Posted: Jun 02, 2012 11:33 am
Rachel Bronwyn wrote:Oh, goodness no! The amount of research going into the production of non-toxic chemo is enormous because it's so glaringly obvious that, even when this therapy works, it causes irreperable harm. We don't want that!
The notion your body can just heal from cancer is what's absolutely fucking ridiculous. Once you've got detectable tumours it's because your body has failed to destroy malignant cells and they are dividing. The likelihood of even a tiny breast tumour clearing on it's own is very poor.
Nope, surprisingly, it's not. At least not with breast cancer. But of course, that's NO argument against chemotherapy.
Frequency of spontaneous regression in cancer
It has long been assumed that spontaneous regressions, let alone cures, from cancer are rare phenomena, and that some forms of cancer are more prone to unexpected courses (melanoma, neuroblastoma, lymphoma) than others (carcinoma). Frequency was estimated to be about 1 in 100,000 cancers;[2] however, in reality this ratio might be largely under- or over-estimated. For one, not all cases of spontaneous regression can be apprehended, either because the case was not well documented or the physician was not willing or literate enough to publish, or simply because the patient did not show up in a clinic any more. On the other hand, for the past 100 years almost all cancer patients have been treated in one way or the other, such that the influence of treatment cannot always be excluded.
At least for small tumors the frequency of spontaneous regression most likely was drastically underrated. In a carefully designed study on mammography it was found that 22% of all breast cancer cases underwent spontaneous regression.[3]
Source: Wikipedia