Budget Player Cadet_
Smash Hero
This is an issue that pisses me off. Not the mild annoyance I get with people arguing that Castle Siege needs to be banned. Not the grating and grinding that occurs when someone says "it's just a theory". No, this gets me really mad.
Why?
Because this shouldn't be a ****ing debate. So-called "conventional" cancer therapy works.
It's trivial to find studies comparing modern cancer death rates to those in the past. In fact, the SEER database has a huge page on statistics. Here's an example page, generated with the query "all cancer" and "5-year survival rate" (a common metric for cancer treatment). Notice how it's gone up in the last 40 years by 20%. That's pretty decent, given the difficulty of the problems we're facing. In fact, for specific cancers, it's actually considerably better than that. Breast cancer has gone from a 75% survival rate to a 90% survival rate in the last 40 years. Acute Lymphoblastomic Leukemia (ALL for short), a rare and very nasty form of childhood cancer, went from a 10% survival rate in the 60s to a 90% survival rate in the 2000s. Science, *******. It works.
This should instantly show just how false the claim that "cancer research is going nowhere" is - a popular claim by "alternative" health practitioners[*], who are apparently disappointed that we haven't solved one of the very hardest problems in medicine. More on them later.
Unfortunately, SEER only goes back to the 1970s. To go even further back, to before we had things like chemotherapy, you need other sources. Here's one comparing breast cancer survival rates in the 1920s to the 1980s. The result? Modern medicine works. Or, more directly, survival rates consistently and significantly rose.
Now what about altternatives? Things that aren't widely accepted, which claim to cure cancer "naturally". Things like Gerson therapy, or Antineoplasteon therapy, or certain diets? Well, turns out, they looked into that too.
Look, say what you will about pharmaceuticals having dodgey ethics, having questionable morals, overpricing their drugs to the point of insanity. The fact is, modern cancer treatment works, and chemotherapy is a key component of that. The data is overwhelming. If any alternative therapy had anywhere near the demonstrable efficacy of what we already use, we'd already be incorporating it into our therapies. To anyone who disagrees, spend an hour or so browsing the SEER database. It's really easy to find out how much better things have gotten for those who get cancer in the last few decades. Websites that claim that modern cancer treatments don't work, or can't be relied on, are lying to you.
[*]There is no such thing as "alternative" health. Remedies that work are adopted into mainstream medicine; those that are not become so-called "alternative" or "complementary" modalities that are sold to dupes. Things like homeopathy, reiki, acupuncture, and the like.
Why?
Because this shouldn't be a ****ing debate. So-called "conventional" cancer therapy works.
It's trivial to find studies comparing modern cancer death rates to those in the past. In fact, the SEER database has a huge page on statistics. Here's an example page, generated with the query "all cancer" and "5-year survival rate" (a common metric for cancer treatment). Notice how it's gone up in the last 40 years by 20%. That's pretty decent, given the difficulty of the problems we're facing. In fact, for specific cancers, it's actually considerably better than that. Breast cancer has gone from a 75% survival rate to a 90% survival rate in the last 40 years. Acute Lymphoblastomic Leukemia (ALL for short), a rare and very nasty form of childhood cancer, went from a 10% survival rate in the 60s to a 90% survival rate in the 2000s. Science, *******. It works.
This should instantly show just how false the claim that "cancer research is going nowhere" is - a popular claim by "alternative" health practitioners[*], who are apparently disappointed that we haven't solved one of the very hardest problems in medicine. More on them later.
Unfortunately, SEER only goes back to the 1970s. To go even further back, to before we had things like chemotherapy, you need other sources. Here's one comparing breast cancer survival rates in the 1920s to the 1980s. The result? Modern medicine works. Or, more directly, survival rates consistently and significantly rose.
Now what about altternatives? Things that aren't widely accepted, which claim to cure cancer "naturally". Things like Gerson therapy, or Antineoplasteon therapy, or certain diets? Well, turns out, they looked into that too.
In other words: those who turned away modern medicine in favor of "Alternative" cures died twice as often within 5 years as those who accepted the conventional standard.
Look, say what you will about pharmaceuticals having dodgey ethics, having questionable morals, overpricing their drugs to the point of insanity. The fact is, modern cancer treatment works, and chemotherapy is a key component of that. The data is overwhelming. If any alternative therapy had anywhere near the demonstrable efficacy of what we already use, we'd already be incorporating it into our therapies. To anyone who disagrees, spend an hour or so browsing the SEER database. It's really easy to find out how much better things have gotten for those who get cancer in the last few decades. Websites that claim that modern cancer treatments don't work, or can't be relied on, are lying to you.
[*]There is no such thing as "alternative" health. Remedies that work are adopted into mainstream medicine; those that are not become so-called "alternative" or "complementary" modalities that are sold to dupes. Things like homeopathy, reiki, acupuncture, and the like.
