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Cancer is ‘natural.’ The best treatments for it aren’t

It's easy to believe that something that is "all natural" is intrinsically good. That doesn't apply to cancer treatments.
Scanning electron micrograph of a three-day old cluster of breast cancer cells.

In the early years of my career as an oncologist, I’m learning that you really remember the patients you can’t save. Those with essentially curable cancers who refused the right treatment stand out the most.

One of those is a patient I’ll call Ruth. She was only 30 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, as I learned later from her medical history. It was localized to her left breast and contained within the relatively small tumor; there were no signs it had spread to other parts of her body. With the right treatment, Ruth had about a 75 percent chance of

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