Posted on 09/07/2016 3:33:50 PM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
Chemotherapy warning as hundreds die from cancer-fighting drugs (cancer drugs may kill up to 50 % patients)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/30/chemotherapy-warning-as-hundreds-die-from-cancer-fighting-drugs/
Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 30 August 2016
Patients should be warned about the dangers of chemotherapy after research showed that cancer drugs are killing up to 50 per cent of patients in some hospitals.
For the first time researchers looked at the numbers of cancer patients who died within 30 days of starting chemotherapy, which indicates that the medication is the cause of death, rather than the cancer.
In Milton Keynes the death rate for lung cancer treatment was 50.9 per cent, although it was based on a very small number of patients.
Deaths of lung cancer patients from chemotherapy were also far higher than the national average in Blackpool, Coventry, Derby, South Tyneside and Surrey and Sussex, according to the research.
Similarly, around one in five people who underwent palliative care for breast cancer at Cambridge University Hospitals died from their treatment.
Public Health England (PHE), said it had contacted the hospitals concerned to ask them to review practices.
More than 1,300 breast and lung cancer patients died because of chemotherapy in 2014, the study shows Chemotherapy is toxic for the body because it does not discriminate between healthy and cancerous cells.
They advised doctors to be more careful in selecting patients for treatment where it could do more harm than good.
“I think it’s important to make patients aware that there are potentially life threatening downsides to chemotherapy. And doctors should be more careful about who they treat with chemotherapy.”
Professor David Cameron, Edinburgh Cancer Centre, Western General Hospital, added: “The concern is that some of the patients dying within 30 days of being given chemo probably shouldn’t have been given the chemo.
The research was published in The Lancet Oncology.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The takeaway is obvious - seek the best medical cancer treatment you can afford where they have outstanding success for patient cancer survival rates. Avoid mediocre care at all costs with treatment that may be imminently more deadly than the disease. Your life may depend on it.
I read these results as the NHS trying to gin up evidence so as to justify cutting its budget.
So chemotherapy kills 50% of patients.
Cancer kills about 100% of them.
This said from a guy whose wife went through a stem cell transplant for advancde breast cancer 20 years ago. Was it hell? You bet. But she saw her boys graduate college, one get married, and is still my beautiful bride today.
Stereotactic radio surgery is probably better than chemo.
well..... many chemotherapy drugs are really “poisons” (starting with mustard gas derivatives in WW2) ...designed to attack dividing cells...
but they are still poisons ... the trick is that they attack the rapidly-dividing cancer cells more than regularly-dividing healthy cells.... its a careful game....
sometimes.. SUCCESS!!! happy patient, living patient. sometimes, though...... well, see the article...
A man I know died last week, two days after his first chemo treatment. Yes, he had cancer, but was still very active. He had planned to spend the weekend fishing at the river. His doctors were saying there was every reason to expect a full recovery. He was 46.
Since this is NHS, I wonder what impact the delay in beginning treatment has on this study?
Good post!
The chemo/radiation route is (or can be) very deadly. I know many who said to me on their death-beds, “Die like a man, and trust in God, not in oncologists.”
May God Bless their Eternal Souls...
But don’t try alternative medicine - that could be dangerous.
You nailed it.
This is one more story out there seeking to back up the premise we need someone to look out for us.
Of course it would be the party that cares, the Democrats.
Cancel kills 100% of them. Some many folks don’t consider this.
Doesn’t everyone already know this? Chemothereapy involves infusing poison heavy metals into the patient’s blood. Repeatedly, and on a schedule.
It made me sicker than I have ever been in my life and it very near killed me, but then it saved my life. And here I am.
p.s. The radiation is no party either.
Very glad to hear your wife’s outcome. Fantastic...
Interesting... I have been around for a few years and have watched battle with Cancer and the search for a cure. Billions, trillions? have been spent on research and yet treatment hasn’t changed much in 20/30 years — the two options: chemo and radiation.
Early detection seems to be what has improved longevity but some even now argue that, for example, mammograms are not beneficial.
Where has all of the money gone!
Cancer treatments often involve medications and radiation that is highly toxic to normal cells.The treatments are a balancing act...that balancing being on a knife’s edge.If a particular hospital or health system has a particularly bad record treating cancer then serious self examination is in order.
Stem cell treatment is very different than chemo
Chemo is nasty stuff.
What a blessing!!!
My 2 centavos
We all can relate as The Big C hits us all in some way.
I don’t think this is the place to critique one treatment or the other.
Happy things are working out for your family
Very lovely story! Kudos to you and your wife.
Unfortunately, chemo can cause leukemia. I know of several who died of the cure.
But what to do?
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