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We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

cshl.nautil.us

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Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#51

Post by jitendrac »

As far as I know, Each cancer in a patient is mostly unique. Not all skin cancers or cancer tumor cases are same. they may have same underlying cause of it but not same cancer case. Mostly what treatment do is remove the affected tumor,tissues, if its related to blood plasma or bone-marrow transplant donor blood and bone marrow. Use chemo to weaken all cells of body regardless of its normal functioning or part of cancer. wait for human body to revive on its own immune system and repeat above task if needed.

so, to fight the cancer first we must find a way to affordably find the type of cancer with cause case-by-case basis and develop a procedure for custom treatment and drug-delivery to affected part without disturbing whole body functions. From my perspective we are still way behind but in better position then yesterday or decade ago.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#52

Post by arcticbull »

Alex3917 wrote: post #48
arcticbull wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...doctor because of course they know best" is a really strange thing to say. I don't mean to invoke paternalism here -- but between a patient with Google and a doctor with years of medical training, residency and practice, they more than likely do know best. At least, better than the patient. They won't always be right, and you can ask for a second opinion, but they do know better. If they didn't, you could practic…

> If they didn't, you could practice your own medicine. Which most people do.

No, they don't. They practice first-aid. There's a big difference between slapping on a band-aid and a DIY hip replacement, or cancer diagnosis.

Maybe this is a uniquely American thing and with the self-sufficiency narrative being so at the fore. I don't fix my own car because I'm not a mechanic -- I share the symptoms with a professional. I don't tell my doctor what to prescribe or what's wrong with me because I'm not a doctor -- I share my symptoms with a professional.

As a concrete example, advertising prescription drugs direct to individuals in Canada is illegal. It's illegal in most countries. [1] As it should be!

[1] https://www.cmaj.ca/content/169/5/425

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#53

Post by tyingq »

jitendrac wrote: post #51

As far as I know, Each cancer in a patient is mostly unique. Not all skin cancers or cancer tumor cases are same. they may have same underlying cause of it but not same cancer case. Mostly what treatment do is remove the affected tumor,tissues, if its related to blood plasma or bone-marrow transplant donor blood and bone marrow. Use chemo to weaken all cells of body regardless of its normal functioning or part of can…

Absolutely true. There are many cancers where the only recourse is disfigurement, dangerous irridation, butchery, poison or death.

No blame on current doctors and nurses, but our current understanding is brutal. Any real advances are crazy welcome.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#54

Post by tornato7 »

deergomoo wrote: post #30
tornato7 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I learned one thing from fighting a (not cancer) disease, it's that you have to be the one responsible for your own recovery. Don't just sit there and say "please save me doc!" You better start reading about the latest research 6 hours a day, make massive comparison charts about treatment options, find the best doctors you can and get opinions from all of them, network with people going through what you are for su…

What an absurd and dangerous notion. It's bad enough to imply that someone dealing with the physical and emotional debilitations caused by both the disease and the treatment, not to mention secondary concerns like the effect on employment and finances, essentially isn't trying hard enough. But suggesting pseudoscience that could very well make things worse is deplorable. I'm truly glad it worked out for you, but as s…

You have to take some responsibility for your health, and the things you do or don't do have a big effect on your long term outcome. If you want to call that insulting, fine.

To be clear every treatment I had was recommended or approved by a medical doctor, that's part of the research and discussion with my doctors. I absolutely think that's important. And having a diverse team of doctors from different backgrounds both in and outside of mainstream U.S. medicine is useful.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#55

Post by minerjoe »

deergomoo wrote: post #30
tornato7 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I learned one thing from fighting a (not cancer) disease, it's that you have to be the one responsible for your own recovery. Don't just sit there and say "please save me doc!" You better start reading about the latest research 6 hours a day, make massive comparison charts about treatment options, find the best doctors you can and get opinions from all of them, network with people going through what you are for su…

What an absurd and dangerous notion. It's bad enough to imply that someone dealing with the physical and emotional debilitations caused by both the disease and the treatment, not to mention secondary concerns like the effect on employment and finances, essentially isn't trying hard enough. But suggesting pseudoscience that could very well make things worse is deplorable. I'm truly glad it worked out for you, but as s…

Naturopathic medicin is not "pseudoscience". I've seen first hand friends that trusted main-stream cancer doctors and were hurt almost to the point of death. It wasn't until they turned to alternatives that they improved and survived.

It doesn't take much of a history lesson to find many many examples of Allelopathic medicine causing much more harm than good. The OP details that they found out that the mechanism at work was not what the doctors thought. How many other mistakes are they making on a daily basis?

You embrasing the status quo, which is demonstrably killing people daily with poisons, and calling everything else "pseudoscience" is truly a deplorable stance.

I truly believe that humans, if we make it that far, are going to look back at this time of "the war on cancer" as one of the most disgusting and, obvious in hindsight, destructive things we've ever forced onto people in the chase for the god mighty dollar.

The financial incentives of the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession do not make them work for our benefit. A cure would be a huge loss of one of the largest money making schemes ever devised.

There has been good research on cancer treatements that do not destroy the immune system, nor require poisoning. A cursory scan on sci-hub for medicinal mushrooms and cancer yeild a hundred hits [1] with much to learn from. Studies from 20 years ago showing how taking certain mushrooms while undergoing chemo and/or radiation can greatly reduce side effects and improve survival rates.

This is science. This is also science that the medical and drug profession ignores, to their own discrace and shame.

The GF was stating a hard fact, you have to do your own research because the baises and conflicts of interest of the medical profession and the drug companies blind them to less damaging and much less profit driven treatments.

