Is Chemotherapy Treatment Competitive Versus General Health Improvement?

ByPrimary Researcher

Executive Summary

  • The medical authorities paid off health websites, and cancer centers make a case for chemo, which is most likely to underperform general health improvement.

Introduction

After investigating how much life expectancy is added by being subjected to chemotherapy, a question arose about whether this extra life expectancy must be better than the average additional life expectancy from general health improvement.

Let us begin by reviewing studies on the expected life extension from chemotherapy.

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Study #1: Oncology Drugs Average Less Than Three Months Improvement in Increased Lifespan

A 2017 paper published in JAMA Oncology presented some stunning conclusions. Of sixty-two new oncology drugs approved between 2003 and 2013, only 43 percent offered a survival benefit of three months or longer, 11 percent offered a survival benefit of less than three months, 15 percent had an unknown survival benefit, and 30 percent offered no survival benefit at all.

Study #2: 2.1 Months of Extended Life From Chemotherapy Drugs

Most of these drugs only add a few months to cancer patients’ lives, as explained in the quotation from Up, Up and Not Going Away: Cancer Drug Prices.

According to Hertler, 71 consecutive FDA approvals of drugs to treat solid tumors increased survival an average of just 2.1 months, and 70% of the drugs approved over the past two decades had no effect on improving overall survival.

The Problem With How Chemotherapy Expected Life Extension is Analyzed

Chemotherapy is never compared to other changes that a person could make. So it is assumed in analyses that I have seen that a patient either does chemotherapy or does nothing. This demonstrates how everything is set up by those that cover the topic of favor chemotherapy.

How It Is Not Difficult to Beat Chemotherapy Outcomes

Chemotherapy has the following characteristics.

  1. It is costly.
  2. It has significant side effects/adverse reactions that dramatically reduce the patient’s quality of life.
  3. It provides minimal average life extension; no evidence exists that chemotherapy cures cancer. Most chemotherapy drugs that get FDA approval don’t even have improved patient outcomes.

These characteristics combine to mean that chemotherapy is not a competitive treatment option. And something that the medical establishment is