Chemotherapy success rates - where the numbers come from

The next time someone tells you "this chemo has a ____ percent success rate," I just want you to consider something I learned from experience.

When I was about eight years old, I was in one of those chemo trials at a pharmaceutical company in Farmington, Connecticut.

It was a paid study using children. Back then, people weren't just willingly putting their kids into medical trials for a free prescription. You actually had to pay them.

The research appeared impeccable. They gave us the chemo starting within an hour of entering the building, and then spent the rest of several weeks continuing treatment and testing our physical and neurological function to see if it was being impaired.

At the end, I was listed as a success because they found no cancer.

So, I became that original "____ percent success rate" that gives cancer patients hope. I think it was low back then, maybe a 5% success rate.

The problem? My "mother" had experience and access in the medical field and needed money for her addiction and side projects. She had forged the paperwork to get me in. She did it with a lot of illnesses and trials over the years.

I didn't have cancer when entering that trial as a cancer patient. There had been no cancer for them to cure.


For me, it was an abusive nightmare, but for real cancer patients depending on that research to be accurate, it may be a death sentence.


And I wasn't a fluke case. She had been recruiting friends with financial woes to do the same thing with their kids. One of my friends, a child of a couple from her social circles, was in that exact trial with me.

I doubt she's even the only con artist with access out there. People in the medical field have a high rate of addiction. When they see "free money offers" on their desk, some of them will take it as an opportunity, and will happily change a test result on a form to do so.

Last Edited by TlvmmCpoft on 09/10/2019 09:40 AM