Colleagues worked in some project for cancer research where they connected terminally ill patient with certain studies. Most of these studies did the same thing, sequencing DNA of the cancer and then finding the right combination of medicines. It turned out that sometimes the treatment was too successful with the right combination, and it killed all cancer cells in a very short time. This was also bad outcome as it was very toxic. Anyway a bunch of people with very late stages did survive all of this and are now cancer free. So now the researchers try to match the DNA with the right amount of treatment to strike a balance.
I’ve not really educated myself on the details of cancer treatments (I’m fortunate I’ve not had to learn yet), so my uneducated assumption was that chemo always did something for cancer, it was more a matter of weighing how much it helped fight the cancer vs. the harm it did to the otherwise healthy tissue/organs.
I wouldn’t have guessed the there are types of cancer where chemo just wouldn’t work at all.
Unfortunately, chemotherapy is still the best thing to treat many cancers.
We need to try harder to find other treatments. Poisoning the body is quite an unpleasant experience.
Nice to be able to avoid it if it's not going to help you
I've always been certain that if I got cancer, I wouldn't even bother trying chemo; a test like this completely changes the calculus.
I thought the same, until I got cancer (stage 4 even, so the chemo wasn't curative). I don't know if I was lucky or it was the type of chemo, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. It's been nearly five years since diagnosis and I'm very happy I got treatment. Considering the fact that I have incurable cancer, my life is spectacularly good!
Based on personal experience, I believe that when confronted with the reality of a terminal diagnosis and chemotherapy is the available option, one's perspective often shifts—most people will choose to do whatever it takes to preserve their life.
I was quite ready to die (after stage 4 dx), but I thought "What the heck, let's give it a go. I've always been curious what it is like." It turned out to be much less horrible than I expected and nearly five years later I'm still alive.
I figure that if it really does get that bad you can just stop the Chemo.
That doesn't undo the trauma of spending your last days poisoning yourself and feeling terrible, being remembered like that, etc. Those are dice which, prior to this test (if reliable!), I would never want to roll.
Unfortunately also most chemo isn't very effective. Some chemo like for testicular cancer is pretty great. But a lot of times the chemo is "statistically shown to extend life" but it's literally a few weeks longer or a month.
Not that the time isn't worth it. But there is a lot of suffering involved.