why take chemotherapy?

solfeo, I agree with you. My husband and I research alternative approaches, and I go to my oncologist with a list. All I ask her to say is couldn't hurt and we leave it at that. For example, she measures my vitamin d level quite often and feels it is important, and her approach to vitamin d is consistent with mine, so her comment about vitamin d supplementation is "couldn't hurt." Oncologists aren't up on every alternative treatment, but when approached correctly, they will provide input. The hard part for me is wading through what alternative treatment adjuncts can possibly help without me having to take a thousand supplements. It is a very bewildering area with no clear cut pros and cons

I agree, anger has no place, alternative forums should be a place to consider alternative approaches, whether they are used as an adjunct to conventional standard of care treatment, or whether an individual wants to use only alternative approaches. We are all here to seek knowledge and help each other. Like when I asked her about mistletoe, she said couldn't hurt.

Sometimes I think anger comes out because people are scared, not because they are trying to be mean or judgmental. Although there is a fair amount of disdain that occurs. But for me, if somebody explains supplemental treatment and it is well thought out, I definitely take the knowledge to heart.

About the anger, I completely agree that it is not constructive. However, the only person who has been angry on this thread is the OP, who, for example, likened me to a cancer because I had the gall to point out that Ty Bollinger is not credible (with backup to support the assertion). It is not "anger" to say, "sorry, but XYZ is simply not true."

For example the claim that 90% of oncologists would not do chemo if they had cancer. This claim is based on ONE survey done at a medical conference in the 80s. It involved less than 200 oncs, and they were given the scenario that they or a loved one had stage 4 lung cancer and were asked if, in that scenario, they would recommend a specific chemo regimen that had been shown NOT to be effective for that particular cancer. The survey has no relevance to the efficacy or usefulness of chemo more generally, and if anything it simply shows that oncs are not as blindly trigger-happy with the chemo as some people seem to think. When you see this claim on alternative health sites, it is invariably phrased the same way, credited as a "study" done by McGill U (which is where the conference was held) and it never has a citation for you to check the details behind it. So all these sites basically reprint from each other with zero checking. It took me some serious google hours to track down the truth about this one

Meow, I think we can all get behind that sentiment