Nov 2011 http://gaia-health.com
According to a new study by Macmillan Cancer Support, people with cancer diagnoses are now living 6 times longer than they were 40 years ago. That’s what it claims, but that’s not what it shows. A fatal flaw renders the study meaningless. All survival rates are based on the date of detection, and absolutely no evidence is given to demonstrate that people actually live longer with cancer.
Let’s imagine two people, Jan and Jane, who develop breast cancer on the same
day. Jan gets mammograms every year, and hers is discovered one year after it’s
found, so she gets treated with chemotherapy and lives for 6 years. Jane, on the
other hand, doesn’t bother with mammograms and goes along blissfully unaware,
until she discovers a lump 5 years later. She decides that the treatment isn’t
worth having and lives another 2 years.
Jan dies 7 years after her cancer started. Jane also dies 7 years after her cancer started. However, in this study, Jan’s survival time is counted as 6 years, while Jane’s is counted as only 2 years. Neither outlasted the other—and Jan’s chemotherapy, not to mention the constant awareness and stress of knowing she has cancer, has probably decreased the quality of her life enormously. Jane, on the other hand, was fine for most of that time. Counting survival from time of diagnosis is meaningless. Yet, that’s precisely what the Macmillan study did. In a time when early cancer detection is heavily promoted, it should come as no surprise that people live longer from the time of detection. There is, though, no reason to believe that this translates into longer life in most cases—and the study itself points out that the ongoing effects of cancer treatment can be devastating, severely damaging the quality of life. (There are a couple of exceptions. Lymph cancer survival rates, in particular, have improved dramatically. They are, though, very much the exception.) Several types of cancer were investigated to examine life expectancies after diagnosis. The cancers for which there are early diagnostic tests are the ones that appear to have longer survival rates. No Breast Cancer Results After 1981?The study is suspiciously silent on what happened to lifespans of women with breast cancer after 1981. A host of new drugs and classes of drugs have been added to the chemotherapy mix in that time, yet the Macmillan study has absolutely nothing to say about it! The study shows breast cancer survival rates skyrocketing between 1971 and 1980, but then goes completely silent after that. It was in the 1970s that mammograms became common. Life expectancy from time of diagnosis increases from about 5½ to about 9½ years. They offer nothing after that, and no explanation for why. Could it be that survival rates have diminished? Macmillan points out that there has been little or no improvement in lifespans of people diagnosed with brain, lung, and pancreatic cancers. Interestingly enough, these cancers are most often diagnosed by symptoms, not routine tests. Finally, people who might have naturally survived cancer through the body’s ability to self-heal, never knowing that they even had it, may now be dying of the extremely toxic treatments pressed on them by the cancerous cancer treatment industry.
An immense amount of profit made on those nonexistent extra years of life. The Macmillan study does not demonstrate that lives are lengthened by early diagnosis. It does, though, clarify that the effects of treatment can damage the quality of life that’s left:
Cancer treatment is the toughest fight many people will face and patients are often left with long-term health and emotional problems long after their treatment ended. Of those colorectal cancer patients still alive between five and seven years after their diagnosis, for example, two thirds (64%) will have an ongoing health problem.
That is, the presumption of extended life is largely mythical, though highly promoted, and it’s bought through treatments that often destroy the quality of life. Surely, Macmillan, a charity that focuses on supporting people through the misery of cancer, must know that this study is junk science. So, why would they produce it? The existence of most medical charities is dependent on the medical treatments people receive. It’s what creates the need for the charities, and it’s what keeps the money rolling into them. The people who run them rely on them for their incomes. Though the pay scales are small in comparison to those of executives in American charities, they are still part of the medical industry. Their jobs would cease to exist if the need for their services disappeared. The fact that a study was produced by a charity is no surety that it’s legitimate. They are still part of the same medical industry that profits directly from its treatments, not from people’s health. It’s sad, but truly, what else could possibly explain producing such an absurdly nonsensical study?