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Alternative cancer therapies linked to reduced survival
Cancer patients who use alternative therapies may be more likely to shun conventional treatments and risk their chances of survival, research suggests.
A study of 1,290 patients in the US found people who received such therapies often refused life-saving care such as chemotherapy or surgery.
Fewer of them survived five years after starting treatment compared to those on standard care, researchers found.
Experts urged patients not to ditch proven cancer medicines.
Tell that to Steve Jobs.
Complementary Medicine, Refusal of Conventional Cancer Therapy, and Survival Among Patients With Curable Cancers (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.2487) (DX)
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Alternative Therapies for Cancer Patients Reduce Survival Rates
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:28AM (4 children)
musical version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DHhGuXCuDb1U [youtube.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 22 2018, @12:58PM (2 children)
Exactly.
There's two relevant dimensions to these statistics: median survival rate (which is what TFA refers to), and confidence interval, which I suspect TFA is neglecting.
If there ever comes a day where I am diagnosed with a well known cancer with a well known treatment with a well known median survival rate of 17%, 95% CI +/- 5%, and a new experimental treatment with a handful of cases, basically unknown survival rate (because 5 years hasn't passed since patient 1), but a rational explanation why this treatment might be much better for me - I think I would try the experimental treatment rather than play Russian Roulette with 5/6 chambers full.
Even if the median survival rate of the new treatment is only 10% for the entire experimental group, they may be able to tease apart risk factors for sub-populations in that group and going forward identify sub-populations with expected survival rates much better than the traditional treatment. Early days you may not be easily classified as to whether or not the new treatment is beneficial for your case, but later on those sub-populations who it works better for can benefit and those that it is not indicated for hopefully will have other investigational avenues as options to the 5/6 chance of death offered by the "best available" treatment.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @07:33PM (1 child)
I thought similar until I did medical research and realized that almost all these numbers are BS in someway. At best, they all refer to some really specific situation thats not you. At worst, its just whatever numbers met a threshold for a grad student to get published and thus move on.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 22 2018, @09:30PM
All too true, however - in oncology, there are riduculously high numbers of tracked and documented, some treatments go back 50+ years (including radiation and chemo), so they actually do have some scientific basis for the numbers.
On the other hand, I had (still have a bit of) a schwannoma which the first MD mostly extracted before he identified/classified it. It grew back to about 30% of its previous size, I had moved 1000 miles away and so went to visit another MD who cheerfully informed me that "I want to get that whole thing out, soon as possible, it can spread turning into a string of beads, I have an opening in surgery next Tuesday you can schedule as you leave...." Umm... pass? I did a quick Google search and, indeed, in the first page there was a reference to a Japanese man who had a schwannoma on a nerve between his ribs and it did indeed present as a string of beads. However, no other reference to schwannoma out of the dozens I checked referenced a string of beads presentation, and even searches for schwannoma string of beads only turned up the one reference at the time - though I see a few more today, but the overwhelming body of reference was much less: big and scary, schedule surgery for extraction immediately and much more: if it is not a problem presently, wait and see. A few years later I visited another MD and that was her first advice, and now 15+ years later it would seem that she and I were correct: surgery not required.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 22 2018, @01:48PM
By the way, Minchin's rant is awesome, and I agree with 99% of what he says, and disagree with 90% of what he has Storm say (discrepancy mostly because he doesn't let Storm talk much), but - cherry picking some points of disagreement:
Proponents of Science often do take their Science on what amounts to Faith, and when pressed on the point, much like practitioners of Faith they simply scream "SCIENCE!!!" louder rather than actually examining what they are asserting. Bad science doesn't go around labeling itself as such, but there is an awful lot of it out there that is little different from faith, and in until the majority of the public can discern bad science from good, Storm's point that science is little different from faith rings true for the majority which cannot.
The final argument about "I get to live twice as long" is radically oversimplifying a complex assertion. In absolute terms, some people in the deep past also managed to live to 100+ years of age, statistically we're doing much better now, but the spread still runs from infant mortality through 100+ years. Another point is the extremely long lived people of today in places like Okinawa and the mountains [chicagotribune.com] or even faithful practitioners of the Mediterranean diet. It's not the pinnacles of modern science that's giving them their longer lives. It's not magic, either, but science is clearly still playing catch-up - what has been happening more or less naturally in those cases is still outperforming the best modern science has to offer the rest of the world in terms of longevity.
Rather than post a third reply, I'll waffle back to the cancer treatment statistic for a moment and also throw in the dimension of quality of life - if there's a traditional treatment with a 60% survival rate but a really shitty quality of life for 2 years during treatment and followup (and perhaps even accelerated mortality for the losers), or an alternative with a 45% survival rate and minimal impact on quality of life during treatment, which would do you choose? (Assuming similar confidence intervals for both...) Steve Jobs is a popular target for his cancer treatment choices, but I believe he opted for the higher quality of life option first - lost the gamble, but it may have still been a very rational gamble to take.
🌻🌻 [google.com]