Cancer Therapy: Read The Evidence and Make Up Your Own Mind

Peer-reviewed evidence is the difference between scientific fact and people trying to cheat dying people out of their every last dollar. For example, certified physicians prescribe chemotherapeutics, instead of say, leech therapy, because they have gone through a rigorous process of clinical trial testing to demonstrate their safety and efficacy, leading to approval by governmental agencies such as Health Canada and the American FDA. Additionally, there is a huge volume of peer-reviewed studies, from many different sources, attesting to efficacy, published in the scientific literature. This evidence is easily accessed through the internet using database search engines such as PubMed. For example, a 5 min search on PubMed yields numerous studies demonstrating the efficacy of chemotherapeutics currently employed in the clinic:

• Phase II study and long-term follow-up of patients treated with taxol for advanced ovarian adenocarcinoma.

• Therapy of advanced colorectal cancer with a combination of 5-fluorouracil, methyl-1,3-cis(2-chlorethyl)-1-nitrosourea, and vincristine.

• Combination chemotherapy for alkylator-resistant ovarian carcinoma

• Phase III study of CCNU, cyclophosphamide, adriamycin, vincristine, and VP-16 in small-cell carcinoma of the lung.

This is just a tiny sampling of the published peer-reviewed work (ie a PubMed search of "cisplatin clinical trial" yields 460 studies). While of course those in the field of oncology have looked at this evidence and come to the overwhelming consensus that chemotherapy is very often efficacious, one need not take their word verbatim. The evidence is out there, each person can read through it, speak with physicians and scientists, ask questions, and ultimately make up their own mind. On the other hand, quackery must be accepted on faith or presumed authority because objective facts, data and statistics are not made available for rigorous analysis.