The complaint is sometimes made that, “the treatment is worse than the disease.” Unfortunately, that can be applied far too often to chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer. That various cancer treatments have been and remain controversial is obvious. The reason for the controversy is equally obvious – sometimes the treatments work and sometimes they don’t. Typically when they don’t, it’s just a matter of time before the illness ends the patient’s life.
Even more concern about the appropriateness of chemotherapy is created when research studies call the treatment into serious question as is the case below:
No matter how much doctors push the treatment, chemotherapy might not be the best option in the fight against cancer, as a new study shows up to 50 percent of patients are killed by the drugs — not the disease, itself.
Now that’s exactly the kind of research report results one doesn’t want to see. The results may be accurate, but they’re also disconcerting, to say the least. What is known about this research project?
Researchers from Public Health England and Cancer Research UK performed a groundbreaking study examining for the first time the numbers of cancer patients who died within 30 days of beginning chemotherapy — indicating the treatment, not the cancer, was the cause of death.
So keep in mind that the assumption this study is making is that anyone with cancer who dies within 30 days of starting chemotherapy, died of the treatment and not the disease because death from the actual disease would take longer.
Across “England around 8.4 per cent of patients with lung cancer, and 2.4 per cent of breast cancer patients died within a month,” the Telegraph reported.
“But in some hospitals the figure was far higher. In Milton Keynes the death rate for lung cancer treatment was 50.9 per cent, although it was based on a very small number of patients.”
Not the most conclusive results, but still they illustrate a valid concern.
So what has the doctor who ordered the research concluded?
Dr. Jem Rashbass, Cancer Lead for Public Health England — the national health care service, which requested the study — said, as quoted by the Telegraph:
“Chemotherapy is a vital part of cancer treatment and is a large reason behind the improved survival rates over the last four decades.
“However, it is powerful medication with significant side effects and often getting the balance right on which patients to treat aggressively can be hard.
“Those hospitals whose death rates are outside the expected range have had the findings shared with them and we have asked them to review their practice and data.”
As the search continues for cures to this disease, it’s clear that serious questions about current and proposed treatments will be part of the debate and discussion. While side effects are a part of most drug treatments, if it’s found that a particular treatment kills as many as it helps, the debate is sure to become much more intense as the search for cures that don’t kill first continue.
Source: Free Thought Project
http://www.truthandaction.org%2Fstudy-half-cancer-patients-die-chemotherapy-not-cancer