Talk:History of cancer chemotherapy

This
This very good article needed some copyediting. I have lowercased all drug names that are not brand names, and similarly all diseases apart from the eponymous ones are lowercased on Wikipedia. I have also formatted the references, added PMIDs, and added categories. JFW | T@lk  4 July 2005 14:45 (UTC)


 * You may have removed my concluding comments by accident while correcting the references. Without this conclusion, this article becomes rather superficial and rings hollow. Combination chemotherapy has in some ways been a tremendous failure - this is not a matter of opinion but solid scientific fact and this should be brought out in a conclusion. MXPULE 4th July 2005 London.

It was deliberate. There are very few articles with concluding remarks, and skimming over it I could not find anything that hadn't been covered in the article. But please leave it in if you prefer. JFW | T@lk  4 July 2005 16:37 (UTC)

What happened to the pictures of all the doctors involved? I thought they were very interesting. Matt 16:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC).
 * They are all US government material but wikipedia keeps on deleting them - very irritating user:mxpule.Mxpule 23:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * They had no source. If Mxpule could find PD/fair use imaged we'd be grateful. JFW | T@lk  21:55, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I am not happy with this page. The history of chemotherapy implies a little history of the therapy, and this reads more like a history of chemo. I would like to see some conclusions about the relative success of the original treatment regimens. Otherwise, what's there to show that any of it helped at all?Jane 13:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC).
 * I can't really understand this comment. It is about the history of cancer chemotherapy!!!! What did you expect - a history of cancer hypnotherapy or aromatherapy? I put into the text when cancers were cured. Choriocarcinoma and Hodgkins lymphoma were universally fatal diseases before chemotherapy - what more "relative success" do you want? Have you even read the article? Mxpule 23:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)user:mxpule

This article mentions "the genetic nature of cancer" as a Scientific Truth, when there's evidence that seems to disprove that argument ( http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2006/4/prweb375398.php ). Please consider and make the following corrections, if warranted. Denvr 15:11, 5 June 2006 (UTC).
 * What planet are you from??? Cancer is largely caused by somatic genetic mutations, Mxpule 23:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)user:mxpule


 * Any other method that causes cancer does it by mutations. Viruses do the same. The link says "Many normal (non-mutated) genes exhibit a mysterious abnormal (increased or decreased) production of proteins in cancer." It's not mysterious. It happens. Anyway hard to make definitions, but I'm brave to say: without mutation there's no cancer. NCursework 06:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

personal experience
I'm new to wikipedia...

I knew most the principle actors mentioned in the article, made rounds with several (Farber, Holland, Davita.) Also worked at NCI under Zubrod... there's lots of details I could add to this...if its appropriate...

E.G.: Holland was the Chief of Medicine at Roswell Park in Buffalo in the mid Sioxties and chaired Acute Leukemia Group B, one of Zubrod's cooperative groups. He was frustrated by the brief duration of responses in breast cancer produced by the use of single agents (5FU,MTX, cyclophosphamide) give as weekly or monthly IV bolus. He was giving a talk at a community hospital outside Rochester, when a community physician approched to discuss a case and mentioned that he was giving all three drugs together and getting much better results. The combination was adopted as CMF and formed the basis for solid tumor chemotherapy.

(The reference is to Hollands first report of CMF in the Annals of Internal Medicine about 1970. The first or second author was the community physician) - User:CRoseMD1 05:20, 5 August 2006‎


 * Very interesting. Currently this article talks about POMP rather than CMF as the first combination therapy. An AIM citation for CMF would be great. - Rod57 (talk) 02:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Encyclopedic tone
Fixed a few minor grammatical things. This is a good article, but might benefit from a more "encyclopedic" tone. I did remove the statement that the lack of benefit from autologous transplant in breast cancer "dealt a severe blow to the medical oncology community". It was studied, it didn't work, and now it's not used anymore. That seems more encyclopedic. I also revised the final paragraph - death rates from the most common cancers have, in fact, dropped over the last 10 years (I added a citation to Abeloff's textbook to support this statement). Of course, a lot of this is due to prevention/screening rather than chemo, and I emphasized this in the revision. Thoughts? MastCell 17:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This is still relevant and I will attempt to help. Knittea (talk) 10:40, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Adriamycin/doxorubicin
I believe Adriamycin was another important single agent therapy in the late 50s/early 60s - this should be added as it was a precursor to the CHOP and ABVD multiple chemotherapies used to successfully treat NHL/Hodgkin's respectfully. See http://www.lymphomainfo.net/therapy/drugs/adriamycin.html for some more info. -- 08:23, 14 November 2006‎ 169.252.4.21 (talk)‎

When was the quiet period - more dates and cites needed
The lack of dates and inline citations make it hard to understand what was actually happening. The whole article seems vaguely chronological but the section names make it look like work has been grouped by topic/approach. (Maybe based on a chapters from a book ?) More inline cites and dates would clarify. A particularly confusing section is "A period of quiet" completely without dates. - Rod57 (talk) 23:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. It seems the only cancers of interest are the two totally incurable without chemotherapy.  Other cancers are mentioned only at the end -- might be good to include this clear delineation of effectiveness in the intro paragraph.  Mention is made of colon cancer, so briefly, no indication when it became common to use it after surgical removal of a tumor and nearby tissues.  This jumps from the 1940s and 50s to the 1990s in one swoop.  I am not medically trained, but wanted to know a lot more than is here about the increase in the use of chemotherapy for cancer (not just the first time) in the US and in other nations.  Was it common to use for colon cancer post surgery in 1980, for example?  Cannot be discerned from this article. --  Prairieplant (talk) 04:04, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Beginning of History: Paul Ehrlich
At the beginning stands German Paul Ehrlich was earlier. He worked on that topic already in 1906. From Ehrlich also comes the word chemotherapy. 92.74.60.141 (talk) 23:37, 15 May 2016 (UTC)