Cancer treatment in the 1950s.

DEFTLEFTHAND

I was reading Lauren Bacall's autobiography recently, great fan of that period of Hollywood .

Her husband the actor Humphrey Bogart contracted throut cancer in 1955. It started when he found it hard to swallow food, his 100 a day cigarette cough was also worse than usual. While filming 'The Harder They Fall' in that year his persistent cough would became a problem when shooting scenes.

He refused to go to a doctor until Jan 56 when Bacall forced him. He was then diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.


What they did then was unreal , he underwent mustard gas treatment , chemo and radio were available at the time but were not used . The mustard gas ravavaged him, it didn't work and he suffered terribly . They ended up entirely removing his oesophagus before he died in Jan 57 weighing 80 pounds.


How times have changed. My mother is battling cancer at the moment with great treatments. I just can't imagine if the likes of mustard gas was still considered.

ChunkyLover54

Best wishes to your mother - I hope she makes a full recovery.

DEFTLEFTHAND

ChunkyLover54 wrote: »

Best wishes to your mother - I hope she makes a full recovery.

There won't be a recovery but her oncologist is hopeful than she live for yrs yet with treatment. It's a staving off process.

mikhail

There is an amazing book called The Emperor of All Maladies about the history of our understanding and treatment of cancer from 19th century chimney sweeps being diagnosed with "a suppuration of the blood" (lukemia) through increasingly radical surgury, early chemo, the drive for cancer research funding in the 50s (60s?) and on to modern genetically targeted approaches. It's a big book, but I can't recommend it enough.

JupiterKid

There have been astounding strides towards cancer treatment in the past 40 and especially 25 years. Until the 1960s a cancer diagnosis was essentially a death sentence. Even as recently as the 1980s half of all cancer patients died within a year or two of diagnosis. Today many if not most cancer patients are treated successfully.

OP I wish your mother well.

Ardent

With regards to previous comment -depends on the type of cancer and how advanced it is.

OP- Not even modern medicine could have saved Bogart at the point he finally went to the doctor.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Ardent wrote: »

With regards to previous comment -depends on the type of cancer and how advanced it is.

OP- Not even modern medicine could have saved Bogart at the point he finally went to the doctor.

That's true , he was at an extremely advanced stage while diagnosed, cancer had spread. He spent over a year refusing to go to a doctor.

Pallative care should have been recommended to him . They should never have tried to treat him.


They made him suffer something fierce.

Duckworth_Luas

I remember reading that, when entertaining guests after being diagonosed, Bogart still continued to meet his visators with a lit cigarette.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

I remember reading that, when entertaining guests after being diagonosed, Bogart still continued to meet his visators with a lit cigarette.

He switched from whiskeys to martinis because whiskey burnt his throut.

He steadfastly refused to give up his chain smoking until the end.

Wibbs

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

He steadfastly refused to give up his chain smoking until the end.

To be fair, at that stage giving up wouldn't have done a thing. The damage was done.

retro:electro

I don’t know how true it is but I heard recently that more people are now living with cancer than dying from it. There’s a massive cohort of people who are surviving with the disease and for many cancer is a part of their lives they’ll have to manage for the foreseeable. My mam was given a diagnosis four years ago and her oncologist told her if this was ten years ago there wouldn’t be much they could do to starve off the disease. Now she takes her medication every day and lives from scan to scan in the hope that the treatment is doing it’s job.
Cancer is no longer a dichotomy of life or death. There’s also a massive cohort in the middle who are living with it, and some managing their symptoms and have managed to stabilise their disease and get it to a place where they can live 10+ years. The advancement in cancer research in the last 20 years has been amazing.

wakka12

Thread makes me happy We are so lucky to have so many of the medical treatments we have available to us today

Atlantic Dawn

Smoking 100 a day would be some addiction, even timewise it would be hard to actually do.

One eyed Jack

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I was reading Lauren Bacall's autobiography recently, great fan of that period of Hollywood .

Her husband the actor Humphrey Bogart contracted throut cancer in 1955. It started when he found it hard to swallow food, his 100 a day cigarette cough was also worse than usual. While filming 'The Harder They Fall' in that year his persistent cough would became a problem when shooting scenes.

He refused to go to a doctor until Jan 56 when Bacall forced him. He was then diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.


What they did then was unreal , he underwent mustard gas treatment , chemo and radio were available at the time but were not used . The mustard gas ravavaged him, it didn't work and he suffered terribly . They ended up entirely removing his oesophagus before he died in Jan 57 weighing 80 pounds.

