Billions Spent, Root Causes Ignored: New Review Challenges the Modern Approach to Cancer
Updated
A narrative review published in the Annals of Research in Oncology concludes that the American health care system overspends on cancer research and treatments while failing to consider alternative treatments that could be more effective and cost-efficient. The authors suggest that ultra-processed food, environmental toxins, disrupted microbiomes, chronic stress, and metabolic dysfunction are the primary causes of cancer.
The CDC says 1.8 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year in the US, with 600,000 deaths. It is the second leading cause of death, and expenses are expected to increase to more than $240 billion by 2030. The authors explain that the cost of bringing a new drug to market is $1.1 billion when accounting for drug failures. The timeline is typically more than seven years to conduct clinical trials and bring the product to market.
For this reason, the authors suggest drugs should be repurposed for cancer research to cut down the timelines, costs, and risks associated with the clinical trial phase. 22% of drug development failures are due to drug toxicity, which has already been evaluated for existing drugs. Of the 14 chemotherapy drugs approved in 2024, ten of them are only suitable for less than 2% of all cancers.
The authors point out the driving forces of cancer as dietary, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Ultra-processed foods provide too many calories with too few nutrients. They damage the gut and disrupt the microbiome. Dietary nutrient density per calorie is inversely associated with cancer risk.
The authors also mention glyphosate as an occupational exposure linked to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and also point out the wide use of the pesticide as a wheat desiccant. There has been a 15-fold increase in glyphosate use from 1994 to 2014. Eating organic food is associated with a 21% reduced risk of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.
“Cancer cells preferentially consume glucose,” the authors wrote. They explain that metabolic approaches to treating cancer should be considered as an approach that targets the potential underlying causes. Ketogenic diets are high-protein, low-carb diets that can help retain muscle mass, but studies on trials using these diets are often too short to develop a full understanding of how this treatment could help cancer patients. The authors state that 40-80% of cancer patients experience malnutrition, and high-protein diets can help counteract that issue.
Tracy Beanz reported for The HighWire in 2024 about a study that found a ketogenic diet combined with fasting was able to shrink tumors in mice.
The authors of the narrative review show optimism for ketogenic diets and the potential usefulness for treatment in cancer patients, but stress there are certain risks for some patients. For this reason, they suggest that careful patient selection is important in a clinical setting. “Any glucose-reducing plan must be introduced as investigational, preferably carried out under medical control and in a structured regimen,” the authors wrote.
The authors pointed out everyday exposures that add up. People spend the majority of their time indoors and buildings are constructed with materials that have a carcinogenic potential. Radon gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking and it leads to 21,000 deaths annually. Flame retardants in furniture are associated with more than double the risk of thyroid cancer. Air pollution causes hundreds of thousands of lung cancer cases worldwide each year.
Beauty products increase breast cancer incidence by 15% and EMF exposure greater than μT is associated with a two times increased risk of childhood leukemia. Antibiotic exposure is associated with a 37% increased cancer risk between the lowest and highest exposure groups.
More than one-third of US adults sleep for fewer than seven hours per night, which is associated with a 6% higher risk of colorectal cancer and 11% increased risk of lung cancer. Individuals with a “combined healthy lifestyle,” including diet, exercise, and sleep, have a 71% reduced risk of all cancers.
Women on hormonal birth control have a 20% higher risk of breast cancer. The HighWire reported last week about changes to Title X family planning guidelines to tackle overmedicalization and increasing body literacy.
Children born via C-section have a 25% increased risk of childhood kidney cancer, which is approximately one-third of all births in the US. Individuals who have three or more older siblings also have a reduced risk of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Leukemia.
The authors suggest that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is underutilized in the US, which is being utilized by the majority of cancer patients in the US despite receiving no institutional support for doing so. Insurance providers do not cover many of the expenses that are considered CAM, and US patients spent $30.2 billion on CAM approaches in 2012, with most of those expenses coming out of their own pockets.
CAM is institutionally supported and widely adopted in Asian countries, as the approaches are more accessible. CAM has three primary goals. The first is to prevent initial cancer or recurrence. The second is to use it as an anticancer effect, but usually alongside other treatments. The third is to alleviate side effects of cancer or cancer treatment. The authors note that the National Cancer Institute has recommended against taking antioxidant supplements during cancer therapy, as there is evidence that those who do have a lower survival rate than patients who don’t take the supplements alongside traditional chemotherapy treatments.