Monday’s Book Excerpt from Lessons from the Miracle Doctors

"According to the medical community, more people are surviving cancer than ever before. But if mortality rates are virtually unchanged (as stated in the Journal of the American Medical Association), and 800 to 1,700 percent more people are getting cancer than ever before, then 8-17 times as many people will be saved with no improvement in treatment, would they not? Thus, the remarkable claims you see in the press. On the other hand, what you don’t hear as often is that 8-17 times as many people are also dying from cancer -- thus, the rise of cancer to its position as the number two killer in the United States. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the population of the United States has increased 400 percent in the last hundred years (75 million to 300 million). That means you can divide both the survival and mortality rates by four to adjust for the increased population. If you do that, you more than wipe out all of the survival gains, but you’re still left with increased mortality of 3-5 times. And that’s how cancer has risen from virtual obscurity to become a devastating killer in the U.S., claiming several hundred thousand people a year. 

So, which is the most important statistic? Quite simply, none of them. It’s the fact that survival rates are virtually unchanged. What that means is that modern medicine isn’t really making much of a difference. In fact, mortality rates are actually worse than they first appear. Consider that when a cancer patient undergoes chemotherapy and then succumbs to pneumonia because their immune system has collapsed from the treatment, it is recorded as death by pneumonia, not cancer. Now, add all of the people who have died from the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, and you find that mortality rates are not just unchanged but have gone backwards."

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