barron http://www.whale.to/cancer/barron.html
(2) Duffner PK, et al., Combination chemotherapy in recurrent medulloblastoma. Cancer 1979 Jan; 43(1): 41-5.
(3) Tirelli U, et al., Etoposide (VP-16-213) in malignant brain tumors: a phase II study. J Clin Oncol 1984 May; 2(5): 432-7.
(4) Finlay JL, et al., Pre-irradiation chemotherapy in children with high-grade astrocytoma: tumor response to two cycles of the “8-drugs-in-1-day” regimen. A Childrens Cancer Group study, CCG-945. J Neurooncol 1994; 21(3):255-65.
(5) Dr J. Bailer, New England Journal of Medicine published in PCRM Update, sept/oct 1990.)
(6) Royal North Shore Hospital Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol) 2005 Jun;17(4):294.
(7) http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/oncologists-criticize-chemotherapy.html

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s1348333.htm

http://www.whale.to/cancer/barron.html

http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/chemotherapy-quotes.html

http://www.whale.to/cancer/quotes1.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849

Disclaimer: This article does not contain any medical advice. This website contains opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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