Is chemotherapy efficient? · 1:31pm Oct 17th, 2013
Who hasn't asked this question before? I mean, it's not like we medical doctors actually study or anything, right? We just like to do what we want and roll with it. If someone bothers to ask a question, we can just slap them in the face and scream "ARE YOU DOUBTING SCIENCE?!"
So, yeah, is it efficient? Because everyone you know who has cancer most likely died. So it doesn't really seem like it. Are these doctors really only out for your money, caring little for your wellbeing? In the US of A, it does seem so, but I digress.
Many studies are agree that a successful dose of chemotherapy kills 90% of all tumor cells. Only 10% of all tumor cells surviving seems to be a good thing. But what is 10% of 10¹¹?
Let's calculate!
100,000,000,000 = 100%
90,000,000,000 = 90%
10,000,000,000 = 10%
So we're left with the following: Out of the 10¹¹ cells, 10¹⁰ survived. So, yes, although chemotherapy is highly efficient (some drugs going as far as having a 99% tumor cell-killing potential), it is still not enough in some cases.
Now a bit of a fun fact: Tumors are like some trees. They secret tumor growth inhibiting factors in order to inhibit other tumors from growing. Pretty neat, eh? This is why, when surgically removed, the other tumors (metastasis) will start growing. Once a person has been diagnosed with a metastasis, the treatment immediately changes from "aggressive" to "palliative", meaning that no matter what we do, the chance for cure is very, very small. So we lower the doses to "keep the tumor slightly less active" in order to try to improve his/her life quality in his/her last days/weeks/months/years.
Oh, yes, if you were confused about my blog in Humor Disorders, I altered it a bit and added a graph for a slightly easier understanding. Check it out.
I absolutely love reading these. I barely understand any of it, but it's still extremely informative for someone who would never learn these things any other way.
Learning things on a fanfiction site. What has my life come to?
Well untill we find an outright cure for cancer it's one of the best options we've got.
1427610 But this is a cure. We already have the cure for cancer. This is it!
1427612 I don't think of this as a cure, I think of it as a treatment with some nasty side effects. We are still looking for better ways, and we may have found an answer...in the common cold. Some scientists are working to make cold germs that only infect and destroy cancerous cells. So instead of getting cancer, you'd get a cold. Still in the early testing stages, but it looks promising.
1427629
Like every single treatment for every other condition ever, then?
Yes, but the cure is already here. We are merely perfecting it. But it is already here!
I don't want to sound like an asshole, but I'd love to read at least three scientific essays, written by third parties with no relation to each other and the project, before even acknowledging this as a possibility.
1427637 Early stages. It'll be at least ten years before we get to human trials, if it proves viable. But it seems to be successful so far with rats during initial testing.
If everything goes perfect, then we might see this in 20-30 years down the line as a cancer treatment.
1428221 Hopefully so, but I don't expect a miracle to happen. With no scientific articles to analyze, I'll just count this as an "internet thing" and shrug until real evidence appears.
1428225 Didn't read about it on the Internet, it was in my local paper a few months ago. I'm not a medical professional, so I don't know if any journals about it have been published yet, or if it's still under testing.
And I for one woud welcome a miracle, but I'm not going to demand one. Even if it just becomes the "new chemo" with a similar success rate, the projections showing it to have dramatically reduced side effects would be a very welcome step in the right direction.
1429299 If I may, I know you aren't a medical professional, but it's still better to take a look at the source and read it than reading something someone wrote about the source. Unless that something is a careful, rigorous, multi-center metanalysis (the best kind of research there is).
It has been published, yes, because journalists would need the source to go for it and draw conclusions, as they are not experts in the field. However, this does bring an interesting point: sensationalism. I'm not saying that this is the case (only it is; read on), mind you, but anything stating "Cure for cancer: nearer than ever before" is going to draw a lot of attention, even if the study written about was poorly done. Again, I don't mean to be an arse, but I wouldn't get my hopes up just yet. Progress has been made, yes, but oncology isn't like infectology. We aren't dealing with a different pathogen that came from outside our body, no. We are talking about a group of our own cells that multiply repeatedly. This ties with the point you brought up in your second paragraph.
The side effects will most likely continue, regardless of which therapy you use (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, molecular-target drugs or hormones). Why? Because cancerous cells are our own cells. On most cases, the mutations that happen inside the cell's nucleus don't bring a change in outer-membrane receptors and auto-antigens. No. Externally, the cell is recognized as just another cell in your body.
Inside the nucleus, the cell has lost the part of its genome that stops the cell from duplicating. This causes said cell to be unable to repair its own DNA after a mitotic process. Meaning that with each duplication, more and more DNA damage will occur. Still, the external auto-antigens of the cell have a chance of remaining the same, meaning that this cell is, immunologically, the exact same healthy cell elsewhere in your body.
To help even further, let me show you the above-stated therapeutics and how they work:
1) Surgery: pretty straightforward. Remove the damned thing. This form of therapy is useless if the tumor: is liquid; is too small; has metastasized; is too numerous.
2) Chemotherapy: it penetrates all cells in our bodies and damage the DNA. Normal cells have some time to repair the genetic material, but some fast-replicating cells (such as the cancerous ones or ones from skin, hair and mucosae) don't stop that long to repair DNA, meaning that, in the long run, they'll have irreparable damage in their genome, causing them to be unable to synthesize proper proteins and thus the cells will die.
3) Radiotherapy: same as chemotherapy, but the aggression towards genetic material is meant through radiation and not a chemical reaction.
4) Molecular-target drugs: these penetrate the cells and, from the inside, actively work to stop the intracellular signals that would stimulate cell replication. This drug is useless if the alteration in DNA causes a self-stimulating cell, since it won't need said intracellular signals to replicate.
5) Hormonal therapy: these bind to external receptors in the cells and actively work to stop the extracellular signals that would stimulate cell replication. This drug is useless if the alteration in DNA causes a self-stimulating cell, since it won't need said intracellular signals to replicate. This drug is also useless if the mutation has destroyed all hormonal receptors on the surface of the cell.
Mind, I'm simplifying loads of things because you aren't an expert on the stuff (and, honestly, I don't expect you to be {not being condescending here}). But as you could see, we have some highly specific drugs that have a very high efficiency in killing tumoral cells. Still, since tumors are composed of our own cells, only slightly different, it is no wonder that we have such side-effects to these therapies.
Such "cure", a genetically altered virus that only targets cancerous cells, does seem from afar a panacea, but believe me, it isn't. As explained above many times: tumors are composed of our own cells, meaning that the virus would infect our cells as well.
Now here's where I think your journal has been a little too sensationalist and omitted knowledge: such virus would only target cancerous cells, leaving our healthy ones safe, if said cells have different receptors on their surface when compared to our own cells. But this only means that such "cure" is only going to work for a few specific kinds of tumors.
Don't get me wrong; any improvement is a very much welcomed improvement. But this being advertised isn't a cure for all cancer. Is a cure for some kinds of cancers.