Over one million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. this year. Two thirds of them will die of their cancer within five years. Chemotherapy will save two to three percent, primarily blood and lymph cancers, especially in children, which are diagnosed early. A combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy has achieved significant tumor eradication rates among certain rare tumors. Nevertheless, these people have eighteen times the probability of having a cancer later in life than other people.
Epidemiologists think so.
If you have cancer and accept chemotherapy, you may be saved, but statistically, the odds are better that you are going to die from complications of your treatment before you have time to die from your cancer. I guess you could say, ironically, that chemotherapy does prevent many people dying from cancer. They die from the chemotherapy instead. The overall, age-adjusted cancer death rate has risen by five percent since 1971. Yet the NCI and ACS are likely to be calling you next week for another contribution.