Wednesday, September 28, 2011

DON'T GIVE OUT CANCER DRUGS IF IT'S JUST TO EXTEND LIFE.

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Don't give out cancer drugs if it's just to extend life: Treatment costs can't be justified, say experts
  • National Health Service spends £5bn annually on cancer treatments up from £3bn in 2002
  • Around 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer


Last updated at 2:50 PM on 27th September 2011



Patients with terminal cancer should not be given life-extending drugs, doctors said yesterday.
The treatments give false hope and are too costly for the public purse, they warned.
The group of 37 cancer experts, including British specialist Karol Sikora, claimed a 'culture of excess' had led doctors to 'overtreat, overdiagnose and overpromise'.
Killer: Some 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer - by 2030 it could be 400,000
Campaigners dismissed the report, saying it was wrong to write off cancer victims. 
'I would hardly call this type of treatment futile,' said Rose Woodward, of the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer.
Breast cancer cells: A group of cancer experts said doctors over-diagnose and over-promise
Breast cancer cells: A group of cancer experts said doctors over-diagnose and over-promise
'We have kidney cancer patients on a life-prolonging drug called Sutent who have been told they have only two to three weeks to live but who go on to live for a further five years.'
Around 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer. But by 2030 this is expected to have risen to 400,000 as an ageing population succumbs to the disease.
    The NHS spends well over £5billion annually on cancer treatments, up from £3billion in 2002.
    In the journal Lancet Oncology, the expert group warned many of the costly drugs produced by manufacturers brought little value.
    They said patients were offered treatment even where there was little evidence it was of use. 
    Instead, money should be invested in better scans and tests to determine whether a tumour is beatable, leaving 'difficult decisions' as to who gets treatment.

    'We clearly would want to spare the patient the toxicity and false hope associated with such treatment, as well as the expense,' the experts told the European multidisciplinary cancer congress in Stockholm.
    The doctors point out that many patients do not want to spend their final days undergoing exhausting chemotherapy in hospital and would rather be at home surrounded by loved ones.
    But a spokesman for the Rarer Cancers Foundation said: 'Describing all treatments near the end of life as futile is tantamount to writing patients off.

    The life-prolonging drug called Sutent which is given to kidney cancer patients. Right, Karol Sikora who is one of the 37 experts who warn that the cost of cancer treatments cannot be justified

    'Just because they cannot be "cured" does not mean that we cannot give them valuable treatment, care and support.'

    'Describing all treatments near the end of life as futile is tantamount to writing patients off. Just because they cannot be "cured" does not mean that we cannot give them valuable treatment, care and support'
      RARER CANCERS FOUNDATION
    Ian Beaumont of Bowel Cancer UK said money was not the sole issue.
    'While cancer care can be expensive, it is unjust to put a cost on the lives of patients, especially when modern treatments can often give them precious time with their loved ones and increase their length and quality of life,' he added.
    Only last week a pill for prostate cancer, Abiraterone, was made available in the UK for the first time at a cost of £35,000 a patient.
    Although on average it only extends lives by a few weeks, some patients survive for five years.
    Similarly, Avastin, which is used to treat advanced bowel cancer and some other tumours, was initially thought to extend survival by an average of only six weeks.
    But some patients are still alive five years later and tumours have not returned.
    Barbara Moss was given months to live when she was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer that had spread to her liver in November 2006.
    She paid for Avastin privately and the drug shrank the tumours so much that they were small enough to be removed by surgery. She lived an extra five years.
    Last week Professor Sikora warned that, in future, the best cancer treatments would be the preserve of the rich because they would be too expensive for the Health Service.


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    Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins

    FACTS

    Good Health to all.

    I was posted this article, which may have some provoking thoughts:

    The below is absolutely 100% true and as a doctor I have been telling people this for 15 years now. No one wants to listen. Folks need to wake up. Cancer treatment is about making money. It is a 120 billion dollar a year industry in the United States alone and estimated to be a 600 billion dollar a year industry worldwide. A successful cancer case according to the American Cancer Society and the American College of Oncology and Hematology means that the person survives for 5 years.

    Both the American Cancer Society and the American College of Oncology and Hematology admit that a person is likely to survive cancer for 7 to 10 years even if they do absolutely NOTHING. Of course, only the doctors get those magazines - not you, the cancer patient.

    Alternative medicine's track record of curing cancer is 10 times higher than that of conventional medicine. Note that I say CURE.

    Remember another thing. A TUMOR is just a symptom. It is not the cause of cancer. Science is cause and effect. Remove the cause and the effect disappears. I am in my third battle with cancer right now. I have not done any chemotherapy or radiation or surgery for any of my bouts with cancer. I survived leukemia, I survived Non Hodgkins Lymphoma and now I have Glioblastoma which is supposedly an incurable form of brain cancer. I was given two months to live 5 months ago. I have been using Chinese herbs, high doses of vitamin C, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy and nutritional changes. Yes, at first it got worse. It had metastasized to my lymph nodes, my lungs and my bones.

    As of this week, I am happy to say that there is no evidence now of any cancer in my lymph system or my bones. I had 6 tumors in my lungs, now there are only two. The tumors in my brain have shrunken tremendously. I never did any of their chemo, radiation or surgery.

    Here is a very interesting statistic that you can only have access to by being a doctor. Every year more than 1,000 doctors oncologists (cancer doctors) are diagnosed with cancer. Less than 10% of them choose to do the treatment that they have been giving to their patients. Sort of like the fact that less than 25% of all pediatricians vaccinate their own children because of the fact that the risk of sudden death or serious side effects from the vaccination is higher than the risk of catching the disease one is being vaccinated for. This is not bullshit people - it is truth. Medicine is about money, not about your health and the system traps people, especially the elderly, disabled and poor into a deadly treatment regime that puts them in an early grave. Meanwhile, all the jet set billionaires are flying off to Europe and paying big bucks for alternative treatments and getting cured.

    Does alternative medicine work all the time? No. Of course not. Nothing works all the time. But there is a reason for that. You don't die until it's your time to die. Nothing can make you live longer than that time. However quality of life comes into play. Those cancer patients who use alternative therapies for their cancer, yet still die from the illness, suffer a much higher quality of life. They die able to spend time with their families and even recognize their family members. They don't become emaciated like those who do chemotherapy or radiation do and rarely is a person who goes under the treatment of chemotherapy able to recognize anyone for the last few days of their lives. Their bodies become ravaged to the point that you can't even recognize them either. They suffer at a much much higher rate and they have one let down after another as doctors tell them, ahhh - it's looking good, only to tell them on the next visit it's looking worse, you need more chemo and radiation.

    What is criminal about this is that YOUR DOCTORS KNOW THIS SHIT.

    I took an oath as a physician. I have always followed it. That has certainly not made me successful financially as a doctor because I have consistently refused to go along with conventional medicine's bullshit.

    Read the below carefully. It may indeed make a difference in your life.

    Rick Cantrell, PhD, MD, PsyD

    AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY ('TRY', BEING THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY .