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So, hey...lets talk about cancer quackery. It's been on my mind on account of the Dr. Burzynski dust up coincided with my recent 6 month oncology appointment. Specifically, I want to talk about the issue with 'testimonial' evidence regarding alternative treatment, and why it is a sucky way to make treatment decisions that can kill you.
Here's the deal with chemotherapy and solid tumors that have not yet metastasized. Surgery is the primary treatment. Chemo may be used to shrink a tumor so that it is more easily surgically removed, but most chemo in these cases is given in an adjuvant setting. Meaning, it's purpose is to help reduce the chance of recurrence after all visible cancer has been removed.
So lets say you have 100 women with my type of tumor, lymph node involvement, and staging. If you treated all of us with surgery alone, 40 of us would go on to have completely cancer free lives with no recurrence. One of those 40 could stand on her head every day and sing Jingle Bells, and then claim that doing so prevented her cancer from coming back...but that would be pretty ridiculous. Surgery cured her, it was never going to come back. In a large number of testimonials for cancer 'cures' this is exactly what's happening (you will not find someone who has been 'cured' that didn't have the primary tumor removed surgically).
Now what happens when we add adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation? 65 of us go on to cancer free lives with no recurrence. The choice of whether or not to stand on your head and sing Jingle Bells or to have chemo/radiation makes very little difference to the 40 who wouldn't have recurred, and the 35 who will regardless. But if you are one of the 15 in the middle? Choosing the Jingle Bell method will kill you.
Unfortunately, medical science has not yet caught up enough to identify which 15 of that 100 women fall in that category (though they are working on it). And, look, there are rational reasons to choose not to do chemo or radiation. Neither is a picnic, and as is demonstrable by yours truly, they can have long term health effects. A person may very well look at the difference in risk reduction and choose to roll the dice on being in the 40 because the possible complications outweigh the possible benefit in their estimation. Promising a cure through Jingle Bells or marketing it as a method of ensuring someone's place in the 40 on the basis of anecdotal/testimonial evidence, though? KILLS PEOPLE. (Yes, I'm looking at you Suzanne fucking Somers).
And this is why we have objective methods to determine what actually affects outcome, and what's just singing Jingle Bells. Yay, science!
Here's the deal with chemotherapy and solid tumors that have not yet metastasized. Surgery is the primary treatment. Chemo may be used to shrink a tumor so that it is more easily surgically removed, but most chemo in these cases is given in an adjuvant setting. Meaning, it's purpose is to help reduce the chance of recurrence after all visible cancer has been removed.
So lets say you have 100 women with my type of tumor, lymph node involvement, and staging. If you treated all of us with surgery alone, 40 of us would go on to have completely cancer free lives with no recurrence. One of those 40 could stand on her head every day and sing Jingle Bells, and then claim that doing so prevented her cancer from coming back...but that would be pretty ridiculous. Surgery cured her, it was never going to come back. In a large number of testimonials for cancer 'cures' this is exactly what's happening (you will not find someone who has been 'cured' that didn't have the primary tumor removed surgically).
Now what happens when we add adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation? 65 of us go on to cancer free lives with no recurrence. The choice of whether or not to stand on your head and sing Jingle Bells or to have chemo/radiation makes very little difference to the 40 who wouldn't have recurred, and the 35 who will regardless. But if you are one of the 15 in the middle? Choosing the Jingle Bell method will kill you.
Unfortunately, medical science has not yet caught up enough to identify which 15 of that 100 women fall in that category (though they are working on it). And, look, there are rational reasons to choose not to do chemo or radiation. Neither is a picnic, and as is demonstrable by yours truly, they can have long term health effects. A person may very well look at the difference in risk reduction and choose to roll the dice on being in the 40 because the possible complications outweigh the possible benefit in their estimation. Promising a cure through Jingle Bells or marketing it as a method of ensuring someone's place in the 40 on the basis of anecdotal/testimonial evidence, though? KILLS PEOPLE. (Yes, I'm looking at you Suzanne fucking Somers).
And this is why we have objective methods to determine what actually affects outcome, and what's just singing Jingle Bells. Yay, science!