Using chemo off-label is risky. And you’ll never guess how much this costs patients every year

After years working in natural medicine, the one criticism I hear more than any other is that we give false hope to cancer patients.

Personally, I know people who have lived longer, healthier and happier after choosing to incorporate natural medicine into their treatment.

But the real reason I find that argument so tragic and offensive is the way mainstream medicine treats cancer patients.

It is an ongoing experiment — and they keep changing the rules.

First, we discover that chemo causes secondary cancers. Then, we learn that chemo can actually feed some cancers. And research reveals that chemo traumatizes the brain for years.

You wouldn’t get those risks with natural medicine.

And, unfortunately, now there’s a new secret from the dirty underbelly of cancer treatment that’s even worse.

Oncologists gone wild…

Now, mainstream medicine has decided it’s somehow okay to introduce off-label use of chemo.

Off-label use of standard medicine is common. There was a time, for instance, when drug companies hyped statins as a possible dementia preventive. Some doctors actually prescribed it to patients with normal cholesterol. It was “insurance” against dementia.

That’s off-label because the FDA hasn’t approved any statin drug for dementia prevention.

But off-label use of everyday drugs is one thing. Off-label use of a harsh and dangerous drug like chemo is something else entirely.

That’s why a new chemo study is so shocking. Researchers followed prescribing records of 10 chemotherapy drugs. They found that oncologists prescribed the drugs off-label in nearly one-third of the cases!

That’s outrageous!

Now, in many of those cases, doctors followed guidelines of the National Comprehensive Care Network. But as Reuters notes, some researchers have criticized NCCN for possible conflicts of interest. So this is a slippery set of guidelines, at best. Some might be sound. Others, not so much.

But then there’s the “loose cannon” 10%.

That’s right — doctors are working on a hunch in 10% of these cases. And that’s giving doctors the benefit of the doubt. In many instances, they prescribe chemo knowing the odds of success are nil.

So — 10% — if you’re thinking that doesn’t sound like much, hang on to your hat. In the course of one year, this slim 10% accounted for $2.5 billion!

That’s an astounding amount to pay for dangerous guesswork that could do more to harm cancer patients than to help them!

One researcher told Reuters that cancer patients and their doctors are, “willing to try things where there isn’t as much data as you would like.” She says they’re, “looking for anything with a benefit.”

ANYthing? Well…no.

Oncologists would have patients believe they’d go to the ends of the earth to treat them successfully. But for most oncologists, the “earth” ends with pharmaceuticals.

For instance, they would never consider using intravenous ascorbic acid. IAA has plenty of successful cancer case studies to back up its use. But mainstreamers dismiss it as quackery. And yet, these doctors are willing to risk billions of their patients’ dollars on brutal chemotherapies that may not even have case study support.

So… Who’s preying on cancer patients now?

Sources:
“Prevalence of Off-Label Use and Spending in 2010 Among Patent-Protected Chemotherapies in a Population-Based Cohort of Medical Oncologists” Journal of Clinical Oncology, Published online ahead of print, 2/19/13, jco.ascopubs.org

“Almost one-third of chemotherapy used ‘off-label'” Andrew M. Seaman, Reuters Health, 2/19/13, reuters.com