[1] http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/?q=mushroom%20cancer

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#56

Post by zzleeper »

softwaredoug wrote: post #39
trynewideas wrote: post #5

From a science and pharmaceutical perspective, maybe. As the partner of someone in the US dealing with stage 4 cancer in their 40s, who has two hospitals fighting with each other over whether to keep using a chemo drug that's sent them into anaphylactic shock twice in two rounds of chemo because it's _more convenient_ for the infusion clinic to administer, and all of that currently held up by pre-approval from a rela…

My mom was just told she has likely incurable pancreatic cancer, so I’m right there with you. It’s frustrating because my sense is either due to doctors desensitization, or due to economics of cancer treatment, my mom feels like a commodity to them. Not a focus. As my mom said “this probably happened because they didn’t do chemo for 4 months before surgery”. I get a sense of “shrug” or business as usual from the docs…

I'm in a similar note. Also mom, also pancreatic. Also was told that it was just "her being too stressed", etc. for two months

Hard to digest.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#57

Post by ghufran_syed »

sacred_numbers wrote: post #47
inspector-g wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last bit of your comment, regarding misdiagnosis, reminds me of a recent episode of Peter Attia’s podcast The Drive, wherein he interviews an experienced oncologist. Her opinion was strong in that we are overspending in treatment research and underspending in (early) diagnosis research. Her case, as described in the interview, made sense to me and gave me some hope that at least others could benefit in the future…

The incentive for all parties (except the patients) is to increase revenue, rather than decrease costs. Insurance companies may want to reduce costs on a case by case basis, but on a macro level they want to spend more, since they are required to spend 80% of premiums received on treatment. More treatment means higher premiums, which means the 20% not spent on treatment is higher. Hospitals have similar incentives, s…

It's worth noting that Kaiser is a nonprofit that is both "payer" (insurance company) and "provider" (hospitals and clinics) in the US - so I would argue that they have exactly the right incentives that you outline - maximize patient outcomes for minimal cost. So I don't think you necessarily need the government involved.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#58

Post by Alex3917 »

arcticbull wrote: post #52
Alex3917 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they didn't, you could practice your own medicine. Which most people do.

No, they don't. They practice first-aid. There's a big difference between slapping on a band-aid and a DIY hip replacement, or cancer diagnosis. Maybe this is a uniquely American thing and with the self-sufficiency narrative being so at the fore. I don't fix my own car because I'm not a mechanic -- I share the symptoms with a professional. I don't tell my doctor what to prescribe or what's wrong with me because I'm n…

75%+ of American adults take supplements, and that’s just one of many different self-directed medical activities that people practice.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#59

Post by copperx »

tornato7 wrote: post #20
jcims wrote: post #10

I was forced to dive headlong into understanding cancer therapy 2 1/2 years ago. It was obvious at the time that this was the correct direction to head, developing an entire therapeutic ecosystem to give the body every possible advantage and assail the disease with every possible disadvantage in order to get the desired outcome. However, what I saw was a rather bizarre and disturbing fetish in the pharmaceutical and…

I've been impressed by the "therapudic ecosystem" developed for coronavirus in the absence of a 'monotherapy'. The MATH+ treatment is an effective combination of available drugs and vitamins. I hope any future COVID drug is used alongside these options, instead of a "here's an expensive drug, now go home!" Approach that some treatments take.

MATH+ seems to me like throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the disease, which screams “we don’t really know what we’re doing.” I haven’t seen replication efforts, and the doctor who’s peddling it once claimed to cure sepsis with IV vitamin C, an effort that failed to do much when replicated. It doesn’t look like a serious approach.

Re: We’re a Lot Better at Fighting Cancer Than We Realized

#60

Post by trynewideas »

copperx wrote: post #16
trynewideas wrote: post #5

From a science and pharmaceutical perspective, maybe. As the partner of someone in the US dealing with stage 4 cancer in their 40s, who has two hospitals fighting with each other over whether to keep using a chemo drug that's sent them into anaphylactic shock twice in two rounds of chemo because it's _more convenient_ for the infusion clinic to administer, and all of that currently held up by pre-approval from a rela…

I'm curious about what kind of cancer masquerades as iron deficiency, an infection, and a benign tumor?

Internal squamous cell carcinoma originating on an ovary. It never "masqueraded", it was just the kind of thing that causes a person to complain about uterine pain, which in turn causes every doctor they seek help from to apparently turn their brains completely off and blame it on either a UTI or menstruation.

The more detailed misdiagnoses: heavy but otherwise normal periods from enlarged fibroids causing anemia, a UTI, and then a 7x4cm benign dermoid cyst. (A ROMA test prior to surgery came back with an exceptionally low score, which the gyno surgeon assumed excluded cancer as a possibility, and other tumors on an ovary wouldn't get that large in her opinoin. There was no actual proof of it being a dermoid cyst.)

The cancer wasn't detected until lab analysis of the removed ovary and uterus showed it had been completely subsumed by cancer. Even then, after the surgery but before the labs, the surgeon said she thought it was endometriosis based on the scarring, which was actually from the cancer's spread.

The surgery to remove the ovary was considered elective, because the tumor was never considered cancerous until after the surgery. The surgery request was put in between February 23 and 26 to be scheduled ASAP, but insurance stalled on the prior approval until after all elective surgeries here were cancelled due to COVID-19 capacity concerns. (Hospitals never came close to hitting capacity here during the span, and the hospital that eventually did the surgery in June had nearly empty ORs for two weeks prior.)

The imaging in February hadn't shown any of the scarring, or the spots on other organs showing it had spread, that the post-surgery imaging in June revealed.

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