Chemotherapy may make things worse.

[Prunepicker]

Something to think about. There's a video for those who can't or won't
read the article, but you have to go to the article.

From Fox Insider
A shocking new study suggests that chemotherapy, the most common
treatment for cancer, might actually make some cancers worse.

Dr. David Samadi commented on the study on Fox and Friends. He
stressed, “This is not a message that your chemotherapy is not working
for you.”

He explained, “When you give systemic chemo, you are giving it to the
entire body. There are healthy cells that when they get affected by
chemo, they can send some signals, some proteins, that are going to
make the cancer cells grow, and they can cause recurrence.”

“What it tells us is that in the future if we can stop those proteins, this
chemotherapy would be more effective,” he said.

[HewenttoJared]

The net effect of the chemo is still generally good. This finding will be abused by alt med : /

[betts]

The net effect of the chemo is still generally good. This finding will be abused by alt med : /

And my son would say, "That's natural selection at work."

Seriously, chemotherapy saves millions of lives a year, and many of those saved are children. Of course it would be better if we had drugs that work only on cancer cells, and researchers are working hard to find drugs like that, but until we do, chemotherapy is the best option for many kinds of cancer. Some are fairly unresponsive to current therapy, though, and perhaps we should be thinking more about quality of life when people are diagnosed with particular types of cancer that are generally not very responsive to existing drugs.

[Midtowner]

I'd rather not accept medical conclusions presented by Fox News.

[RadicalModerate]

I have to say that chemotherapy seems to have worked wonders for my grandson . . .
(not discounting the premise of the OP, just sayin' . . .)
Of course, it could have really been on account of all the prayers.

[Larry OKC]

Of the 10 or so friends/family members that have had various forms of cancer that had chemo, only 1 survived much longer than the treatment (she has been cancer free for 10 years now). All of the others the chemo made things worse and died within a year. My Dad was the most recent and he died within 2 weeks of his first round of chmeo and radiation the completion of the radiation treatments on his leg. He had 4 cancers and was in Stage 4 of the kidney & lymphonic (?) one. So the chemo may not have hastened the end but it din't seem to stop it either. In the end, make an informed choice and do what is best for you.

[PennyQuilts]

I have no idea what to think about this but the whole notion makes me shudder for families faced with the awful prospect of choosing a viable medical treatment. It isn't as if it wasn't already terrifying. When my mother was dying of cancer, she opted to skip chemo on advice of her physician because it wouldn't help her by that point. I remember thinking it would be even harder to be faced with having to make medical decisions where the "wrong" one might cost a precious life. This sort of news is going to cause a lot of grieving families a new wave of pain and doubt. I just hope that they can take this information and tweak treatment in the future.

As for the Fox news jab - The news was all over:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_1...arby-proteins/
http://www.healthcare-today.co.uk/ne...-bigger/22467/
http://www.isciencetimes.com/article...resistance.htm
http://health.usnews.com/health-news...hts-aug-6-2012
Google for more if you're interested in making sure you aren't fooled by fox. This latest discounting of anything by Fox is a belly laugh.