Chemotherapy - Is your doctor “playing” with your life?
From Breast Cancer- When Chemotherapy Becomes A Useless And Dangerous Poisonous Cure by Chris Teo, PHD
It is most shocking to learn that at a closed session of a select group of people during the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting held in Chicago (2007), Dr. Dennis Slamon, chief of Oncology at the University of California at Los Angeles, revealed that his research had indicated that anthracycline chemo-drugs such as Andriamycin, provide no benefit whatever to about 92% of breast cancer patients. Dr. Slamon’s research has shown that the most widely used chemo-drug may not benefit most women. To find no benefit is one thing but pay for and receive a drug that causes severe toxicities is another thing. These anthracyclines are notoriously dangerous because they are known to cause damage to the heart or may even cause secondary cancer like leukemia.
The National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) – a grass roots advocacy group in the US released this statement (May 2007) in its website: “NBCC urges the oncology community to reassess the use of anthracycline-based chemotherapy in the adjuvant treatment of breast cancer.”
The Coalition urged that it “may very well be the time to do away with anthracycline drugs”. Such drugs only benefit a very small percentage — only 8% — of breast patients whose breast cancer co-amplify the Her2 and TopoII genes. This point is worth repeating: only patients tested positive for Her2 and TopoII benefit from anthracycline-base chemotherapy.
Is the medical community willing to change its ways of treating breast cancer in the light of this research evidence? The NBCC said: “while the medical oncology community is quick to embrace additional treatments, it is extremely cautions toward change in the other direction even when the evidence warrants it. Meanwhile, women with breast cancer are subject to complex regimens of toxic and expensive treatments that they simply may not need.”
Comment
The jury is out. The choice is clear. Women have a choice. Make that choice wisely. Learn for yourself if the chemotherapy that is offered to you is going to benefit you or it is just an expensive, useless and dangerous poisonous cure that you do not need.
My name is margret richardson and I was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 yrs. ago, oct.98. I had a lumpectomy and radiation. I refused the chemo, they told me it had a 15% chance of helping me, I really wanted some better assurance than that. The radiation had a 95% chance that I would never have it again in that breast, 3 yrs. later I had it in that breast again, so I don,t trust much. I had my breast removed and 3 months later I had more on the same spot. I refused radiation that time because they could not tell me why it didn,t work the first time. Also they had told me that once you had radiation, you could never have it again in the same place. I found out in 2005 that it had spread to my bones, I was put on herceptin and Zometa for my bones. The herceptin has helped with the cancer and the Zometa has helped with the bones.Now I am concerned the herceptin is damaging my heart. I am so scared of those drugs and scared to get off them.
I take lots of supplements and would love any advice out there
Comment by margret richardson — October 4, 2008 @ 9:01 pm