Chemotherapy is basically cave man medicine. That a therapeutic drug is explosive only adds to that sentiment. The idea that we'll basically poison you just up to a point that's nearly fatal in order to kill the cancer is such a terrible way to treat someone. Now I'm not saying don't ever do it -- unfortunately that's where we're at in 2021. It's just kind of unbelievable that cancer remains so elusive that we're sti…
> Chemotherapy is basically cave man medicine
A meaningless statement. Actually, there is a sophisticated system of diagnosis and staging to work out who needs chemotherapy at all. This includes CT scans, ultrasound, MRI, positron emission tomorography. Chemotherapy agents are modern pharmaceuticals with a variety of supportive care measures to help patients who can benefit from them. How is nanoparticle bound paclitaxel a cave man medicine?
> The idea that we'll basically poison you just up to a point that's nearly fatal in order to kill the cancer is such a terrible way to treat someone.
Again, ignorant. Highly toxic multi-agent chemotherapy is used in acute leukaemias, because the patient will literally die next week or sometimes in a day unless you start treating. In that case you are trying to help someone who is already very sick, so of course there is a high mortality rate, but it is less than the 100% without treatment. How do you suggest we work out the best dose of chemotherapy, apart from giving it at increasing doses and monitoring what happens in a phase I trial? Anyway, many chemotherapy agents are given at a dose that controls disease and maintains quality of life in incurable disease, in direct opposition to your off-hand comment.
> Now I'm not saying don't ever do it -- unfortunately that's where we're at in 2021.
Do you realise that there are malignancies which are 100% fatal without chemotherapy, but curable with chemotherapy? Germ cell tumours in men for example. Acute leukaemias. Lymphomas. Gestational trophoblastic tumours. So what on earth are you talking about?
> It's just kind of unbelievable that cancer remains so elusive that we're still using medical treatments that started from mustard gas usage during world wars, when we're so advanced technologically in so many other ways.
Most chemotherapy agents in use today are not based on mustard gas, for a start. Many of them come from plants. One of the most useful and well tolerated chemotherapy agents comes from the bark the pacific yew tree. Anyway, the argument is stupid - your car engine is based on explosions, so car engines cannot be sophisticated or useful?
> Interestingly, cancers for children are largely successfully treated. I was at a fancy conference a few years ago where some cancer researchers were socializing over wine, and I asked them why that was versus adults. They said the difference was that parents are willing to do almost anything (aka enroll their kids in experimental treatments) to cure their kids, but adults aren't quite so willing for themselves.
This is bullshit. Walk into a clinical trials unit in an adult cancer centre and you'll see. The reason cancers in children are different are because the biology is different, to state the bleeding obvious. Also children are much more physiologically resilient and don't have other medical problems, so their response to treatment is fundamentally different.