[goodwithagun]

Over the past three years two very prominent docs in our community were diagnosed with cancer. They were both given the surgery, chemotherapy, radiation option. Both of them chose to treat the pain and live out their shorter lives to the fullest. What does that tell you about their beliefs in the surgery, chemotherapy, radiation treatments?

[aruanan]

Over the past three years two very prominent docs in our community were diagnosed with cancer. They were both given the surgery, chemotherapy, radiation option. Both of them chose to treat the pain and live out their shorter lives to the fullest. What does that tell you about their beliefs in the surgery, chemotherapy, radiation treatments?

It tells me a lot more about your beliefs and an unseemly hastiness to abstract a general principle from an absurdly small sample size than it does anything about the efficacy of treatment modalities or how they related to the two physicians in particular.

For instance, my father was diagnosed late in life with non small cell carcinoma. Surgery was not an option and he elected not to undergo chemotherapy because of his age and because he had had what he considered to have been a long and productive life. At one point he elected to have some successful radiation treatments to shrink the tumor since it was impinging on nerves and was causing excruciating and unremitting pain. But he knew that life was never going to be forever and that his remaining time could be either be relatively pain free or suffering the short term effects of chemotherapy with the end being the same. If this had happened when he was 60 rather than almost 90, his choice would have been different. But that was not a comment on his beliefs about surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, only their relative value at that stage of his life and for the extensiveness of his disease.

[BCW]

That says alot.

I know this is a sensitive subject - as you can see from the poster with the daughter in MD Anderson - but I too watched my father go through all this - and resulted in his death.

Youth has many advantages - and even those doctors are telling this mother that she’s going to live pass 60 - doesn’t mean that cancer has been cured - there are other opinions on treatments and cures - but emotionally charged persons discount all of it when the one they love survives.

I watch top of the line doctors who couldn’t explain to me why my father was dying — so for me - they are people who have been trained in a certain method - and they deploy it - it may work for one and not the other — so it’s a practice - not a cure. My point on diets and fat people are to demonstrate that the US diet is allowing cancer rates to soar - despite the other health factors - cancer is an opportunistic virus - given the right conditions - it flourishes — take that away - and it dies (i.e. Japanese Diet - where they have the lowest cancer rates in the world) When people eat nutrient and organic foods they do not get sick nor do they develop life threatening diseases unless there are other factors that come about. That’s all I’m saying - next you know - people are calling me small minded and full of BS...

We are all entitled to look at all the research. To look away due to an emotional response may hinder progress.