Chemotherapy can backfire and worsen cancer, a new study has found

Global Post ^ | 05 AUG 2012 | Amy Silverstein

[BCW]

Despite its life-saving qualities, chemotherapy has long had a nasty reputation, known as a necessary poison for people suffering from cancer. But in some cases, chemotherapy is so damaging that it may even backfire and make the cancer worse, a new study has found. The study, published in Nature Medicine, found that chemotherapy causes damage to healthy cells, which triggers them secrete a protein that actually sustains tumor growth, Cancer UK reported.

[BCW]

Uhm...a chemical injected into the body - would cause damage...who'd a thought?

[Blennos]

Better link: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120805/chemotherapy-can-backfire-and-cause-cancer-new-study-has-found

[aruanan]

Uhm...a chemical injected into the body - would cause damage...who'd a thought?

A mind unable to process simple concepts and information, who's surprised?

The purpose of chemotherapy is to use the cancer cell's relatively rapid proliferation and impaired cell repair mechanisms against it. Generally it's been found that they die more rapidly than non-cancerous cells and recover less easily. The same is true for radiation. The whole point of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation is to knock out enough of the cancer cells that recovery can take place. In the current news, it has been discovered that the response of healthy cells is to produce a protein to protect themselves. This protein can diffuse to the deranged cancer cell and make it more resistant to further insult from a chemical agent. Does this mean that chemotherapy is bad or ineffective? No, it just means that the situation is more complicated than previously understood and it also provides a basis for designing something to interfere with the cancer cells' benefitting from the response of surrounding healthy cells.

You have a very weird view of chemicals anyway. That appears to be a large part of your problem.

Our bodies are chemical machines that run on chemicals. They also produce chemical by-products that are very toxic. The body has ways of dealing with them that are more or less effective. There are chemicals in food that we don't need for purposes of nutrition. The body has ways of dealing with them that are more or less effective. Sometimes other chemicals are added to food and packaging to keep "food" from spoiling. Why? Because the danger posed by those chemicals is minuscule compared to the danger posed oxidation or by mold and bacteria the growth of which those chemicals are designed to retard.

In a day in which we have food of unparalleled quantity, quality, and availability in a way never before seen in history to the point that people are developing life-threatening conditions from too much of a good thing and in a day when analytical chemistry has become so advanced that parts per trillion can be detected of one chemical, it's inevitable that at least two things will occur:

1. Someone will start demanding governmental regulation to reduce your intake of food to prevent you from developing diseases arising from hypernutrition.

2. Someone will start pointing out the presence of naturally-occurring chemicals in food that, in sufficient quantity, could sicken or kill you and demand that something be done to regulate them.

Sort of like what they did back in the 1960s and 70s when people eager to get their hands on the levers of government power and remake the United States into their vision of a socialist utopia warned that we were being exposed to an ocean of man-made carcinogens against which we had no defenses (but them and their regulatory urges) and that by the 1990s there would be a cancer epidemic if we didn't regulate immediately and regulate well through something like, well, the EPA and other agencies so that we could then be free of man-made chemicals and live in peace and healthful harmony with benign nature.

They used the Ames test to show the danger of mutability posed by certain industrial chemicals that they claimed needed to be regulated for the sake of health. It was later, after the regulatory camel was in the tent, that Ames himself showed that almost anything could be used in his test to provoke mutability and others demonstrated that nature, far from being benign, was full of dangerous chemicals that could cause cancer and many, many other forms of illness, and yet people managed to keep living and reproducing.

But wherever there's a danger, no matter how slight, you will always find people eager to be frightened and to impose their fears on others. And they are usually not content to do so by using their own money to attempt to persuade others to follow what they promise will be freedom from disease and death but by getting the government to impose on other people, using other people's money, their utopian vision.

[originalbuckeye]

Sorry. This doesn't pass the smell test. Chemotherapy works by killing the fastest growing cells in your body. That is why people lose their hair and sometimes their fingernails. But it also target cancer cells which divide and multiply at random. I am glad we have had the use of various chemotherapies. They have exponentially helped far more people than they may have hurt.

[autumnraine]

I likened chemo to leeches of a time before. You are killing the good cells as well as the bad, same as bloodletting was letting out the good blood as well as the bad.

Now, for the courts who took children because they did not get chemo, will they give an apology to the parents and children?

[G Larry]

Forget the hype about marginal potential.

Go with the Doc’s recommendations, ask questions, but listen.

I tried being a google doc, and my approach would have killed me.

My Doc recommended low dose cisplatin and it worked well....7 years ago.

[Elendur]

Sorry. This doesn’t pass the smell test.
///
i agree. i think this is just justification for the NHS to avoid expensive chemo.
...similar to the recent “studies” that show prostate tests, and cancer screenings and even EKGs to be of little benefit.

[FES0844]

Perhaps under Obamacare, it’s just too expensive.

[duffee]

From UK “healthcare”, could mean fewer having “chemo” and off the “dole” sooner. The socialist would like to see “life expentcy” drop among the masses.

[JIM O]

Is Obama care positioning it self to save a few bucks with chemo treatment rejections?

[goodwithagun]

Causes more damage for which you will need more medical care, as well as more drugs from the fancy companies that pride themselves on how well they wine and dine docs.

[SC DOC]

My first experience on the medical wards as a 3rd year medical student in the early 70's was a child with leukemia, who died shortly after diagnosis, which was fairly common at that time with the chemo that was available at that time. Now, improvements have led to a 90% cure rate for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the most common malignancy of childhood. Link

[BCW]

“Someone will start demanding governmental regulation to reduce your intake of food to prevent you from developing diseases arising from hypernutrition.”

I don’t have a simple - and how rude of you to make such assumptions.

The problem with the US public as of now - is not “quality” of food - it’s over-processed and lacks nutrients. That is a fact - not an opinion. Giving the body nutrients is not a bad thing. Taking pills is.

Cancer rates have soared in the last 30 yrs - and it’s due to large volume of food being processed for easy meals - easy pick-up - and the results is a population that is fat and sick all the time.

Other cultures that do not participate in the US Diet don’t have these problems. Japan for one.

The last thing I want is more govt, control - but that’s what we have in corn and soy production. I live in Indiana and I fly my own helicopter - and it’s all I see in the vastness of this state.

Per Cancer - I’m very familiar with it. I’ve conducted research studies from an Anti-Terrorism perspective on germ warfare - and cancers were the initial phases of that.

As the results - my father died from such treatments - his immune system destroyed - and he received his bone marrow transplant from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Wash. At the time it was the best place to go for such traditional cancer treatments.

I love it when people get on here and are rude - knowing nothing about me - with one liners.

[BCW]

Good to see others get it.

Doctors and medical science are great at a host of things - but cancer - not so much. They are using the same types of chemo and radiation to fight cancer. It’s not a cure they are looking for - but someones coin!

Doctors are practitioners - they practice on people and hope they get it right. Per the drug companies - and those wanting to be Google Doc’s - have available to them - clearly academic and peer reviewed publications that state the very thing that cure is not an option - but it serves great for advertizing.

[SC DOC]

My first experience on the medical wards as a 3rd year medical student in the early 70's was a child with leukemia, who died shortly after diagnosis, which was fairly common at that time with the chemo that was available at that time. Now, improvements have led to a 90% cure rate for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the most common malignancy of childhood. Link

[CMAC51]

Cancer rates have soared in the last 30 yrs - and it’s due to large volume of food being processed for easy meals - easy pick-up - and the results is a population that is fat and sick all the time.

I call B.S.

Cancer rates have soared statistically for two reasons.

One is because people are living longer and not dying of all the other things that were getting people before they developed cancer. The second is that cancer is better detected now than thirty years ago. It doesn't count as cancer unless the cancer is detected. In 1960 Grandma would die of liver failure. In 2010 she died of liver cancer. The only differnce being the detection.

I also have experience with the subject. My daughter has brain cancer so I have been learning from the doctors at MD Anderson Cancer Treatment Center in Houston. They just happen to be #1 in the world in cancer treatment, so I think they know what they are talking about.

[BCW]

No - you’re right - it’s not due to the way food is processed now in 2012 compared how it was processed in 1960’s - when people brought locally grown products and purchased meat from their local butcher. People are getting fat because mankind is evolving and transforming to a newer human species...thanks for calling BS because your daughter is at MD Anderson - that alone debunks all other researchers in the world of cancer...

[CMAC51]

Doctors and medical science are great at a host of things - but cancer - not so much. They are using the same types of chemo and radiation to fight cancer. It’s not a cure they are looking for - but someones coin!

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you are talking about. My daughter has brain cancer, two types Anaplaxtic astrocytoma and oligodendroglioma.

She started with surgery. When the surgeon worked on her, he could see what he was doing on a 3d computer screen that displayed the MRI of her brain/tumor and the location of his instruments with an accuracy of less than 1mm. Becasue of its location, 10 years ago she would have had to undergo intense speech therapy. Thanks to the miracle of modern medicine she was taling our heads of within a week.

After surgery, her first treatment consisted of radiation, actually IMRT or Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy. This machine is so precise that the intensity of the radiation beam can be varied in increments of 1mm and from full intensity down to the equivelant of an intense light beam. This allows them to attack the cancer while preserving things like her optic nerve.

After radiation it is chemo. The levels and consitency of both the radiation and chemo were determined by testing the removed tumor down to the genetic level. The presence or absence of specific genes determines the make up of the final treatment regimen.

10 years ago she would have been lucky to survive 18 months, 3 years tops. Today her doctors are telling her what side effects to expect when she hits 40, then 50 and then 60. Don't tell me they don't know what they are doing. What they are doing is absolutly amazing.

[Family Guy]

I have Follicular Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma so I've been reading everything I can to get as much info as humanly possible.

In my case they are giving me a chemo drug (Treanda) in conjunction with what they call a mono-clonal antibody (Rituxan). Neither drug by itself is anywhere near as effective as the two used together.

I have read that the cancer cells create a protein that blocks normal cell death, otherwise they would die normally and there would be no problem. I read that the drug companies are developing drugs to block the protein, which would allow the cells to die on their own and the body could then just do its own thing.

The two drugs they're giving me have been shown to be very effective. I don't know that the study from this article is saying anything that wasn't already known. I'm hoping that the drug companies do have success with this protein blocking drug. It sounds to me like the right way to go.

[CMAC51]

No - you’re right - it’s not due to the way food is processed now in 2012 compared how it was processed in 1960’s - when people brought locally grown products and purchased meat from their local butcher. People are getting fat because mankind is evolving and transforming to a newer human species...thanks for calling BS because your daughter is at MD Anderson - that alone debunks all other researchers in the world of cancer...

Nice try! Try to divert by changing the sugject. You said "Cancer rates are soaring becasue..." That was BS regarless of how fat people are getting. There is no demonstrated correlation between cancer rates and obesity. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, liver problems, even joint and arthritis problems yes, cancer no.