The treatment of choice for most advanced organ cancers is chemotherapy, or a combination of the triad: surgery, followed by radiation, followed by chemotherapy. Billions of dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling and Indian Rupees or in any other currency are spent every year, while the recipients undergo untold miseries. The question then arises, is this money well spent? And do the end results justify the patients’ suffering that these treatments inevitably cause?If we were to believe the average oncologist in private practice or at a cancer ward in a hospital anywhere the world over, the answer is an almost unqualified, yes – to both questions. There thus appears to be an overwhelming consensus among scientists. Everyone seems to agree on the usefulness of chemotherapy. But, is this agreement statistically verifiable? Are there comprehensive statistics? And what do they reveal? For example, that chemotherapy will provably exert a positive influence on survival and/or quality of life in patients who suffer from advanced stages of the different major organ cancers? Or is the belief in chemotherapy just that – an unfounded belief?
Unfortunately, the statistics confirm the doubters. According to the most meticulously researched statistical data available chemotherapy is totally ineffective when used to treat advanced organ cancers. In which case its efficacy is, indeed, merely a belief.
The stubborn belief in utter failures is the stuff for good comedy movies, yet in the context of the human suffering caused by cancer to think in terms of the comical would be at best insensitive. In this case the findings that we are bringing up are not comical. Rather, they constitute confusing and sad news, especially for the people afflicted with organ tumors. What should they believe now? In what therapies can they put their hopes?
From the viewpoint of allopathic medicine there are none besides surgery, radiation and chemo. Whereas according to the research by Prof. Ulrich Abel of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, we likewise should not unqualifiedly believe in chemotherapy as if it were a magic wand. On the contrary, we actually need to be cautious. An abstract of his discoveries published by the cancer research institute at the same university states rather bluntly:“…As a result of the analysis and the comments received from hundreds of oncologists in a reply to a request for information, the following facts can be noted. Apart from lung cancer, in particular small-cell lung cancer, there is no direct evidence that chemotherapy prolongs survival in patients with advanced carcinoma. Except for ovarian cancer, available indirect evidence rather supports the absence of a positive effect… Many oncologists take it for granted that response to therapy prolongs survival, an opinion which is based on a fallacy and which is not supported by clinical studies… With few exceptions, there is no good scientific basis for the application of chemotherapy in symptom-free patients with advanced epithelial malignancy.”
Professor Abel (an epidemiologist with an additional Ph.D. in mathematics) published these findings in the monograph Chemotherapy of Advanced Epithelial Cancer in 1990. To date the sheer volume of data collected for his research has not been matched by any other study. He devoted an entire year to analyzing the input from several thousand studies worldwide. In addition, he personally wrote to 350 oncologist and cancer treatment centers and asked for their so far unpublished data. It is on the basis of such thorough collection that he had to draw some of the conclusions that were less than enthusiastically received by his peers.
In an especially dramatic table, Dr. Abel displays the results of chemotherapy in patients with various types of cancers, as compared to untreated patients. This table shows:
1) In Colorectal Cancer: no evidence that survival is improved.
2) Gastric Cancer: no clear evidence of improvement.
3) Pancreatic Cancer: study completely negative. Longer survival in control (untreated) group.
4) Bladder Cancer: no clinical trial done.
5) Breast Cancer: no direct evidence that chemotherapy prolongs survival;
6) Ovarian Cancer: no direct evidence.
7) Cervix and Uterus: no improved survival.
8) Head and Neck: no survival benefit but occasional shrinkage of tumors.
In other words, Professor Abel stated that whereas chemotherapy was effective in lymphomas, in leukemia, as well as in certain types of cancer of the testicles, according to the statistics available it remained totally ineffective in all other forms of advanced organ cancer.
Such was the state of affairs in1990, when the findings were introduced at an international gathering of oncologists in Hamburg, Germany, where the English language translation of the book was launched.
Now one might think that the situation will definitely be different as twenty years have passed since then, and new and more refined cytotoxic agents have been introduced. And indeed the claim is that these new drugs are better and produce fewer and less unpleasant side effects, which made one German oncologist state: “People don’t vomit any more which is why I can now have wall-to-wall carpeting in my practice rooms”.
A certain decrease in side effects caused by these newer drugs is unquestionably true. But are they any more effective than their older cousins?
“No, they are not”, concludes Joerg Blech medical editor at the magazine Der Spiegel in an article published on October 4th, 2004. Before writing his piece, Blech consulted Professor Abel’s updated data and many other sources available in Germany at that time. He also interviewed physicians at the most prestigious university polyclinics. The conclusion shared by most of these specialists when speaking from experience with patients suffering from advanced organ cancer: cytotoxic infusions continue to be administered in yearly increasing numbers, in the hope that they might do something, even though statistics suggest otherwise.
According to Professor Dieter Hoelzl at the Grosshadern cancer center in Munich, the statistics are downright depressing: whereas for the period of 1978 to 1986 the survival rate for patients with metastatic breast cancer had been 24 months, for the period of 1994 to 2002 this rate had shrunk to 22 months. In Blech’s article Hoelzl states that the decrease in the survival for the more recent period may have actually been caused by the more aggressive use of modern forms of chemotherapy. The statistics for cancer of the prostate, of the lungs and of the colon are not more encouraging. When the more recent data are compared with the older data, no or only a slight increase in the survival rate can be found.
This should give reason to pause, and consider alternatives.
As an aside, the expenditure for cytotoxic (chemotherapy) drugs practically tripled between 1996 and 2004: from 5.9 billion dollars in 1996 to 16.11 billion dollars in 2004! Today’s figures will again be much higher.