(Sometimes) To Do Nothing As Cancer Treatment Is Also Good Medicine

haidut

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I just made post about a book calling for all but the abolition of the medical system. The evidence for any systemic benefit are just not there, while the evidence for iatrogenic harm and death, as well as astounding financial costs, is abundant.
https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/a-call-for-medical-nihilism-to-do-nothing-is-also-good-medicine.30074/

Now, an opinion in the WSJ, written by an esteemed oncologist makes a call not too dissimilar than the one in the book above. In fact, the doctor states that EVERY oncologist has one or more patients who simply live with their cancer. And invariably, those are patients that have refused treatment. It is those patients that apparently outlive the aggressively treated ones by many years and some are even in 10-year remission periods, officially known as "cures". Furthermore, the doctor writes, given how long it takes for cancer to develop to the point of being diagnosable, most cancer patients have unknowingly been living with their cancer for most of their lives without it causing major issues. Why bother treating ALL of them when they are finally diagnosed? Clearly, if they have been living with their cancer for so long, then it is not something that likely warrants attention unless the tumor is affecting vital organs. Despite the anecdotal nature of those cases, they are still evidence and that evidence points to "doing nothing" being vastly better as therapy when it comes to cancer. I consider editorials/opinions like this a good development. If even mainstream media is making calls for a change in a discipline that has seen little progress over the last 100 years, then the end of this carnage/genocide is in sight.

Opinion | Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

"...Cancer physicians for more than a century have followed the simple dictum that more is better—more surgery, more radiation, more chemotherapy and, most recently, more immunotherapy. But how much is enough? Do we escalate doses to the point of lethality, as those engaged in bone-marrow transplantation are forced to do regularly? Is this struggle to eliminate every patient’s cancer achievable or even warranted? These questions have taken on a new urgency because oncology has lost sight of a basic principle: Every patient is a uniquely complex person with different medical needs requiring different treatments. Every oncologist has patients who simply “live” with their cancers. After I told one patient with advanced lung cancer that she was unlikely to respond to conventional therapy, she declined intervention and proceeded to outlive all of her “treated” counterparts by several years. I describe her to my medical students as “my best response I never treated.”

"...We now know that cancer is a disease of altered cell survival, not excessive proliferation. That is, cancer doesn’t grow too much, it dies too little. Applying cell kinetics, we can trace a newly diagnosed colon cancer back to its first cell. This reveals that a cancer that has spread to the liver by the time it’s diagnosed may have its origins some 30 years earlier yet remain undetectable with current diagnostic techniques for well over two decades. The same holds true for pancreatic, lung and other tumors. By the time many patients are diagnosed, they have unknowingly lived more of their lives with cancer than without."

"...A newly diagnosed patient with lung cancer and metastases to the brain once arrived in my office and told me that her first oncologist was so pessimistic that she was told to “get my affairs in order.” Her studies revealed a simple two-drug combination that provided a remission that has now lasted more than 10 years. When we met shortly after her diagnosis to discuss the recommended treatment, she blurted out, “You mean I’m not going to die?” “No” I said, “you’re not sick. You just have cancer.”
 
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The trouble is that people don't want to think for themselves because responsibility is scary. Very, very few people can resist the outcries from their family and friends when they try to avoid conventional chemo and radiation.

Their family and friends pressure them into the conventional route. Every news article and story pressures them into the conventional route.

It takes a rare person to resist.
 
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haidut

haidut

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It takes a rare person to resist.

I agree. It usually only happens if the person is "terminal" (as the first example in the article about that lady with lung cancer) as then they know they got nothing to lose.
 
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there are some studies done on people who refused (further?) treatment and turned out okay.

There is a prostate study that I have reviewed that is about "active surveillance" or what formerly was called "watchful waiting" and about 25% of the tumors disappeared on their own.
 

Lilac

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The trouble is that people don't want to think for themselves because responsibility is scary. Very, very few people can resist the outcries from their family and friends when they try to avoid conventional chemo and radiation.

Their family and friends pressure them into the conventional route. Every news article and story pressures them into the conventional route.

It takes a rare person to resist.

Don't forget the advertisements! In the New York area, we used to get heavy radio advertising for Memorial Sloane Kettering. And in the past few years there is a doctor who uses radio ads to sell his services, to paraphrase, if traditional cancer therapies--chemo, radiation--have failed.
 

NathanK

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There's definitely a case though they blame Steve Jobs death on his refusal of medical treatment until too late. I think he had pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most lethal forms to get
 

burtlancast

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I've recently heard Steve Jobs managed to live with his diagnosed pancreatic cancer for 8 years before succumbing to it.

He definitely was doing something alternative.
 
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kimbriel

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I've recently heard Steve Jobs managed to live with his diagnosed pancreatic cancer for 8 years before succumbing to it.

He definitely was doing something alternative.

Steve Jobs had neuroendocrine cancer of the pancreas, which is a different animal than what it known as "pancreatic" cancer. I had neuroendocrine cancer of the lung (lung carcinoid). It tends to be a very slow-growing, non-aggressive cancer, that doesn't tend to jump to other organs all that well. Admittedly, a tumor in the pancreas is more difficult than one in the lung.
 

kimbriel

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There's definitely a case though they blame Steve Jobs death on his refusal of medical treatment until too late. I think he had pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most lethal forms to get
As I said below, it's not exactly pancreatic cancer. He had neuroendocrine cancer of the pancreas. I had the same cancer, but in my lung.
 

gunther

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I got through about 1/3 of this book and had to stop. It was too dark and depressing. Griffin covers much of the cancer industry and it isn’t good. One particularly disturbing part is how the NIH uses its massive research grant budget to silence any promising exploration into cures.
 

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frannybananny

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I got through about 1/3 of this book and had to stop. It was too dark and depressing. Griffin covers much of the cancer industry and it isn’t good. One particularly disturbing part is how the NIH uses its massive research grant budget to silence any promising exploration into cures.
I have not read this book but I do believe that the darkest elements of the medical/cancer industry are true. When I get asked in grocery stores if I want to make a donation to various cancer venues, even St Jude's Hospital for children, I always reply.... they already have cures for cancer... they just don't want us to know about them.
 
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Furthermore, the doctor writes, given how long it takes for cancer to develop to the point of being diagnosable, most cancer patients have unknowingly been living with their cancer for most of their lives without it causing major issues. Why bother treating ALL of them when they are finally diagnosed? Clearly, if they have been living with their cancer for so long, then it is not something that likely warrants attention unless the tumor is affecting vital organs. Despite the anecdotal nature of those cases, they are still evidence and that evidence points to "doing nothing" being vastly better as therapy when it comes to cancer.

"...We now know that cancer is a disease of altered cell survival, not excessive proliferation. That is, cancer doesn’t grow too much, it dies too little. Applying cell kinetics, we can trace a newly diagnosed colon cancer back to its first cell. This reveals that a cancer that has spread to the liver by the time it’s diagnosed may have its origins some 30 years earlier yet remain undetectable with current diagnostic techniques for well over two decades. The same holds true for pancreatic, lung and other tumors. By the time many patients are diagnosed, they have unknowingly lived more of their lives with cancer than without."
These two statements really caught my attention.
 

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