In addition, the authors stated that “where assumptions were made, we erred on the side of over-estimating the benefit.” The researchers did not evaluate the quality of the studies or their funding sources, even though clinical trials may be biased toward new drugs when pharmaceutical companies are the funders of the trials. It is plausible, then, to conclude that chemotherapy provides almost no overall benefit. While some people with uncommon cancers (such as some types of leukemia, or Hodgkin’s disease) do benefit from chemotherapy, others are harmed by their treatments.

Can You Trust the Trials?

Believing in the efficacy of chemotherapy requires trust in the integrity of clinical trials, and that trust might be misplaced. The BBC reported in early 2006, for example, that a Norwegian scientist entirely fabricated the names of patients and their case histories for a cancer study he published in the prestigious journal The Lancet in October 2005.

In 1994 a Canadian doctor, Roger Poisson, was found to have falsified data on some breast cancer patients to allow their enrollment in a cancer trial. It was eventually revealed that in 13 additional clinical trials, Poisson had falsified data in a total of 115 instances. This fraudulence may be at least partly explained by the drug company practice of making payments to doctors for each patient enrolled in a clinical trial.

Prevention Trumps Treatment

The best way to avoid cancer therapy is to avoid cancer through prevention. True prevention includes drinking pure water and eating fresh, organic and raw foods. Since we are increasingly surrounded by polluted air, water, and soil, cancer prevention must include making our environment cleaner. Supporting an environmental group or lobbying your local politicians to take the health impacts of environmental degradation seriously are important steps.

Be skeptical of the cancer industry’s prevention-as-detection message. Both mammograms for breast cancer and PSA screening (and resultant biopsies) for prostate cancer are questionable: They raise the number of unnecessary interventions and, in the case of mammograms, may themselves contribute to cancer risk. Neither mammograms nor PSA tests (or digital rectal exams) have been categorically proven to reduce cancer mortality in a large population.

Choose Your Path

When cancer does strike, there are no easy decisions. You may decide to follow the mainstream route of radiation and chemotherapy, using nutrition and alternative treatments to mitigate the symptoms. Be skeptical of offers to participate in a clinical trial, particularly preliminary Phase I and II trials; they are not designed to test the full protocol of the drug. For every major claim made, request the scientific paper that supports it.

A lonelier road is to investigate alternative treatments yourself. In some cases, obtaining these treatments may mean leaving Canada, which can be expensive.

The Canadian medical system funds many unsafe and ineffective conventional medical treatments because they are popular with doctors. Alternative treatments, though they can be safe and effective, are unfunded or even outlawed because they threaten the power and prestige of the medical establishment.

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

Source: alive #289, November 2006