"The Honest Oncologist": What a Concept
Updated: 17 hours ago
How many Oncologists do you think, would sit down with their patients before they treat them and say the following?
"Due to the fact that the amount of cytotoxic chemotherapy we would need to give you to kill ALL of your cancer is more than enough to do a good job of killing you, we will have to give you less. The problem that we've noticed over the years is that when we do give you less chemo in doses, something interesting happens. Healthy "fibroblast"(these cells help maintain the structural integrity of connective tissue, and they play a critical role in wound healing and collagen production), that live around the cancer sustain a type of DNA damage from the chemo that drives the production of broad spectrum growth factors (a type of Super food for the cancer) that stimulate cancer growth. Dr. Peter S. Nelson, M.D., a member of the Hutchinson Center's Human Biology Division and colleagues (New mechanism behind resistance to cancer treatment that could lead to better therapies) found specifically, that DNA-damaging cancer treatment coaxes fibroblasts to crank out a protein called WNT16B within the tumor neighborhood, or micro-environment, and that high levels of this protein enable cancer cells to grow, invade surrounding tissue and resist chemotherapy.[1]
We don't know how to stop this affect, but it happens every time we give you chemo. Therefore your cancer will come back sooner or later, stronger than ever and for this service we will be charging you and your insurance company (if you have one) a great deal of money. Also this will probably damage your immune system and not only set you up for a relapse, but possibly create new cancers for you to deal with."
How's that for informed consent?
The researchers observed up to 30-fold increases in WNT16B production and this protein when secreted, would interact with nearby tumor cells and cause them to grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy.
In cancer treatment, tumors often respond well initially, followed by rapid re-growth and then resistance to further chemotherapy. Rates of tumor cell reproduction have been shown to accelerate between treatments."Our results indicate that damage responses in benign cells... may directly contribute to enhanced tumor growth kinetics," wrote the team. The researchers said they confirmed their findings with breast and ovarian cancer tumors.
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