The picture below is of an Oncologist wi
The picture below is of an Oncologist with his wife who was diagnosed with breast cancer that metastasized. The article is called, “The Day I Started Lying to My Wife.” http://nymag.com/news/features/cancer-peter-bach-2014-5/
Chemotherapy Use, Performance Status, and Quality of Life at the End of Life
The mainstream media is coming unravelled as a JAMA’s publication is making the rounds which calls out chemotherapy as “ineffective” versus late stage or end-stage cancers where patients are nearing death.
Of course, the “late stage” and “nearing death” variables aren’t an open admission to the entire chemotherapy application, but they are rare for publications which often take sides with chemo as the absolute best treatment for cancer in all FOUR stages.
This article states, “Physicians have voiced concerns about the benefits of chemotherapy for patients with cancer nearing death.[1– 5] In 2012, an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) expert panel identified chemotherapy use among patients for whom there was no evidence of clinical value [6] as the most widespread, wasteful, and unnecessary practice in oncology.
Let’s put this into perspective – having a major medical journal widely viewed as the top of the medical science food chain calls the application of chemotherapy under these specific circumstance as “widespread, wasteful, unnecessary” is incredibly telling. Think of the money which chemotherapy producers make by peddling chemo to people who are clearly at a state of near death. The study finds it is, “widespread, wasteful, unnecessary” and telling everyone that the for profit aspect of the treatment supercedes any real life-goals for helping people live longer or live better.
Specifically, ASCO guidelines recommend against the use of chemotherapy in solid tumor patients who have not benefited from prior treatment and who have an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG)[7]
Prior to this statement, the study has found that people who haven’t responded to chemo were given chemo again even after the chemo did NOT work the first time! So the chemotherapy treatment failed and yet they were put through the treatment again.
Despite the lack of evidence to support the practice, chemotherapy is widely used in cancer patients with poor performance status and progression following an initial course of palliative chemotherapy.[1,4,10,11]
Chemotheroapy has no evidence in working with people at this late or end stage cancerous condition, and yet the oncologist would administer the treatment expecting a different result? This is the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result!
Chemotherapy’s willingness to rake in billions of dollars from Big Pharmaceutical companies at the expense of those who have cancer could not be more egregious than in this case. This study loudly states egregious, contemptible actions yet with no responsibility to those who have so often contributed to the issue.
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