[Becky]

Chrisy is right. You are not looking at the statistics right.

Let's say at Stage 2 if given chemo (with surgery +/- rads) you have a 30% recurrence rate but if you're given Herceptin too, your 2 yr recurrence rate would become only 15% (as Herceptin halfs that) and then as time goes on, the rate would flatten out to about 20%. The difference is that you are assuming that all Her2s or all with bc recur and that does not happen, even if you don't get Herceptin. Herceptin just lowers the recurrence rate of those who would have recurred (and you don't know who you are until you do recur...). A Stage 1 woman has less odds of recurring and so on so treatments that lessen recurrence rates are most effective on those that are at higher Stages but those treatments do help all. A Stage 1 woman might only have a 10%-12% chance of recurring and taking Herceptin would lower that to 6% or so.