I would be hesitant to cite a 2004 article on cancer. Back then the cancer I dealt with had a survival rate of about 50%. By using genetic information of the cells, different poisons, learning to do dose adjusted administration and introducing monoclonal antibodies the current 5 year survival rate of anybody not already elderly is in the 90's. Studies are just now coming out to show this, yet my oncologist called it more than a handful of years ago.

Yes, chemo is expensive and it does poison your body. My treatments were about $500k, including tons of scans, weeks of hospital stays, and even an emergency surgery to check out a cyst just in case. But chemo works because the cancer cells metabolize things way faster than the rest of you. Docs carefully monitor things to make sure your tumor is dying while your body suffers minimal harm, considering. And monoclonal antibodies seem to be the next big thing in treatment. Expect to see more drugs ending in -mab to be introduced as they learn how to target more cancer types. Maybe one day they'll end the use of chemo entirely. That would make things so much easier on people.