This is welcome news in a couple of ways. If they are faking cancer stats and cancer recoveries (as many of us suspect), then it shows up in this fact that half the people with cancer will die of a different disease.
Secondly, even if the stats are real, it means cancer is less to be feared than many people think.
I think the third interpretation… that we are winning the war against cancer, is the least likely to be true!
What are the facts?
Officially (this is the USA), there are now 12 million cancer survivors… up from 3 million in 1971 and 9.8 million in 2001. Other territories will have proportionately similar figures.
Two-thirds of them have survived cancer for at least five years, according to Yi Ning, MD, ScD, of the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center in Richmond. He and his colleagues examined data on 1,807 cancer survivors who participated in the 1988-1994 and 1999-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES).
The most common forms of cancer among the survivors were breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal. Fifty-one percent died from cancer and 49% died from other causes.
Died Of What?
Heart disease was the number one killer, responsible for over two-thirds of the non-cancer deaths. Chronic lung diseases like emphysema claimed 15%; Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes were each responsible for 4% of non-cancer deaths.
The study also showed that that the longer people lived after their initial cancer diagnosis, the more likely they were to die from another disease. In the first five years of diagnosis, 33% of survivors died from a condition other than cancer compared with 63% after 20 years.
Also, people diagnosed with cancer at older ages were more likely to die from diseases other than cancer, Ning says.
So Are Cases Really Cured?
I have to say this, but yes. You’d think, to read articles and comments in the holistic field, that chemo and radiation therapy is a dismal 100% failure.
That’s not true, really. The 12 million survivors are mainly from the conventional route. There is no evidence that more people survive using holistic methods (there are just NO figures, so please don’t write to me and tell me I am idiot). All we can say is that the quality of life is generally far better using a holistic approach.
Of course, once orthodox therapy has done its job and treatment discontinued, then the quality of life issue is irrelevant.
One is left with the question: does chemo etc. set you up for a recurrence? Figures say many cancers recur. You know that.
But what we lack is stats to tell us how often the cancers come back, after holistic therapy. And there are NO figures again, so again… don’t write and tell me I am idiot.
People on my list like me to tell the truth and not propagandize for holistic therapies. I’m just telling it like it is.
Orthodox or holistic is a personal choice and everyone is entitled to make their own decision. I’m disgusted at the number of “holistic” people who sneer at those who choose conventional therapy.
I put “holistic” in quotes because it is not nice to judge and stupid to believe only you are right, neither action of which is in any way in accord with Mother Nature and holism.
Lots of people die choosing the holistic route; some after seeing celebrated cancer heroes. So don’t be naïve.
Take Home
I think the message is very clear. Survival of cancer requires general health measures that will protect you against ANY disease process. That starts and ends with diet; includes detoxing; requires elimination of toxic emotions; and not smoking, taking exercise and generally being moderate.
We should all be doing that. In which case we are unlikely to get cancer and will probably survive it if we do!
[SOURCE: American Association for Cancer Research Meeting 2012, Chicago, March 31-April 4, 2012]
Surely it is not beyond holistic practitioners to follow up patients regularly and so, eventually to produce the required statistics.
I am particularly interested to find out the longevity and absence of other diseases among those who use holistic lifestyles.
Do the Adventist studies not have any statistics on this?
You are far from an idiot, my dear. Thanks for another great article and for making me laugh.
I lost a good friend a while back to the burn and poisen routene
here in Riverside- cause of demise phnewmonia.Not cancer.
Nobody dies from cancer, but rather from the side-effect of chemo, radiation or surgery
Does it say what they died of? Was the death related to the cancer treatment such as damaged lungs or heart?
Remember the quote…”There are 3 types of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics”.
As you know Doc, there are many ways of supporting an argument/theory. If you go looking for something, or looking to prove something you will probably find it. (I am not suggesting you are doing this. Follow the money)
Hi Doc
I am so glad to hear you say all of this. I recently (well, 2 years ago) went through chemo and a bone marrow transplant for leukaemia. I have done spectacularly well and all my tests are indicating that I am quite well. I am well aware that I could relapse (I did that after my first rounds of chemo and that’s why I had the transplant) but I am feeling confident about the future.
I have seen quite a few fellow sufferers also go through treatment successfully. In fact, all of those I met during treatment are still going strong. None of us seems to have long-term damage that’s shown up yet. So I quite happily go along with the statistics.
I would have to agree that it’s not pleasant therapy and that holistic therapies are gentler on the body. I am not sure that I would still be here, though, had I gone down that route. I didn’t have the luxury of time to do the research but what I’ve seen since indicates that holistic treatments for leukaemia aren’t as successful as those for other cancers.
Thank you for the reassurance!
My parents are good examples of a discrepancy between what the death certificates say and what happened. At age 81 my dad had pancreatic cancer and didn’t even go to a doctor until a few weeks before he died. Finally, toward the end he had a stroke, so that’s what went into the statistics. But would he have had the stroke had he not had the fatal cancer? Very possibly not.
Mom had breast cancer and a mastectomy at age 84, but refused follow-up treatment. She continued until she had a stroke at 91. From that time on she was in a care facility, where we discovered her cancer had returned. Metastases were confirmed through biopsy, and even I could palpate several tumor sites around her body. She lived until age 95, then had a series of strokes, and finally died. Her death certificate reads “death caused by metastasized breast cancer” because the cancer return had brought Hospice care into her life. So what killed her? Strokes, not cancer! Did the cancer cause the strokes? Who knows?
Sometimes it’s really hard to tell why a person dies.
On another subject, I find this sentence from your article difficult to understand: “Of course, once orthodox therapy has done its job and treatment discontinued, then the quality of life issue is irrelevant.” Who says? Certainly not the friend who still has balance problems after losing both breasts. Definitely not the one whose heart was damaged by radiation to her left breast. And clearly not the friend who suffers painful neuropathy in her feet because of the chemo. How about the woman who died of lymphoma which was caused by an previous bout of chemo? How about the friend who can no longer lift her arm very high because of radiation to her axilary lymph nodes? I could go on in this vein, but you know the aftereffects of cancer therapy can cause quality of life issues for the rest of life for many.