Unfortunately, dramatic and obvious improvements in treatment like these are rare. After the results in Hodgkin’s disease were published, the principle of using high dose combinations was applied to other types of cancer. A few types showed a similarly dramatic improvement in results but for many it was much less spectacular or nonexistent. For example, about one in three people with extensive breast cancer gain a remission with single chemotherapy drug treatment and their average length of life is about nine months. About two in three people get remissions with combination chemotherapy and their average length of life is about twenty-one months, none are completely cured. In cancer of the large bowel and most types of lung cancer, no combinations of drugs results in people living any longer, on average, than those who have no anti-cancer treatment at all. Combinations using the drug cis-platinum are far less effective against other types of cancer than they are against testicular cancer.
How have cancer specialists reacted to the fact that dramatic breakthroughs in treatment are rare and usually only apply to a few particular types of cancer? They have reacted by spending a lot of their own time and energy and a lot more of their patients much more precious time, energy, and comfort trying to prove very small differences between treatments. They look for differences that are ‘statistically significant’, that is, unlikely to be due to chance. ‘Statistically significant’ does not mean significant for people, as you will soon see.
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