THE LATE president Cory Aquino, according to news items, refused continued chemotherapy for her colon cancer during the month before her transition into the spirit world. This must have upset both her doctors and close family members, because chemotherapy is still the medically accepted mode of treatment for most types of cancer.
But she was right in refusing such therapy because it has been proven ineffective. It would not have mattered much. According to an important paper published in the Australian journal Clinical Oncology in 2005, the survival rate over a five-year period of Australian adults treated with chemotherapy is only 2.3 percent, and even lower for Americans at 2.1 percent.
According to Dr. Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D., who summarized the findings in a two-part article entitled ?Aussie Oncologists Criticize Chemotherapy,? the report attracted attention in Australia but ?was greeted with complete silence? in the West.
According to Moss: ?All three of the paper?s authors are oncologists [i.e. cancer specialists]. Lead author associate professor Graeme Morgan, is a radiation oncologist at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney; professor Robyn Ward is a medical oncologist at University of New South Wales/St. Vincent Hospital. The third author, Dr. Michael Barton, is a radiation oncologist and member of the collaboration for Cancer Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Liverpool Health Service, Sydney.
?Prof. Ward is also a member of the Therapeutic Goods Authority of the Australian Federal Department of Health and Aging, the official body that advises the Australian government on the suitability and efficacy of drugs to be listed on the national Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule [PBS] ? roughly the equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration.?
According to Moss, the meticulous study of the above oncologists ?was based on an analysis of all the randomized, controlled clinical trials (RCTs) performed in Australia and the US that reported statistically significant increase in five-year survival due to the use of chemotherapy in adult malignancies...Whenever data was uncertain, the authors deliberately erred on the side of overestimating the benefit of chemotherapy. Even so, the study concluded that overall, chemotherapy contributes just over 2 percent to improved survival in cancer patients.?
?Despite the mounting evidence of chemotherapy?s lack of effectiveness in prolonging survival,? said Moss, ?oncologists continue to present chemotherapy as a rational and promising approach to cancer treatment.?
Conclusion
But the conclusion of these Australian oncologists is neither new nor surprising.
In Europe, Dr. Ulrich Abel of the Institute of Epidemiology, University of Heidelberg, made a survey of over 350 cancer centers worldwide in 1990 and concluded that: ?Apart from Hodgkin?s disease, some childhood leukemias and testicular cancers, there is no direct evidence that chemotherapy prolongs survival in patients of advanced epithelial malignancies.?
In late 1999, Dr. Eduardo Gonzales, former dean of DLSU College of Medicine, in a book titled ?Medicine for All,? declared that: ?Except in a few instances, there have been no improvements in cancer survival rates.?
And Dr. Gloria Cristal-Luna, an oncologist, wrote that ?despite advances in early detection and treatment, overall death rates from cancer have remained largely unchanged since the early 1970s.? The above quotations are from papers passed on to me by Dr. Omar Arabia.
A very religious woman, president Cory Aquino refused further chemotherapy, not necessarily because she didn?t believe in it, but because she must have surrendered her fate to God.
But there are now several alternatives to chemotherapy that cancer patients can explore if they wish. They need not be forced to accept chemotherapy which has been proven to be largely ineffective.
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