How times have changed. My mother is battling cancer at the moment with great treatments. I just can't imagine if the likes of mustard gas was still considered.

I don’t know much about it, but was there any particular reason why mustard gas was chosen to be administered over chemo or radio treatments? It does kind of remind me of lobotomies which were a regular treatment at the time but are now no longer performed. Obviously we understand more now, but at the time I suppose for any different number of reasons they were arguably the most effective treatment for the particular conditions for which they were used as a treatment.

I’m kind of reminded of other treatments not specifically in relation to cancers which were once considered an effective treatment at the time, and today we would regard those treatments as barbaric. I have no doubt that some of the treatments we use in modern medicine today will at some point in the future be regarded as barbaric too, but they were simply what was regarded as the most effective form of treatment at the time.

Raging_Ninja

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I don’t know much about it, but was there any particular reason why mustard gas was chosen to be administered over chemo or radio treatments? It does kind of remind me of lobotomies which were a regular treatment at the time but are now no longer performed.

Lobotomies are still performed to remove damaged parts of the brain, and as a treatment for certain types of severe epilepsy.

As for mustard gas as treatment, it did have some effects against certain types of cancer:

During World War II, naval personnel who were exposed to mustard gas during military action were found to have toxic changes in the bone marrow cells that develop into blood cells. During that same period, the US Army was studying a number of chemicals related to mustard gas to develop more effective agents for war and also develop protective measures. In the course of that work, a compound called nitrogen mustard was studied and found to work against a cancer of the lymph nodes called lymphoma. This agent served as the model for a long series of similar but more effective agents (called alkylating agents) that killed rapidly growing cancer cells by damaging their DNA.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/history-of-cancer/cancer-treatment-chemo.html

Remember, this was a very early era of treatment and research and people were operating largely in the dark.

Corruptedmorals

Mustard gas, wow that's horrific.

Unfortunately children's cancer is not moving with the times at the same pace as adult cancer research. Some cancers that are specific to children are using the same drugs for chemo that were used decades ago. These cause immense amounts of secondary damage and are quite brutal. Some cancers such as neuroblastoma have an extreme mortality rate in the case of relapse with no treatment available in this country. I would love to see the likes of neuroblastoma , rhabdomyosarcoma and the rest get the same awareness and funding as breast cancer does.

SEPT 23 1989

I hope things work out ok for your mother

Hopefully she can beat it

best of luck DEFTLEFTHAND

_Brian

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I was reading Lauren Bacall's autobiography recently, great fan of that period of Hollywood .

Her husband the actor Humphrey Bogart contracted throut cancer in 1955. It started when he found it hard to swallow food, his 100 a day cigarette cough was also worse than usual. While filming 'The Harder They Fall' in that year his persistent cough would became a problem when shooting scenes.

He refused to go to a doctor until Jan 56 when Bacall forced him. He was then diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.


What they did then was unreal , he underwent mustard gas treatment , chemo and radio were available at the time but were not used . The mustard gas ravavaged him, it didn't work and he suffered terribly . They ended up entirely removing his oesophagus before he died in Jan 57 weighing 80 pounds.


How times have changed. My mother is battling cancer at the moment with great treatments. I just can't imagine if the likes of mustard gas was still considered.

Oh how times have changed.

Steve Jobbs shunned conventional medicine when he was diagnosed with cancer and instead went with some crack pot alternative gig. It didn’t work. He had a treatable form of cancer but ended his life by making a terrible decision.

Kuva

Some chemo drugs are still based on mustard gas, things haven't moved on.

Others ruin your heart or destroy your nerves, others will give you a secondary cancer due to damage caused.

Living with cancer for 10 years, why do some of you think this is good? You don't forget you have it, it's a sentence.

Theirs a couple of companies doing the targeted genetic stuff around the world now, treatment for your particular cancer and only you, few actual trials on the go, been delayed for years for a couple reasons.

One eyed Jack

_Brian wrote: »

Oh how times have changed.

Steve Jobbs shunned conventional medicine when he was diagnosed with cancer and instead went with some crack pot alternative gig. It didn’t work. He had a treatable form of cancer but ended his life by making a terrible decision.

That’s kinda why I asked about Humphrey Bogart and the mustard gas when radio and chemo were available treatments that he no doubt would have had the means and resources to have access to, same as Jobs who would have had access to the best medical and technological assistance of the time, yet chose what appears to have been the most illogical option.

