Cancer Treatment! Worse than the disease?

While advances in the treatment of cancer are continuously being made, I have always had an overriding belief that "the cure is worse than the disease". I have just never been able to adequately articulate why I believe that to be so, that is until now. [note]I only wish I had seen this great analogy, on how cancer treatments work, when I was first diagnosed with MCL, and friends and acquaintances would ask why I wasn't starting treatment right away.[/note]

While this person was responding to a promising new technology, CART (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell) therapy, it's still represents an accurate assessment of the current state of all cancer treatment.

I live in the wilderness with many species of wild and domestic animals like Coyotes, Fisher Cats, Fox, Bobcats, Dogs, Cats and yes Bears. Many of these animals help keep a balance of nature and rarely bother humans but sometimes bears can become dangerous, culminating in the rare attack on humans. Let's say a particularly dangerous Bear population begins to breed like wildfire and the threat to me becomes a crisis for which my Atlatl and 12 gage shot gun are no longer able to handle. Along comes a laid off car salesman offering to sell me a brace of T-Rex dinosaurs that he guaranties will eat up the nasty Bear clan. Wow! this is just what I need...... but I don't notice on the contract that I sign and in fine print of course, that although the T-Rexes have proven voracious they are pretty dumb due to small cranial capacity. The guy who trained the T-Rexes to eat my nasty Bears could not get the beasts to recognize just the bad Bears of the nasty Bear clan from the good bears. Training quit at the level where the T-Rexes could recognize and target all four legged fur bearing animals.

The nasty Bear horde threat, being so urgent, I hastily put my money down and let the T-Rexes loose. They clean out the nasty Bears in short order along with the good bears the fox, coyote, bobcat, fisher, domestic cats, dogs and my drunk hirsute neighbor who had been crawling up the path to his cabin one night. Now, losing my garrulous hirsute neighbor was no big loss, I hasten to admit, but soon the environment was overrun by rats and mice who carried the fleas from which I have now contracted bubonic plague. The T-Rexes, having eaten all the animals they could recognize were looking curiously in my direction.

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He goes on to explain the challenges in treating cancer which I add here just for some additional insight

The challenge for developing CLL cytotoxic agents, specific to our cancer cells, is that an idiotype (unique to the cancer cell) marker on the surface of the B-cancer cells does not exist or has not been found or cannot yet be exploited for bio-engineering of T-cells or mAbs (monoclonal antibodies like Rituximab/Ofatumumab). The inefficiency of Rituxan/Ofatumumab may prove to be a blessing for those patients who get a good response and who do not react badly, like me, in that some of the good guy B cells are left after therapy and may confer some immune functionality although too many of the bad guys are also left who evolve to resist repeated therapy.

He ends with a statement I find very appropriate

......Live in the moment, and practice gratitude for all that we have. Increasing options abound.