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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!
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YAY, SCIENCE!
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http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Science-Quacks-Pharma-Flacks/dp/0865479186/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323708249&sr=8-1
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But, having done so I have seen exactly zero evidence that in terms of cancer research/treatments chemo doesn't do what it is supposed to do or that research that would lead to cure or prevention is being blocked in any way.
The thing is...I find it almost impossible to believe that every one of the thousands of scientists and doctors working on cancer research were willing to keep their mouths shut about such a thing, especially given that most of them will or already have lost someone to cancer or been diagnosed with it themselves...if you look at say, the tobacco industry, people were smuggling out hard evidence and whistleblowing with information leaking around the edges precisely because people were becoming ill or losing loved ones. There's nothing of the sort surrounding cancer research at all. Not a single one of these people watched someone they loved die, knew it could have been prevented by the company they work for, and started hollering? Not one? The level of control and conspiracy that would have to be in play is mindboggling.
But more than that there isn't any profit motive even if you could convince people to shut up and watch their mother die a painful death for a nondisclosure agreement. You asked above who profits? The answer is actually pharmaceuticals. Everything, everything we understand about cancer indicates that what a cure will look like is actually treatment as a chronic illness. Right now what happens is either people do not recur and don't require further treatment, in which case the drug companies aren't making any more money off of them anyway. Or they do and...well, the vast majority of chemo in cases of advanced or metastasized cancer extend life in terms of weeks or months. That's not a very good long term investment. The drug company that can find a way to prevent people from dying of cancer stands to make enough money to buy a small country for every day of the week and two on weekends.
An example where that's already happened...the makers of Gleevec are currently making money hand over fist because they've extended the lives of CML patients by years as opposed to the months available with previous treatments. The longer a drug company can keep a cancer patient alive the more money they make, so if the motive really is profit...right now they are sucking at it by not saving lives.
So, I guess, yeah...I don't trust big corporations further than I can throw them, and I think there's plenty of evidence that they will steamroller right over the little guy when it's in their best interest. It's just that in terms of cancer treatment and research I can't see how they could either keep it that tightly under wraps (even discounting human relationships, not one cancer researcher really wants the Nobel prize and her name going down in history forever as the person who cured cancer?), or that there is any reason for them to do so in the first place. Not if they actually want to make more money.
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So it's not that I don't believe there are instances where Big Corporation X would try and hold back research or progress. It's that it would be nearly impossible for them to succeed at it or keep it quiet like they might (and are) able to do so in other circumstances.
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But I've also seen a bunch of new drugs come on the market (for various conditions and illnesses, not necessarily cancer) that aren't better than what was already available (and they don't have to be; they FDA says they just have to do what the manufacturer says they do), but they're new and expensive, and get a lot of hype, and often become huge cash cows. And then shit happens, like what happened to a young relative of mine who took Yaz for 3 months, got blood clots in both lungs, and almost died. And then shortly after that, info comes to light that implies Bayer (who makes Yaz) falsified their research WRT blood clots, and... well, that's why I have Issues.
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