Is chemotherapy absolutely necessary

Answer 1

Certain types and stages of cancer are easily treated with chemotherapy. You must investigate each case individually of what can be reliably done.

Statistics are available on 5, 10, and greater year survival rates with certain forms of cancer, certain stages of cancer, and certain combinations of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Check for the patient selection criteria for inclusion in such trials--some studies will reject patients if the prognosis is too poor-- for example, stage of cancer is to high, and death is too likely, and will make the outcome of therapy look extremely poor.

Some randomized control trials on this are also available.

If a certain "type and stage" of cancer is selected, the survival rates may be around zero, but for others it may be greater than 90%--it all depends on the initial prognosis. Some cancer spreads to other places--this affects the survival rates.

Some critics have indicated that the studies are often funded and conducted by the particular drug companies who produce the given chemotherapeutic agents, and so cannot be taken as fully reliable due to numerous financial conflicts of interest.

Critics have correctly identified that some patients do not survive the treatment and in many studies these deaths are excluded from the statistics because, strictly speaking, the patients did not die of cancer, and nor were they able to complete the full schedule of treatments due to their premature deaths. A published study might therefore state that 197 people were in the study, but this number might exclude 100,000 patients who died of the therapy instead of cancer.

Certain forms of alternative cancer therapies claim to have certain levels of efficacy, but unbiased measures of efficacy (published statistical studies) are unavailable. Because of this, alternative cancer therapies rely heavily upon individual case studies / anecdotal / testimonials that must be found in web videos, or off-shore web sites. Some alternative cancer treatment methods are recommended by word of mouth by friends, relatives, and acquaintances.

Cancer videos are searchable. View them with a grain of salt by considering if the patients are paid for appearing in the videos. Some of these alternative therapy patients state that their situation was otherwise hopeless--they had no choice except alternative therapies because surgeons could not cut out their remaining lungs, heart, vital organs, etc, without killing them.

Some web sites state that the cure for cancer has been known since the 1920s to 1940s, but has been kept from the public for the reasons of population reduction by the Rockefeller foundation. (See National de-industrialized cancer population control cure suppressed 1969 Dr. Richard Day planned parenthood Rockefeller). (See also "the Rick Simpson Story").

Answer 2

Chemo therapy effectiveness depends on the type of cancer treated and whether it has spread. For example, targeted chemotherapy for Breast cancer can be very effective, but it's used in advanced cancer when it has spread to other parts of the body is less effective.

Answer 3

Chemotherapy is the treatment used for treating cancer and chemotherapy is the best possible option present to treat cancer.

Answer 4

It depends on how bad off the patient is and what the current circumstances are.