"The War In Medicine"

Remission, Cure Rates and Other Deceptions:

Introduction

This is the longest article and it is the most important. Do not rush
through it.

First, I am going to ask three questions. Write down your answers to
these questions on a piece of paper before reading any further:

1) When you hear that someone has "gone into remission," what goes
through your mind?
2) Because chemotherapy causes so much pain and suffering, what statistic
would justify its use?
3) What does "cure rate" mean?"

Write your answers on a piece of paper, then read this chapter, then see
how accurate your answers were.

Options

A newly diagnosed cancer patient has several options to deal with their
cancer:

Treatment Options For Newly Diagnosed Cancer Patient

Have surgery, chemotherapy and radiation (i.e. orthodox treatments), as
prescribed by their doctor (this may include orthodox treatments other
than surgery, chemotherapy and radiation).

Have surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, but drop out of the treatment
program prematurely.

Refuse all treatments (i.e. have zero surgery, zero chemotherapy, zero
radiation, zero alternative treatments, etc.).

Have alternative treatments after extensive orthodox treatments and after
doctors have given up all hope for the treatment of this patient.

Have alternative treatments after some orthodox treatments, but the
patient dropped out of the orthodox treatment program prematurely.

Have alternative treatments instead of orthodox treatments (i.e. they
refused orthodox treatments).

Note that in the last three items, which deal with alternative
treatments, there are over 100 different alternative treatments, thus
there are really over 100 options available to a newly diagnosed cancer
patient.

The key question to be dealt with is this: how do we determine which
treatment plan is "best?" I think a normal person would judge the
effectiveness of a treatment plan (or lack of effectiveness) on the basis
of three criteria:

Treatment Decision Criteria

First, "length of life since diagnosis" (quantity of life, meaning how
long do they live between diagnosis and death), and

Second, "quality of life since diagnosis" (lack of pain and sickness).
Third, "strength of the immune system during and after treatments" (this
is a measure of the body's ability to fight future cancer events).

For example, suppose Treatment A and Treatment B have identical "length
of life since diagnosis" figures, but Treatment A patients have extreme
suffering during treatment and patients of Treatment B have very little
pain and suffering. I suspect that everyone would judge Treatment B as
being the better or preferred of the two treatment plans.

These three treatment decision criteria can lead to some subjective
evaluations. For example, suppose the patients on Treatment Plan C have a
"length of life since diagnosis" of 12 months, and the patients on
Treatment Plan D have a "length of life since diagnosis" of 11 months,
but have far, far less pain, suffering and sickness during treatment.

Which treatment plan is best? The answer is subjective, but I think most
people would favor Treatment Plan D.

In short, we can intuitively define a treatment plan as "best" if it is
the most desirable treatment plan, given the data of the three treatment
decision criteria statistics. In other words, the plan picked by the most
number of people who have accurate treatment decision criteria
information about the treatment options would be judged the "best" plan.

For example, suppose a person had a list of all possible treatment
options (even the 100 alternative treatments) and for each treatment
option they had accurate data for all three treatment decision criteria
(e.g. quantity, quality and immune system) for their type of newly
diagnosed cancer at the stage in which they are in at the time of
diagnosis. The person could look at the chart and within a few minutes
pick their treatment protocol. It would be easy to decide which option to
choose.

But therein lies the problem, what is the accurate data for the above
treatment options for the three treatment decision criteria, for a
specific type of cancer diagnosed at a specific stage? None of this data
is available. You might be interested to know "why" this data is not
available. That is what this chapter is about.

     Continued In The Next Post.

Cancer can be cured.
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