Was it just a case of “Nope, I’m fine thanks, I don’t want to prolong this”?

retro:electro

Kuva wrote: »

Living with cancer for 10 years, why do some of you think this is good? You don't forget you have it, it's a sentence.

Obviously being cured outright is preferable, but that’s not always realistic. Being told it’s treatable but not curable is better than being told goodnight Irene there’s nothing we can do.

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

My dad ended up dying 10 months after his diagnosis with the treatment causing a tumor on his brain. He’d have lived a little longer without radiation.

banie01

Mustard gas derivatives were the very 1st form of chemotherapy.
It's not that Bogart couldn't avail of better chemo options, it's that at the time his treatment was bleeding edge.

Even as late as the late 40s and early 50s medical consensus was that leukemia was untreatable and the pioneers in Chemo were ridiculed for even trying anything other than palliative care.

sullivlo

mikhail wrote: »

There is an amazing book called The Emperor of All Maladies about the history of our understanding and treatment of cancer from 19th century chimney sweeps being diagnosed with "a suppuration of the blood" (lukemia) through increasingly radical surgury, early chemo, the drive for cancer research funding in the 50s (60s?) and on to modern genetically targeted approaches. It's a big book, but I can't recommend it enough.

Can not recommend this book more highly. Great read.

tashiusclay

I hope we experience a time in the not too distant future, that we can look back at chemo treatment as a barbaric, agricultural treatment of this illness. Having your body pushed to the point of destruction with essentially a chemical bleach is disgusting, and needs to be rendered obsolete, years ago by now.

0lddog

On OPs topic of Lauren Bacall ( Please forgive this otherwise O/T post )

Her 'Desert Island Discs' ( actually some nice anecdotes )

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mxpg

El Tarangu

My mother died of a brain tumour 20 years ago. Ten years later, a friend of my Dad got a very similar brain tumour, and lived*
While I am sure that that my father's feelings of relief that his friend survived were somewhat tinged with sadness of the cosmic misfortune of his wife's illness occuring just on the wrong side of this advance in medicine, it's heartening that science keeps finding new and better treatments all the time.

*in fact he died quite recently, but he got another 10 years of a good standard of living from the treatment

griffin100

tashiusclay wrote: »

I hope we experience a time in the not too distant future, that we can look back at chemo treatment as a barbaric, agricultural treatment of this illness. Having your body pushed to the point of destruction with essentially a chemical bleach is disgusting, and needs to be rendered obsolete, years ago by now.

What’s your alternative treatment?

jh79

tashiusclay wrote: »

I hope we experience a time in the not too distant future, that we can look back at chemo treatment as a barbaric, agricultural treatment of this illness. Having your body pushed to the point of destruction with essentially a chemical bleach is disgusting, and needs to be rendered obsolete, years ago by now.

What a clueless post, i'm stunned people thanked it.

wakka12

griffin100 wrote: »

What’s your alternative treatment?

Yeh exactly. If there was better ways to treat cancer, theyd do it

CrabRevolution

tashiusclay wrote: »

I hope we experience a time in the not too distant future, that we can look back at chemo treatment as a barbaric, agricultural treatment of this illness. Having your body pushed to the point of destruction with essentially a chemical bleach is disgusting, and needs to be rendered obsolete, years ago by now.

If you've a better treatment, please share it with us.

tashiusclay

CrabRevolution wrote: »

If you've a better treatment, please share it with us.

I can think of plenty of alternative treatments, that once you have the initial surgery to remove the tumor, if this surgery is possible, would give similar chances of survival post surgery to chemo, i.e. moderate chances either way.

Do you not think its odd, that since the 1950s, we've sent people to the moon with commercial space flight soon approaching, we are driving cars so sophisticated that they will soon be able to drive themselves, we can speak face to face with anyone across the globe in an instant with a device hugely powerful relative to the computers and telephone boxes of the 1980s, that fits in our pockets, yet we're still using only a refined version of the early chemotherapy from the 1950s. And these chemotherapys continue to be an exorbitant price, yet the basic principle and structure of it is well over a half a century old. And your chances of beating the cancer with said chemotherapy is close to nil if you're at all advanced with it and not caught in time, as if the cancer doesn't return in remission, you've probably shortened or reduced your quality of life anyway with the damage to your body from the chemo.

You've never questioned that, no? Or can someone enlighten my own view of it please?

tashiusclay

jh79 wrote: »

What a clueless post, i'm stunned people thanked it.

