[AlaskaAngel]

All good questions, Valerie, and since no one has yet answered most of the questions about breast cancer it is really important to keep asking questions.

If we all agreed that we must use chemotherapy for breast cancer as a basic ingredient in therapy, then even if there is a drug that would be better we will never try it because we don't feel safe without adding chemotherapy.

One key question that also has to be answered (and won't be, as long as we continue to say that chemotherapy is essential) is, what percentage of patients who otherwise would not recur, recur because they do chose chemotherapy?

To people who desperately hope that chemotherapy will work, that may seem like a "silly" question. But any therapy (and especially known toxic therapies) can ADD to the total of those who recur instead of just reducing the recurrence rate. For some, chemotherapy may be the reason they do recur. As long as we refuse to ask and find the actual true answer to that question, we are failing those patients in the mere hope that chemotherapy is necessary and more helpful than harmful. This is an even more crucial question to ask when applying therapy of any kind to a group of patients where the majority is known not to recur without any therapy. That group can actually have a worse outcome because of treatment.

It is important to remember that adjuvant treatment has a very short history, so what might seem to be protective in our desire to protect ourselves and each other may not be protective, but actually harmful.

AlaskaAngel