from the BBC: scary news that chemo kills more brain cells than cancer cells!

[Lani]

"It is important to remember, however, that all presently available cancer treatments have gone through extensive clinical trials to ensure that their benefits outweigh unwanted effects.

"No patient should stop their treatment because of this research."

The researchers said it might be possible to add protective agents to chemotherapy drugs.

They also suggest further work to pinpoint which cells are most at risk.

[Kimberly Lewis]

There is more and more I learn about our cancer treatment that dissapoints and even shocks me. Over the holidays my family was reminiscing about some events and I was totally unable to recall even the smallest detail of them even though I was there too. It is hard to know that parts of your life have been stolen and you will never really know the extent of it. I guess in comparison to dieing of the disease it seems petty to complain. But... even so I am really having a hard time lately with the repercussions and anger regarding treatment differences in general.

[Lani]

The point this all seems to make is that cancer treatment is definitely a "work -in-progress" Most people ASSUME that short and long term effects are known, whether for chemo, radiation, etc. All cancer treatment has basically been a trial. Something seems to work, they try to find out why. It is hard when something SEEMS to work to try to use less and see if it is equally good, hence the trials of more. Money for trials overwhelmingly comes from Drug companies.

I went to a lecture yesterday at Stanford, where the instigator of a clinical trial of high dose (not available outside the clinical trial and not equivalent to that which you get without a prescription) Vitamin D and Naprosyn for advanced prostate cancer. He bemoaned the fact that there is not enough money to continue the trial past one year of treatment, or even to follow those who might or might not continue on just naprosyn after the trial ended. Similarly, there is little money for the trials of accelerated partial breast irradiation.

Let's make less assumptions (so many of my posts here have to do with previous "dogmas" being questioned), support those doing research to answer these questions, and be as informed as we can. That does not mean not to trust one's doctors, just to be aware that there aren't necessarily "right answers" out there and therefore "one-size-fits-all" thinking regarding methods of treatment needs to be seriously reconsidered

If everyone gets the same treatment ie, radiation therapy, the same drugs and doses it makes it extremely hard to figure out which parts of the treatment might be unneccessarily toxic and which other treatments might be less so.

Food for thought

[Hopeful]

my point of view to a "T." MORE is not always = BETTER. I am participating in the study on partial breast irradiation, though, unfortunately, I was randomized to the whole breast irradiation arm of the study, as I feel that testing definitely needs to be done on reducing the amount of toxic treatment patients recieve. There were several news stories out just a few months ago, reporting about how the side effects of chemotherapy are under rated, and how many patients on it wind up in the emergency room for both reasons directly related to their treatment AND for other problems in general, much more than the general population. Not enough is known about the long term effects of these drugs, because, up until now, patients who took them never lived long enough for anyone to find out. This article you have posted directly contradicts the standard dogma I have read that "the brain is not effected by chemotherapy because the cells divide too slowly." The decision to use chemotherapy in early stage bc is a personal choice, but, at the very least, everyone should receive complete and accurate information regarding ALL potential side effects, to be able to make a fully informed choice.

Here is a link to a story from earlier this week that has more positive, but still disturbing, information on chemobrain: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20061127...rainareasstudy

Hopeful