cancer can go away on its own

evidence-based cancer treatment — the discipline that insists on proof that time-honored medical practices and procedures are actually effective.
No ancedotal stuff please.
Pet cancer treatment can cost ten thousand USA dollars. This forum is for people to tell us how they were able to obtain cancer treatment when they had no pet health insurance to cover the cost. Rabie Vaccine caused cancer often is paid for by the company that produced the vaccine even when not legally required to do so.

cancer can go away on its own

Postby malernee » Sat Jan 17, 2004 10:13 am

A newsgroup query prompted me to do Medline search on the above, and
there is a surprisingly large literature on it. In vet school we were told that lymphoma in the dog went away on its own in one case out of ten thousand. I have no idea where that fiqure came from. Below is some human data about how cancer can go away on its own and how that can make people think its the treatment that does it.
****
One source quotes a one per 60,000 to 100.000 overall accepted incidence
but no one indicates how that figure is derived. If this were true
there should be at least five and possibly 12 or more observable
spontaneous remissions of cancer in the USA alone each year and about
half of these would be applying some kind of "alternative" treatment at
the time. (I am working on just over a million new cases of cancer and
about half that number of deaths and an average figure for studies of
alt usage by cancer patients).

Some cancers remit more often than others. The ones most commonly
mentioned are --

Leukemia (Many)
Lymphoma (Lots)
Melanoma
Hepatocellular carcinoma (lots)
Neuroblastoma in infants (usual)
Renal cancer (see below)

But even lung cancer is represented. A variety of theories are put
forward, the strongest relating to immunological responses, but an
intriguing one is a loss of telomerase activity.


The following article suggests a staggering 4-6% incidence of
"spontaneous" remission of metastatic renal cancer (mainly associated
with resection or embolisation of the primary).

BJU Int. 2000 Oct; 86(6): 613-8. Related Articles, Links

Placebo-associated remissions in a multicentre, randomized, double-blind
trial of interferon gamma-1b for the treatment of metastatic renal cell
carcinoma. The Canadian Urologic Oncology Group.

Elhilali MM, Gleave M, Fradet Y, Davis I, Venner P, Saad F, Klotz L,
Moore R, Ernst S, Paton V.

Department of Urology at the Royal Victoria Hospital (MUHC), Canada.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the validity of using an historical maximum
spontaneous regression rate (reportedly 0-1.1% in those with lung
metastases after nephrectomy) in clinical trials of treatments for
patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), as the eligibility
criteria for most studies will select patients with better performance
status (and thus excluding those who are unlikely to respond) and more
modern staging methods would potentially reduce the number of
false-positives. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A multicentre
randomized,placebo-controlled, double-blind trial was recently completed
in which 197 patients with metastatic RCC from 17 study centres across
Canada were randomized to receive placebo or recombinant interferon
gamma-1b (60 microg/m2) subcutaneously once every 7 days until disease
progression. All tumour responses were validated by an independent
response committee unaware of the treatment. RESULTS: The median (95%
confidence interval) overall response rate (complete, CR, and partial,
PR) for those on interferon-gamma was 4 (1.4-11.5)% and for those on
placebo was 6 (2. 5-13.2)% (P = 0.75). In the six patients who were
receiving placebo the CR and PR (three each) was considered to represent
spontaneous remission. Of these six patients (aged 44-64 years) five had
undergone nephrectomy, one a tumour embolization, four had clear cell
carcinoma and one an adenocarcinoma, and all had regression of lung
and/or lymph node metastases. CONCLUSION: The lack of efficacy of
interferon-gamma in this trial underlines the importance of continued
research to identify alternative therapeutic agents or combinations of
agents in phase II studies. However, the threshold response rate for
initiating phase III trials should be increased to 18% in the phase II
trials, i.e. three times the response rate on placebo.
malernee
Site Admin
 
Posts: 462
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 5:56 pm

Return to cancer treatment

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

cron