What's clueless about it? Fill me in.

tashiusclay

griffin100 wrote: »

What’s your alternative treatment?

Not moderate to high dose chemotherapy anyway, that's for sure, even low dose chemo I think I'd baulk at the option of it. I'd take my chances with removing the tumor with surgery if that's possible, and one of the holistic options then, the way I look at it my chances aren't much worse with the latter than the former.

CrabRevolution

tashiusclay wrote: »

I can think of plenty of alternative treatments, that once you have the initial surgery to remove the tumor, if this surgery is possible, would give similar chances of survival post surgery to chemo, i.e. moderate chances either way.

Do you not think its odd, that since the 1950s, we've sent people to the moon with commercial space flight soon approaching, we are driving cars so sophisticated that they will soon be able to drive themselves, we can speak face to face with anyone across the globe in an instant with a device hugely powerful relative to the computers and telephone boxes of the 1980s, that fits in our pockets, yet we're still using only a refined version of the early chemotherapy from the 1950s. And these chemotherapys continue to be an exorbitant price, yet the basic principle and structure of it is well over a half a century old. And your chances of beating the cancer with said chemotherapy is close to nil if you're at all advanced with it and not caught in time, as if the cancer doesn't return in remission, you've probably shortened or reduced your quality of life anyway with the damage to your body from the chemo.

You've never questioned that, no? Or can someone enlighten my own view of it please?

Well you're effectively demanding something that we're not even sure exists, just because you want it to exist. Our method for dealing with cancer is to find the cancerous cells and to kill them (via chemo, radiation therapy, brachytherapy etc.), remove them (surgery), or both. Whatever new treatment you want would need to somehow not involve these methods, and I can't even picture what this new cure could be.

For all the greatness of the technologies you listed, unlike your non-chemo treatment they weren't unforeseeable or unimaginable.

Wernher Von Braun was writing articles in the early 50s detailing with remarkable accuracy exactly what rockets would be doing to reach the moon. The rockets and spacecraft didn't exist yet but the scientists of the day knew the rough idea of what was going to happen.

It's the same with computing. For a long long time people have known that computers are capable of massive feats. The trick has been to build better computers and to code them better. Moore's law has for decades pretty accurately tracked the power of computing.
I'd argue that it was a bigger jump from nothing to telegraphs than it was from telegraphs to video calls. Once radios were invented, people could easily picture televisions too, and once televisions came around, video calling was effectively seen to be just around the corner.

Not so with cancer therapy. We've made huge advances in technique, dose, treatment plans, administering the drugs etc. and we can foresee more developments in those areas. But nobody has come up with or even theorised a total replacement for chemotherapy that you believe is waiting to be discovered.

That's not to say that there's no chance of it happening, but I think what I and others took issue with was your assertion that we're failing in some sense because we haven't already found tomorrows technology today. It's like criticising the Romans for not having the combustion engine.

CrabRevolution

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

What’s clueless about it? Chemotherapy is incredibly harsh (for example can make you neutropenic) and not always curative. The poster seems to hope that less harsh treatments will be discovered. What’s wrong with that?

As I said above, the post seemed to suggest that we're failing in some sense by not having already produced a total replacement for chemotherapy, despite the fact there's none currently in existence. The use of the word "barbaric" to describe humankind's best efforts at cancer treatment and then a later post insinuating that scientists/companies are deliberately not developing cancer treatments is also clueless.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

CrabRevolution wrote: »

As I said above, the post seemed to suggest that we're failing in some sense by not having already produced a total replacement for chemotherapy, despite the fact there's none currently in existence. The use of the word "barbaric" to describe humankind's best efforts at cancer treatment and then a later post insinuating that scientists/companies are deliberately not developing cancer treatments is also clueless.

Many people who are totally on board with conventional medicine and who aren’t ‘big pharma’ nuts describe chemotherapy as barbaric. I don’t see what’s wrong with describing it that way just because it’s all we’ve got along with surgery and radiotherapy and a few other things. Actually, cancer surgery and radiotherapy are routinely described that way by many recipients too and in many cases, the awful side effects aren’t even worth it in the end because the patient still dies. Just because they’re all we’ve got, people aren’t allowed comment on how harsh the treatments are and how devastating the side effects can be? In some studies of terminal cancer patients, individuals who opted out of harsh treatments lived longer than those who took palliative chemo and other treatments.

