The success rate in the cancer cure biz is near zero. We have made huge strides in cardiac disease but almost nothing in cancer. The war against cancer is mis-conceived. Cancer is a complex set of diseases that arise from a complex web of causal factors. Many, maybe most, of these are tied up with environment and lifestyle. Even those with genetic predispositions need additional stresses to trigger cancer as a disease entity. Those who express cancers with certain genetically determined traits have something akin to a death sentence. Those with other cancers can sometimes be successfully treated. Almost all would have been healthier and even cancer free with better environmental and lifestyle factors. If anyone in the cancer field today believes that they have treatments that significantly affect morbidity and mortality of the aggressive cancers, they are hopelessly out of touch with research. Many of the existing treatments themselves generate additional cancers or cause existing ones to metasticise. If anyone is guilty of causing ‘false hope’ in cancer patients, it is pharma.
