From "Elle Macpherson refused chemotherapy after secret breast cancer diagnosis/Supermodel says she is in remission after being diagnosed seven years ago and rejecting traditional medicine" (The Guardian).
ADDED: The idea that surgery is extreme is subjective. How aversive to it should we be? It made me think of the newly normalized gender affirmation surgery, bariatric surgery, and the plastic surgery done to fight the perfectly ordinary effects of age.
And I happened to see this earlier today:
Amazing Mom
— The Best (@ThebestFigen) September 1, 2024
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Check out Chris Beat Cancer for his information on beating cancer without standard medical practices. Many people have done this. But, the pharma companies don't make any money this way, so it has to be bad right?
Check out Steve Jobs.
She'll be fine until she isn't anymore. That's my prediction. I'm not going to tell her how to live however. I don't think she's setting a great example for others to follow.
Re: The Playdoh doctor. I will suggest that she will continue this for a lot longer than warranted by her son's interest. Neat videos. The luxury of time.
Play dough surgery.... coming soon to a DEI Med school program near you.
In dutiful Hack-Leftist journalism - you cannot be an anti-vaxxer.
You will be dutifully labeled a "disgraced" anti-vaxxer.
Big Pharma insists.
Life is an exercise in risk management.
My mind went to "Dead Ringers" (1988) with Jeremy Irons.
A friend of mine's girlfriend is super huge into holistic and non-traditional medicine, and I have been surprised to see (or hear) about how some of what she's attempted seems to work. Ultimately, I chalk a lot of this stuff up to the beneficial effects of making certain lifestyle choices, which these 'therapies' seem to motivate.
I'm with MadisonMan, "this stuff works until it doesn't", but there is something to be said for the 'power of positive thinking', and a lot of this stuff happens to make people feel better. Maybe that's enough some times.
Holistic dentist?
Pancreatic cancer is nearly unbeatable. There is the Whipple surgery and it doesn't always work.
Big mistake, lady. Breast cancer is very much treatable.
Not necessarily. My stepmom followed, and endured all that modern medicine has to offer for breast cancer. The tumors receeded. then came back with a vengance and she died.
chemo works until it doesnt. It also slowly kills you in the process of working.
I had a grade school friend who had prostate cancer. He told me he was going to treat it with diet. He's dead now.
You're absolutely right Chris. And going through it is just as much personal choice as meditating under your personal moon chakra while distilling periwinkle hearts for your hourly tisane infusion. If you're faced with death your belief system in what will work is intensely personal, and I support people who choose to go through chemo as much as I support periwinkle hearts. I'm not making a moral distinction between either though it might sound like I am, and someone who's dying will always have my emotional support regardless of the method they choose to fight back.
Macpherson made a lot of money from her willingness to display those breasts in public and on screen, so I can see why she’s reluctant to have surgery. I’m kind of torn — on the one hand it’s her body and she has a right (or even an obligation) to make the final, informed, choice as to the best option for treatment, but on the other hand when I see “naturopath” I wonder how well informed her decision was.
In the end it’s her body, her choice.
Good thing she went to Phoenix and not Toronto, where I imagine they’d start talking about DIME
Who died because Jobs received a donor’s pancreas — and then Jobs failed to follow through with proper treatment?
When I was younger, Elle was the most beautiful woman to me. Her freckled décolletage was mesmerizing in the grocery checkout line. And now, suddenly, she's my age and her famous breasts have gone through cancer. Weird world.
Jobs' cancer WAS beatable, because of where it was located. Could have been cut out, easy peasey.
So the lumpectomy surgery seven years ago was, fortunately, sufficient treatment for Elle's very localized stage 0 breast cancer. It's really nice that she fell within the 99% 5-year relative survival rate of the medically-treated group, and not within the 1% who don't survive for 5 years. I'm very happy for her.
Whatever happened to plain old snake oil?
Also, I love the idea of child surgeons. With those small hands they won’t have to cut as big a hole to get at stuff.
The play doh surgeon is creating fascinating stuff. Kudos to her for listening to her son and helping him to visualize what he says he wants to do when he’s older.
I witnessed a couple surgeries (open heart and skin graft) when I was in my late teens. I’m not a doctor.
