Shaving heads for cancer is an ironic ritual mimicking a side effect of cancer treatment, not a symptom of the disease. It raises money to make mainstream treatments easier to obtain, not to make cancer harder to get. It sends a strong message that these treatments are effective.

Evidence published by cancer scientists in medical journals is beginning to question this message.

Despite this evidence initiatives like the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control work from the assumption that existing chemotherapy treatments, albeit imperfect, are effective and will continue to improve. They claim, like many others before them, that “new and better tolerated [chemotherapy] treatments have an impact on survival...for a number of common cancers.”

Chemotherapy uses cytotoxic (cell-killing) drugs to target cell division or other subtly different characteristics of cancer cells, hoping to destroy the cancer without killing or permanently disabling the patient.

War Games

Chemotherapy began with the chemical warfare agent known as mustard gas, first used in World War I. When scientists discovered its ability to destroy white blood cells, it was used in early attempts to control lymphoma, a cancerous proliferation of white blood cells. The chemical approach to cancer treatment evolved rapidly after World War II, producing many of the 76 oncology drugs now approved, all based on the theory that cancer treatment must be a war between the doctor and the cancer cells, with the patient as the battlefield.

The "War on Cancer," or National Cancer Act, signed into US law by President Nixon in 1971, dramatically increased research for the types of cancer treatment that dominate today. Other industrialized nations, including Canada, fell in line as US cancer money spilled over the borders in international clinical trials.

Cancer as Infection

Long-time cancer researcher and author of The War on Cancer: An Anatomy of Failure, A Blueprint for the Future (Springer, 2005), Guy Faguet, notes that the conventional approach to cancer treatment is based on the model of infection. “The notion [is] that cancer, like invading bacteria, is inherently different from the host and must be thoroughly eradicated in order to prevent recurrences and death,” writes Faguet. Just as medicine tries to destroy all germs, it is believed that every cancer cell must be destroyed, even though cancer cells are derived from our own cells and targeting them can be difficult. The thought of living with cancers when they are slow growing (as many breast and prostate cancers are, for example), is scorned by medical practitioners. Their emphasis is on expensive, patented, and highly toxic cell-killing chemicals.

Response, Not Cure

Even the measurement of progress in cancer treatments emphasizes the tumour, not the patient. A response to conventional cancer treatment means only that the tumour is shrinking. Allopathic treatment decreases the quality of the patient’s life in the short term, offering hope (often in vain) that the diminished growth of the cancer will improve lifespan.

In 1948 experiments with chemotherapy for lung cancer resulted in a response in about half of the patients, but a median lifespan of only five months. Fifty years later a large trial reported a smaller response rate (16 to 21 percent) with four different chemotherapy regimens but a slightly longer median survival of about eight months. This illustrates both the lack of correlation between response and survival rates and the minimal progress that has occurred in half a century.

In high dose chemotherapy, a woman’s bone marrow (the source of immune system white blood cells) is severely depleted, always requiring a marrow transplant for survival. However, recent studies showed no benefit from this technique.

Three Australian cancer researchers recently undertook a medical literature search of studies reporting a five-year survival rate in cancer patients that was solely attributable to chemotherapy treatment. They concluded that chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival; this treatment is responsible for just over 2 percent of cancer patients surviving for five years in both the US and Australia.

David Crowe is a Calgary-based environmentalist and medical science critic. Contact him through editorial@alive.com.

Source: alive #289, November 2006