Radiotherapy treatment - no national standards

There are no national standards for radiotherapy treatment. Extraordinary as it seems, after 50 or so years of medical practice, we still don't know when radiation is most effective for dealing with cancers.

In some cases, radiotherapy used as an adjuvant (just in case) therapy to prevent local recurrances does produce better results (that is, fewer local recurrances) than current surgery. But this does not in any way increase survival time. Therefore, many protocol adding radiotherapy to either chemotherapy or surgery must take into account that it probably won't prolong your life and could cause a myriad of crippling side effects. If you are young you should also take into account the known risks of ionizing radiation in causing cancer. Any radiation aimed toward your breast could give you breast cancer.Of the conventional approaches, conservative surgery on its own remains one of the best and safest of treatments (see p 1).

Immunotherapy experiments with interleukin and vaccines appear to be pie in the sky approaches with no proven success.

Of the alternatives, germanium appears to have the most scientific evidence of success, while shark cartilage appears to have the least toxicity. A comprehensive approach combining diet works best (see vol 7 no 3).