I wonder how many bad techniques the play dog toddler surgeon will have to unlearn in residency. A dermatologist does not necessarily know how to do gallbladder surgery or oral surgery.
I expect Phoenix was a hedged bet. The Mayo Clinic has a large facility (including a hospital) over in Scottsdale.
She had a lumpectomy and now they are doing "watch and wait". There is nothing odd about this approach. They probably could have done some radiation of the area and hormonal therapy, but the lumpectomy sounds about right. People with actual breast cancer may read this story and draw the wrong conclusions.
This is correct. She had a rather typical surgical intervention and now she is trying to mystify it all with BS woo-woo talk. Thousands of women do the lumpectomy and move on.
Exactly, rrsafety. Cue the holistic nutters, the "Big Pharma" paranoiacs, and the "Well, the stupid doctors told my mother-in-law...but she blah blah" storytellers.
I am reaching that age where, if I got a cancer diagnosis, I would have to decide whether to take every possible and recommended treatment or not. Right now, at age 58, I would probably take the recommended treatment but that answer is going to change at age 65 and beyond. The story MacPherson tells sounds like she did the standard treatment that has allowed her to live cancer free for the last several years (the lumpectomy which is quite often successful over a 5-10 year window). I wish her luck with continued remission.
Three years ago a lesion was discovered on my pancreas. I have it checked regularly and it hasn’t expanded in size. At my age of 73, if it becomes aggressive, I will review my options but chemo will not be on the list.
Wait - she's saying she avoided surgery, but she had a lumpectomy? Good for her for getting the treatment that was advised to her, but presenting that history as "no surgery" is deceptive.
Sydney said:
“I wonder how many bad techniques the play dog toddler surgeon will have to unlearn in residency”
If her son reaches the point that he is in residency, mom will sit back and pat herself on the back for a job well done.
Some of the modern immunotherapies, keytruda as an example, are cures for some people. Traditional chemo, in contrast, gets FDA approval based on improved quality of life, not disease cure and sometimes not even extension of life. Traditional chemo is toxic to all growing cells. The problem with cancer is that the genomes of cancer cells are unstable and mutants arise that are resistant to the chemo. Immunotherapy works differently and allows the immune system to specifically target novel cancer antigens.
Fun with Gumby!
Jobs had one of the rare curable pancreatic cancers. He did foolish things like avoid Conventional treatment. I had patients who wanted to try alt medical stuff. I would OK it if they agreed to standard treatment, as well. Jobs regretted his mistake before he died.
Chris, shit happens but not all the time.
I'm not aware of chemo being successful in pancreatic cancer.
I was going to share the article with someone, but that bit set me off.
The placdbo effect.
There are two kinds of cancer - pre-metastatic and post-metastatic. Most pre-metastatic can be cured by surgery and chemo. Once the cancer metastasizes you are doomed. Life expectancies for post-metastatic cancers have not changed in 60 years. Nothing works. So, early detection is the way to beat cancer, period
Yes, because that's true of both conventional and alternative treatments.
(particularly the immunotherapy or gene-targeted treatments that all but "cure" you...for a few months)
What Michael K said.
Beware the survivors bias. Most who use alternate methods die but the press amplifies the few who live, and treat their success like a peer reviewed trial.
Des not the press suck?
"Although the list of potential nontrauma surgical emergencies is extensive, diseases of the appendix and gallbladder (appendicitis and cholecystitis) are common and unified by our ability to prophylactically remove these organs before space flight. Prophylactic surgical excision also has a negligible effect on the function and overall health of a patient. This review discusses the predicted risk of appendicitis and cholecystitis during extended-duration expeditions and the potential role for prophylactic appendectomy and cholecystectomy."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310768/
My husband had exactly what Jobs had (neuroendocrine tumor).He lived 18 years with it-not always easy, always in treatment, but an amazing life. There was no surgical cure but various traditional medicine therapies allowed me and my kids to have him for all that time. He passed in ‘22. I still don’t understand why but I have a controversial suspicion.
I thought Biden cured cancer with his "moonshot". Guess he failed, as usual.
I know several people who rejected cancer treatments. They all died.
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