For my unit-long series I decided to focus my research on whether or not immunotherapy is a better choice than chemotherapy for cancer patients. For years on end the universal solution that first comes to mind when we hear the word “cancer” has been chemotherapy. However, in recent years a new treatment called immunotherapy has begun surfacing and gaining more momentum in the medical world.
Now this investigation is taking a turn. As the pros and cons of immunotherapy become more well-known, the real question is this: Is immunotherapy a more effective treatment than chemotherapy?
Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a network of hospitals focused on treating cancer, stand behind their claims that immunotherapy is more effective than chemotherapy because patients treated with immunotherapy often surpass their prognosis, while patients treated with chemotherapy do not. According to CTCA, those (patients) who received [immunotherapy] lived nearly twice as long (14.9 months) as those who received [chemotherapy] alone (8.2 months).” This conclusion comes from a study that compared the effect of immunotherapy versus the effect of chemotherapy on cancer patients.
Other supporters range all the way from patients that have done their research and are willing to try a new approach to their disease, to researchers who claim that the types of immunotherapy being developed are the future of how cancer will be treated.
In the other hand, some doctors such as Dr. Reeja Tharu, a Biomedical Genetics doctor with a Ph.D. form the University of Madras, dedicate their career to spread the positive aspects of chemotherapy, for example how “in the case of advanced-stage cancer, chemotherapy helps to shrink the cancer and reduce the symptoms… [which provides] a better quality of life and increase the chance of survival.”
Opponents also range widely, from insurance companies who reject immunotherapy because the success rate isn’t high enough for it to be distribute to the public, to doctors who don’t want to risk their patients’ lives by subjecting them to experimental drugs.
I consider this debate to be of extreme relevance because for decades, humanity has been waiting for the cure for cancer to finally be found and announced, but this day never seems to come. Now, however, we seem to have a pretty good lead in that direction based on all the research and claims made about immunotherapy. Although immunotherapy is being used to treat cancer patients with more frequency than before, the fact remains that chemotherapy is our tried and true, go to cancer treatment that has proved to be effective and mostly trustworthy up until this point.
Can immunotherapy beat chemotherapy’s results and survival rate? Or is chemotherapy still the best path for patients to take on their journey to remission? These are the questions that I want to explore throughout the rest of this unit and hopefully inform myself enough that I can take a stand and support one of the two sides of this debate.
Immunotherapy 