Anyone receiving chemo is carefully monitored because you are basically putting poison in your body hoping it will catch those fast-growing cells. Saying that isn’t saying that you reject conventional medicine, it’s just saying that it’s harsh. Chemo recipients can be left with cardiac issues. Some breast cancer patients have to wear compression sleeves for the rest of their lives because lymph fluid causes their arms to swell up. Cancer treatment is really bloody brutal in a lot of cases.

skooterblue2

griffin100 wrote: »

What’s your alternative treatment?

Great Question!!!

Nobody wants to know about Colin Campbell, no red meat protein diet. See the China Study. There is too much money in Chemotherapy and research that seems to be going nowhere. Certainly not the beef and Dairy and Pharma industry here in Ireland.

jh79

tashiusclay wrote: »

I can think of plenty of alternative treatments, that once you have the initial surgery to remove the tumor, if this surgery is possible, would give similar chances of survival post surgery to chemo, i.e. moderate chances either way.

Do you not think its odd, that since the 1950s, we've sent people to the moon with commercial space flight soon approaching, we are driving cars so sophisticated that they will soon be able to drive themselves, we can speak face to face with anyone across the globe in an instant with a device hugely powerful relative to the computers and telephone boxes of the 1980s, that fits in our pockets, yet we're still using only a refined version of the early chemotherapy from the 1950s. And these chemotherapys continue to be an exorbitant price, yet the basic principle and structure of it is well over a half a century old. And your chances of beating the cancer with said chemotherapy is close to nil if you're at all advanced with it and not caught in time, as if the cancer doesn't return in remission, you've probably shortened or reduced your quality of life anyway with the damage to your body from the chemo.

You've never questioned that, no? Or can someone enlighten my own view of it please?

In very general terms, whatever you do to inhibit the cancer cell will affect the healthy cells too because they share the same biology.

The perfect chemo drug would inhibit a cellular process unique to the cancer cell , otherwise it works on the idea that the cancer cell is replicating faster so will be affected more by the drug eg the mustard nitrogen class of drugs that are dna alkylating agents.

Immunotherapy and tailoring treatment to the dna of the person / cancer is the more modern approach but it depends on the type of cancer.

Any examples of these alternative treatments that some how target only the cancer cells?

jh79

skooterblue2 wrote: »

Great Question!!!

Nobody wants to know about Colin Campbell, no red meat protein diet. See the China Study. There is too much money in Chemotherapy and research that seems to be going nowhere. Certainly not the beef and Dairy and Pharma industry here in Ireland.

China study showed a greater risk of cancer with plant protein too and a greater all cause mortality for the plant based diet.

Highly flawed study that is poorly interpreted to sell books.

El Tarangu

tashiusclay wrote: »

I hope we experience a time in the not too distant future, that we can look back at chemo treatment as a barbaric, agricultural treatment of this illness. Having your body pushed to the point of destruction with essentially a chemical bleach is disgusting, and needs to be rendered obsolete, years ago by now.

This is like saying that amputation is a barbaric treatment for a gangrenous limb - I mean, it is, in a way, but it's the best treatment that we have for the moment, and while it would be better if we had a less abrasive cure, it is not as if we can tell all of the cancer patients/ gangrene sufferers to hang on for a few decades until we come up with one.

jh79

skooterblue2 wrote: »

Great Question!!!

Nobody wants to know about Colin Campbell, no red meat protein diet. See the China Study. There is too much money in Chemotherapy and research that seems to be going nowhere. Certainly not the beef and Dairy and Pharma industry here in Ireland.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/

It would be wonderful if we could prevent cancer and all those other diseases by avoiding animal protein. It would have the extra added benefit to the environment of increasing the productivity of agricultural land and reducing the greenhouse effects of gassy cows. I look forward to future well-designed studies investigating the effects of very low protein and animal-protein-free diets. Meanwhile, The China Study makes a good case, but the case isn’t quite good enough.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-china-study-revisited/

The China Study was embraced by vegetarians because it seemed to support their beliefs with strong evidence. Minger has shown that that evidence is largely illusory. The issues raised are important and deserve further study by unbiased scientists. At any rate, one thing is clear: the China Study is not sufficient reason to recommend drastic reductions in protein intake, let alone total avoidance of meat and dairy foods.

Canis Lupus

skooterblue2 wrote: »

Great Question!!!

Nobody wants to know about Colin Campbell, no red meat protein diet. See the China Study. There is too much money in Chemotherapy and research that seems to be going nowhere. Certainly not the beef and Dairy and Pharma industry here in Ireland.

