Treating the Patient, Not Just the Cancer

Abstract

Progress in chemotherapy has produced cures in advanced Hodgkin's disease and other lymphomas, metastatic testicular cancer, and several childhood cancers. These cures are obtained at the price of considerable toxicity, but both patients and their physicians are willing to accept a high risk of toxicity if there is a definite chance of cure. Unfortunately, most of the common solid tumors of adults cannot as yet be cured once they have metastasized to other sites. Anticancer drugs may kill a proportion of the malignant cells in many of these cancers, leading to a shrinkage of tumor masses that is often referred . . .