Study what doctor said...

The intellectual kernel of the transcript is the following passage:

Dr Barlogie: Myeloma cancer cells are already resistant. Otherwise one could achieve a complete remission and cure with very simple chemotherapy. Even with transplantation of bone marrow when used up front, one does not achieve an 80 per cent complete remission rate. One achieve maybe a 50 per cent complete remission rate.
So half the patients do not go into complete remission and those are clearly the patients who will not be cured.
Out of the 50 per cent who achieve a complete remission, not all of those have long-term disease control either.
So from my point ... philosophically, biologically, and all I know about cancer, if this approach of intensive therapy [two bone marrow transplant] is going to work and is actually to generate some long term survivors, then it ought to be used up front and everything ought to be put together to have this chance.

Study these words and hope gets less with every phrase.

Fifty per cent get into remission? Not quite. Dr Barlogie said maybe fifty per cent.

So a bit more than half will not go into remission. These, as Dr Barlogie remarks, clearly . . . will not be cured. This means that they will die, even with treatment. Clearly is quiet but final.

Try www.cacare.com

Am I too sensitive to words, too literary? Do I find death or premature death where it is not? I tst myself against other pages.

Dr Barlogie: The secret in terms of long-term disease control is not to have a recurrence. Not to have a recurrence. That is the principal law with all cancer. Once the recurrence occurs, the chance to get a cure is minimal. It is going to be shorter and shorter unfortunately.

Recurrence. Not getting into complete remission was, surely, a recurrence. So for more than fifty per cent, who do not get in to complete remission, unfortunately is the key word.

Ticket on the Titanic. Steerage.

Maybe fifty per cent of patients achieve complete remission. But not all will stay that way. can Dr Barlogie put a figure on it? Does the patient have a forty per cent chance? Thirty per cent? Twenty per cent? What is it, if you listen hard?

Dr Barlogie's words are 'if this approach . . . is actually to generate some long-term survivors'. Here is a careful man weighing what he says. He will not give a figure. Notice, too, that the word cure goes out of his vocabulary as he goes on. At first he talks of 'complete remission and cure'. But that was to make an abstract point about what could not be done : 'Otherwise one could achieve a complete remission and cure with very simple chemotherapy.' This is a difference of emphasis.

'Out of the 50 per cent who achieve a complete remission, not all of these have long-term disease control either ... if this approach of intensive therapy [two bone marrow transplants] is going to work and is actually to generate some long-term survivors.'

And Dr Barlogie's conclusion is that 'everything ought to be put together to have this chance'.

Not cure.

Chance.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What does this say about my own consultants?
Unlike Dr Barlogie, they were not prepared to take the trouble to sift through these possibilities with me. Result? Bullying (Immobilisation is what happens with your cancer) and suave generalisations (Research is going on with all cancers : we may find a cure). Easy way out.

Why charge such high price for mere information source from Internet, while the doctors did not add any significant value into my situation?

Man's diseases is the sport of doctors,not of God. Man's healthy wealth is the sport of God, not of doctors, also known as 'certified quacks' and legalized at that.
The art of healing is deed is long, but life is short.

The medical profession is a murderous absurdity ...which practises the most revolting cruelties in the pursuit of knowledge.

I often ask candidates of Oxford : why have doctors always been satirised? Why have they?
(But, I think some doctors are wonderful).
The clever candidates always get it right : doctors are hated because they play at being God.

Cleverness only means anything if you are competent.
There are three kinds of doctor: certified doctor, practicing doctor, and clever doctor. What do these society doctors do? Sit in the fence.

We need more, someone who does not dive for cover in health ministry.

A euphemism of Dr Barlogie's stays with me :
Dr Barlogie : The bottom line that everybody agrees upon is that what one considered the conventional treatment for multiple myeloma is not very successful. Patients are not cured with this approach.


Not very successful : a gentle choice of words, but can failure be more total?

Yet it must be easy for a man of Dr Barlogie's distinction to move to a branch of medicine where cures exist and life is sunny. Not Dr Barlogie : he is gritting it out.

He is a hero.