Why does there always have to be one person... Can we just not blame 'big pharma' or this diet or that diet on 'cancer'. Cancer isn't just one disease.

There's no secret, no conspiracy. Everyone from vegans to the CEOs of big scary pharma companys are affected or know someone affected by cancer.

Franz Von Peppercorn

griffin100 wrote: »

What’s your alternative treatment?

jh79 wrote: »

What a clueless post, i'm stunned people thanked it.

wakka12 wrote: »

Yeh exactly. If there was better ways to treat cancer, theyd do it

CrabRevolution wrote: »

If you've a better treatment, please share it with us.

These reactions are extremely odd, particularly when the original post was about a treatment which was not too dissimilar in its effect to chemo and was the best treatment for its day, and yet we consider it barbaric now.

Nor does the guy who says he hopes chemo is replaced have to come up with a solution. He just has to hope that particular cure is replaced with a better one. One that is less destructive to the rest of the body.

CrabRevolution wrote: »

As I said above, the post seemed to suggest that we're failing in some sense by not having already produced a total replacement for chemotherapy, despite the fact there's none currently in existence.

Its precisely because there is none currently in existence that we are failing. If we do get a less destructive or invasive cure this era will look primitive.

The use of the word "barbaric" to describe humankind's best efforts at cancer treatment and then a later post insinuating that scientists/companies are deliberately not developing cancer treatments is also clueless.

We often look at the past and consider medical treatments barbaric if we can cure the disease easier today, and even if those treatments were the best available then. Your latter point is correct, but not the former.

Why o why do threads like this always attract the 'big pharma' conspiracy types if one of them gets cancer they are free to reject chemotherapy and try and anything they like but that's not good enough for them they want to drag everyone else into their quackery.

Franz Von Peppercorn

mariaalice wrote: »

Why o why do threads like this always attract the 'big pharma' conspiracy types if one of them gets cancer they are free to reject chemotherapy and try and anything they like but that's not good enough for them they want to drag everyone else into their quackery.

Only one person has come up with a conspiracy. Others have merely said it would be great if chemo was replaced by something else.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Only one person has come up with a conspiracy. Others have merely said it would be great if chemo was replaced by something else.

Of course, it would be great if there was an alternative, a scientific evidence-based alternative just the way chemotherapy is a scientific evidence-based treatment.

Franz Von Peppercorn

mariaalice wrote: »

Of course, it would be great if there was an alternative, a scientific evidence-based alternative just the way chemotherapy is a scientific evidence-based treatment.

Sure. That’s what we are saying.

Alternatively we are at the best possible time for medicine and it’s downhill from here.

Canis Lupus

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Sure. That’s what we are saying.

Alternatively we are at the best possible time for medicine and it’s downhill from here.

If we look on the bright side once antibiotics stop working due to their prolific overuse we can go back to the good old days of dying before cancer gets us.

mikhail

tashiusclay wrote: »

I can think of plenty of alternative treatments, that once you have the initial surgery to remove the tumor, if this surgery is possible, would give similar chances of survival post surgery to chemo, i.e. moderate chances either way.

Well done, you've reinvented medical science from the 1930s. You may think chemo hasn't improved anything, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

ohnonotgmail

tashiusclay wrote: »

I can think of plenty of alternative treatments, that once you have the initial surgery to remove the tumor, if this surgery is possible, would give similar chances of survival post surgery to chemo, i.e. moderate chances either way.

Do you not think its odd, that since the 1950s, we've sent people to the moon with commercial space flight soon approaching, we are driving cars so sophisticated that they will soon be able to drive themselves, we can speak face to face with anyone across the globe in an instant with a device hugely powerful relative to the computers and telephone boxes of the 1980s, that fits in our pockets, yet we're still using only a refined version of the early chemotherapy from the 1950s. And these chemotherapys continue to be an exorbitant price, yet the basic principle and structure of it is well over a half a century old. And your chances of beating the cancer with said chemotherapy is close to nil if you're at all advanced with it and not caught in time, as if the cancer doesn't return in remission, you've probably shortened or reduced your quality of life anyway with the damage to your body from the chemo.

You've never questioned that, no? Or can someone enlighten my own view of it please?

You use the word cancer as if it is a singular thing that always responds in the same way. You ignore that we have made massive strides since the 1950's. There are people surviving cancer today that would be long dead if we were still using 1950's medicine.