MANILA, Philippines?In last week?s column, I presented statistics showing chemotherapy?s lack of effectiveness in prolonging survival of cancer patients based on scientific studies conducted by several Australian oncologists led by associate professor Graeme Morgan of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, and published in the journal of Clinical Oncology in 2005.
Not only is chemotherapy ineffective, it also has a lot of very bad side effects such as nausea, vomiting and loss of hair. Chemotherapy destroys not only the cancerous cells but also the white cells. It is so toxic to the body that the patient often suffers more from the treatment than the sickness it aims to cure.
Despite all the evidence against chemotherapy, why is it still the preferred and accepted therapy for most forms of cancer?
The answer is provided by the Australian oncologists themselves who made the study. According to Ralph W. Moss Ph.D who reported the study, ?Oncologists frequently express the benefits of chemotherapy in terms of relative risk rather than giving a straight assessment of the likely impact on overall survival which makes treatment look more beneficial than it really is.?
Explains Dr. Moss: ?If receiving treatment causes a patient?s risk to drop from 4 percent to 2 percent, this can be expressed as a decrease in relative risk of 50-percent... that sounds good. But another equally valid way of expressing this is to say that it offers a two-percent reduction in absolute risk, which is less likely to convince patients to take the treatment.?
Clinical trial
Doctors are also influenced heavily in presenting a drug by the manner in which clinical trials are reported.
?When results were expressed as a relative risk reduction, physicians believed the drugs were more effective than they did when identical results were expressed as an absolute risk reduction.?
As an example of how chemotherapy is oversold, the Australian oncologists cited the treatment of breast cancer.
?In 1998 in Australia, out of a total of 10,661 women with breast cancer, only 164 (3.5 percent) actually gained some survival benefit from chemotherapy. The use of newer regimens including taxanes and anthracyclines for breast cancer may raise survival by an estimated additional one percent but this is achieved at the expense of an increased risk of cardiac toxicity and nerve damage.?
In other words, the attendant serious side effects of the newer drugs may not be worth the risk of undergoing such a treatment. This is probably the reason why some Filipino faith healers and psychic surgeons told me they do not accept cancer patients who have undergone either cobalt or chemotherapy treatments.
Sometimes temporary relief from cancer through chemotherapy is used to justify its continued use, but as pointed out, it seldom lasts for more than a few months.
?The cancer typically returns, sometimes with renewed vigor and survival is not generally extended by such interventions,? according to the study.
Dr. Moss wonders why this important finding by the Australian oncologists about ineffectiveness of chemotherapy is not given enough attention by western media and medical specialists. Could it be because it will hurt their pockets?
Let the reader judge for himself.
Note: A new one-day seminar on ?Working with Quartz Crystals? will be held September 24, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., to be conducted by both Sylvia Mariano of Minex Crystals and the Undersigned. The next Soulmates, Karma & Reincarnation seminar will be held Sept. 19, 1-7 p.m., at Rm. 308 Prince Plaza, 106 Legazpi St., Greenbelt, Makati. Call 8107245 or 8159890; e-mail jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com.
