I'm not a doctor, but in some fairness, I think there has been a lot of progress in chemotherapy and radiation. "Increasing 5-year-survivability by 0.5%" doesn't make a fun sexy headline, but that's still an achievement that required a lot of hard work and enough of those happening still adds up.

I agree with your overall point though; it's a little annoying that every few weeks we hear about a new experiment that seems to indicate that we'll have a radically new and effective form of treatment for cancer only for it to never materialize.

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bruce511 5 days ago | parent [-]

"Cancer" is a term that covers a lot of diseases. So there is a lot of research going into a lot of different things, and hence lots of announcements.

"Chemotherapy" again is a loaded term covering a lot of different drugs, drug combinations, protocols and so on. So yeah, a lot of cancer treatment us "chemo" - but today's chemo is far removed from 2000 chemo.

5 year survivability has increased tremendously over the last decades. We're not talking 0.5% here, breast cancer for example has gone from 72% to 93%. Early detection of prostrate cancer has near 100% survivability.

But you're right, improving survivability doesn't make for sexy headlines. Yes there's a social media appetite for "breakthroughs", but the underlying "boring" stuff is doing well, and getting better all the time. It's just not "news".

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johnwheeler 4 days ago | parent [-]

My mom died of cancer and had to suffer through chemo. It was in the early 2000s, so I'm curious to know if you know anything about these new chemos and what makes them different.

	▲	bruce511 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		My condolences for your loss. Discussing things in general terms,while having a lived experience must be painful. There are different cancers, different stages different, different chemos, and of course different people. Ultimately individual experiences of chemo run the whole gauntlet. At one end it can be little more than a bit of fatigue, at the other end a horrendous nightmare. Yes, chemo has, as it's goal, a poison function. It sets out to poison you, hopefully killing the cancer first. It's never going to be the "fun" part of treatment. I'm not a Dr, much less a medical historian. I would be ill equipped to quote specific drugs or dosages. Outcomes however are easily Googled, and those don't seem to be controversial. I get that improved statistics don't make individual loss any easier.