Analyzing the Responses from Cancer Centers to Questions Cancer Patients Have
Executive Summary
- This article evaluates claims from established cancer websites about important questions for cancer patients.
Introduction
In this article, we will cover responses to common questions cancer patients have from established cancer treatment websites.
Quotes from Together 4 Cancer
The following quotes are from the article What Are the Most Important Questions to Ask After Diagnosis?
2. What Are the Causes of the Condition?
The causes of cancer include genetic mutations, environmental factors, and lifestyle choices.
Genetic mutations can be inherited and increase the risk of developing cancer, necessitating discussions with healthcare professionals about risk management.
Genetic mutations that are inherited form the basis for only a very small percentage of cancers, and they are mostly all in the mitochondria, which actually supports the opposite hypothesis from cancer being genetic. This is a topic that I cover in the article What Percentage of Cancer is Estimated to be Genetic?
Environmental factors contributing to cancer include exposure to toxic chemicals and radiation.
Lifestyle choices affecting cancer risk include smoking, poor diet, and lack of physical activity, all of which can be addressed through guidance from health professionals.
Of all the factors listed here, the most important are lifestyle (which I cover in the article How Japan’s Health Level Helps With Cancer Prevention, and the article What Percentage of the NIH’s Cancer Budget Goes to Prevention?)
What politicians, the medical establishment, and entities like the NIH put almost no effort into helping the public improve, or even improve after they’ve received their treatment.
3. Is the Condition Treatable?
Cancer treatability depends on the type and stage of cancer, patient health, and available treatments, including standard and experimental options like clinical trials.
Treatment options include:
- Surgery
- Chemotherapy
- Radiation
- Immunotherapy
- Targeted therapy
In reality, all of these treatments are actually quite poor (see, as one example, the article Is Chemotherapy Treatment Worth its Expected Life Extension?), with surgery potentially being the only one that’s worth the side effects, and even in that case, there are many complications with removing tumors.
Early diagnosis enhances treatment outcomes, improving the chances of recovery and quality of life.
Because the outcomes for conventional cancer treatments are so poor, it is actually not true that early diagnosis in even most cases improves treatment outcomes. And something that’s entirely left out is that cancer screening often results in people having their health outcomes degraded by accepting cancer treatments that they don’t need. This is referred to as over-treatment.
The following articles provide more details and support for this statement.
The Enormous Waste of Resources of PSA Screening
The Historical Predisposition for Overdiagnosis by the Cancer Industry
Why Most Oncologists Do Not Want the Effectiveness of Cancer Screening Discussed
6. How Effective Is the Treatment?
The effectiveness of cancer treatment depends on the cancer type, stage, and patient health.
Early-stage cancer treatments are generally more effective than treatments for advanced cancer.
Clinical trials help measure treatment effectiveness and guide future therapies.
This is a vast oversimplification. Nearly all clinical trials are paid for by pharmaceutical companies that pay the principal investigators to rig the clinical trial. There is a chasm between the effectiveness of cancer treatments in clinical trials and their effectiveness when rolled out at cancer centers.
The following articles provide more details and support for this statement.
How Do Pharmaceutical Company Controlled Studies Have a 95% Success Rate?
How Me Too Drugs or Copycat Drugs Exaggerate Pharmaceutical Innovation
How Pharmaceutical Companies Rig Clinical Trials
Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. Radiation therapy uses high-energy rays to target tumors. Surgery removes cancerous tissue. Immunotherapy boosts the immune system to fight cancer. Palliative care improves quality of life by managing symptoms.
Treatment choice depends on cancer type and stage.
This is a vast oversimplification of how all these treatments work. All of these treatments come with serious side effects and sometimes death. And to say that immunotherapy boosts the immune system is quite deceptive, as immunotherapy frequently causes such an overreaction that the patient can die or be left with long-term aggressive and life-degrading side effects.
All of these short descriptions are simply high-level explanations of how the treatment is supposed to work. For instance, if you’ll notice on the chemotherapy description, it states that chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. However, it leaves out that the vast majority of cells killed by chemotherapy are healthy, normal cells, which I cover in the following article, How Chemotherapy Drugs Cannot Specifically Target Cancer Cells.
Quotes from Colorado University Anschutz Division of Hematology
Is immunotherapy the Answer?
Manali Kamdar, MD – associate professor of medicine in the CU Anschutz Division of Hematology and clinical director of lymphoma services:
One of the biggest unanswered questions in cancer is how we can move toward truly chemotherapy-free, immune-based treatments – and make sure these advances aren’t limited to a select few. It’s not just about achieving long-lasting remissions through the immune system, but also about making these breakthroughs accessible and equitable for every patient, no matter where they live or what resources they have.
This is an oncologist who clearly prefers immunotherapy. However, the problem is that immunotherapy is a very poorly performing cancer treatment with massive side effects. And something that Dr. Kamdar doesn’t seem to point out is that immunotherapy is also, at least in most cases, probably the most expensive conventional cancer treatment. So the only way that it could be made accessible and equitable for every patient is for the government to pay for anyone who wants immunotherapy but can’t afford it to get it. I also totally disagree that there have been any breakthroughs in immunotherapy. It’s turned out to be an extremely disappointing treatment avenue.
A Whole Body Mammogram is the Answer
Natalie Serkova, MD – professor in the Department of Radiology and CU Cancer Center associate director of shared resources:_
Why can’t we develop a preventive screening for any cancer? In the future, could that be a “whole body mammography” screening for any cancer? Or a genetic test in a tube for predicting any cancer?
Even if you could do this, the problem is that what cancer centers offer is conventional cancer treatment. And the argument by oncologists and cancer centers that screening is the answer has simply not been borne out by history, which is a topic I cover in the article How the Medical Establishment Hides Mammography Accuracy from the Public.
We Need a Renewed Cancer Moonshot?
Hatim Sabaawy, MD, PhD, MS – professor of medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology and CU Cancer Center associate director of translational research:_
At our CU Cancer Center’s 40th anniversary, I ask: When will cancer-related death be eliminated? I note, not asking for a cure! With recent strides towards cancer cure, early stages, testicular cancer, and minority responders of targeted and immunotherapies, cure is otherwise an exception. A number of seismic changes at the policy, society, academic, and industry levels are necessary; principally a renewed moon shot or another (inter)national cancer act to transform prevention, interception, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. To meet the challenges of the thousands of cancer subtypes rather than their anatomical sites, expanding knowledge and data on longitudinal cancer clonal evolution and applying more innovative and ultraprecision approaches at various elements of cancer care hold the keys for a better future. When these changes and advances in cancer care prevail, we could see cancer as a manageable chronic disease; I dream, in my lifetime.
I have taken only a portion of Dr. Sabawi’s response, but as a synopsis, all of this is essentially fantasy. There have been hundreds of billions of dollars spent on cancer research and very little improvement in cancer outcomes. The primary beneficiaries of all this research money have been private companies who are offering more or less ineffective cancer treatments to gullible cancer patients.
Conclusion
It’s always interesting to see what the cancer establishment presents as information to cancer patients and potential cancer patients. The bias in their presentation is just overwhelming. This bias is clearly due to financial considerations. At no time is it observed in any of these articles that the person providing the quote makes their living from, and makes quite a good living from, providing conventional cancer treatments. The assumption of these articles is always that the cancer treatments are good, and that the only thing the cancer patient has to do is take the advice of a highly biased cancer center, cancer organization, or oncologist, and they will get the best possible outcome. There is very little focus on the effectiveness of the treatments. Most of the claims these entities and individuals make are inaccurate and clearly wrapped around one objective: maximizing profit and income.