Scared Monkeys Discussion Forum

Current Events and Musings => Health and Medical Issues => Topic started by: MuffyBee on October 25, 2012, 08:39:04 PM



Title: Study: We overestimate how much medicine can do
Post by: MuffyBee on October 25, 2012, 08:39:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/25/study-we-overestimate-how-much-medicine-can-do/
Study: We overestimate how much medicine can do
October 25, 2012

Between 2003 and 2005, a team of researchers at Harvard asked over 1,000 cancer patients about their expectations for chemotherapy.
All patients surveyed had received a diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer or colorectal cancer four months earlier. These are some of the most difficult-to-treat conditions. Medical research says that, in these extremely challenging cases, chemotherapy can extend life by weeks or months but it is very unlikely to provide a cure.
That’s what the science tells us — but that’s not what most late-stage cancer patients believed. The majority who elected to have chemotherapy believed there was a chance it would do something it wouldn’t: Namely, provide a cure.
Sixty-nine percent of lung cancer patients and 81 percent of colorectal cancer patients gave responses “that were not consistent with understanding that chemotherapy was very unlikely to cure their cancer,” the researchers report in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.
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Title: Re: Study: We overestimate how much medicine can do
Post by: KittyMom on October 26, 2012, 12:05:37 AM
I think you have to have experienced cancer in your family to truly understand all the aspects of it. 


Title: Re: Study: We overestimate how much medicine can do
Post by: MuffyBee on October 26, 2012, 02:52:19 AM
I think you have to have experienced cancer in your family to truly understand all the aspects of it. 

 ::rhino::