Latest ConMed Cancer Treatment: Maximum Invasive Surgery Paired with Heated Chemo & No Proof It WorksIsn't modern medicine supposed to be evidence based? Apparently, only when evidence can be drummed up. When it can't be faked, then they just say it works and sell sell SELL it!by Heidi Stevenson31 August 2011 
HIPEC cancer treatment literally guts a patient so that the surgeon goes through the abdomen with a metaphorical fine-toothed comb to search for and dig out every speck of cancer he can find. Then, a heated bath of chemo-drugs is circulated through the abdominal cavity. Finally, the patient's guts are put back together and sewn up. This extreme treatment is sold as the best therapy for advanced abdominal cancers. Considering the obvious risks of such an immoderate use of two of the most dangerous and misery-provoking treatments in modern medicine, you would think that there must be good evidence showing that it works. But that's not the case. So how is it supported? In the Annals of Surgical Oncology, surgical oncologist David Bartlett says that the evidence for such treatment is lacking and it's hard to come by, so therefore: Despite these difficulties the anecdotal data, retrospective reviews, prospective database reports, phase II studies, and small phase III studies are compelling. In other words, if they can't justify their treatment with the methods that they say are the only valid ones—randomized trials—then it's quite all right to use the kind of data that they utterly reject for any other treatment modality. They do not hold themselves to the same standards that they insist others must meet! The New York Times reports on HIPEC (hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy): Although it has given some patients hope, there is almost no evidence that the treatment is more effective than traditional chemotherapy — besides one small trial in the Netherlands over a decade ago that did show a benefit, but in which 8 percent of the participants died from the procedure itself. Recent History of Extreme Cancer TreatmentsYet, here we go again. To put it into perspective, as the Times reports, heroic surgical treatment for cancer became quite popular among physicians after World War II, though its popularity among patients is...well, a bit more doubtful. On the theory that more is better, surgeons not only removed the breast in cases of cancer, they also removed chest muscle, and part of the breastbone and ribs. If it had spread into the arms (as it commonly does in the lymph nodes), they'd remove entire arms and shoulders. Uterine cancers could result in removal of part of the pelvis, bladder, and rectum. None of this benefitted patients—but doctors were quite enthusiastic and pushed these horribly deforming and debilitating treatments on patient victims. They even exhorted other doctors to do the same, calling them surgical cowards if they didn't do extreme surgeries. The father of super-radical mastectomies, Jerome A. Urban, said, "Lesser surgery is done by lesser surgeons." Apparently, Urban wasn't terribly concerned with the results, only with having the freedom to chop people up. Later, extremely toxic high-dose chemotherapy was used by oncologists—again, without any evidence it worked. They simply decided to impose such treatment on their patients—and, of course, charge them exhorbitant fees for it—on the basis of their unfounded assumption that it must be effective. Ultimately, these surgeries and drugs were shown to be of no value to patients. That shouldn't be surprising, because they had never been shown to have value. It was only because of the claims of the surgeons promoting their profession that they were done. Think of the unneeded misery brought on those patients! History Repeats ItselfAnd now, the same sort of thing is happening again, but with a couple of new twists. HIPEC treatment combines extreme surgery with extreme chemotherapy. Of course, they've refined it a bit. Now they take the patient's guts apart and dig through them trying to find any sign or hint of cancer to excise, and then they pump them full of hot toxic chemicals, which are presumed to kill more cancer cells because they're hot, but leave others alone. HIPEC treatment was being done by 2005, more than six years ago. Thousands of patients have been treated with it. Here and there, a patient is trotted out as a success story—the anecdote that modern medicine supposedly considers anything but proof. We see claims of how it is presumed to work, but no genuine studies to demonstrate efficacy. Worse, though, is that we aren't seeing anything that documents how many patients are suffering and dying from the extreme treatment itself. What we do see, though, is a proliferation of clinics specializing in the treatment. Whenever we see that, we're looking at doctors who posture as caring for patients, but instead are luring them in to be treated with extreme and untrialed measures. The patients rarely benefit—but the doctors benefit with extreme profits. Apparently, this is legal. But alternative practitioners are driven out of practice for doing exactly the same thing, though few realize more than minimal profits. As Steve Scrutton's The Failure of Conventional Medicine chapter, Traditional Medicine (why ConMed will always fail), explains so well, while conventional medicine (ConMed) continually talks of so-called progress: ...it fails to understand what constitutes, what generates, and what maintains good health. It understands the mechanism of illness, but fails entirely in its ability to treat it successfully. ***************************************************************************** *****************************************************************************
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