Why Isn't There an Anti-Oncology Movement?

Happy Fourth of July to all of our readers!

We will be posting a podcast later today--we kept this one short and sweet at just over 15 minutes.


We've talked quite a bit here about Anti-Psychiatry sentiment, and I keep wondering why psychiatry alone gets such controversy.  Oh, I think people are frustrated with other areas of medicine, and doctor bashing has become a popular past time, but I'm not aware that any other sub-specialty has an organized "anti" movement.  

Here's why I think that oncology might be a good candidate:


Like psychiatry, the treatments are not guaranteed: they may work, they may not.  

The treatments have horrible side effects: vomiting, hair loss, nerve damage, chemo brain, organ damage, cardiotoxicity, loss of body parts from surgery, infertility, and the list goes on.

They are never given involuntarily, you say, but I assure you there are patients who are cajoled and guilted into some pretty toxic treatments even when their chances of meaningful recovery may be quite low.  And a patient in a hospital who tries to refuse care and check out may well end up having a psychiatry consult called to assess their competence to make decisions.

Treatment is extremely expensive.   If you thought Abilify costs a lot, try Avastin at $88,000 a year, or Provenge which prolongs life by an average of 4 months and costs $93,000.


My best guess?  I think we're so conditioned to think of Cancer as deadly and terrifying that those who survive the illness and the treatment are 'programmed' to believe they must be thankful, and those who don't are too dead to complain.  Leslie will tell us it's because there is no formalized mechanism for involuntary treatment, and Rob will tell us that it's because there are known pathological mechanisms which dictate that cancer is real.  Is that totally true?  Don't we think that there are people who have early-stage breast and prostate cancers that likely won't progress to fatal diseases who are still subjected to disfiguring and toxic treatments in a mass sweep to decrease mortality rates?


Oh, my, not a very holiday-esque post!  And I don't have it in for the oncologists at all, I was just wondering.