History and Future

of

Chemotherapy

How did Chemotherapy start and where is it going?

Chemotherapy.  What an amazing invention.  The origins of chemotherapy have been well documented.  I don't know too much about it but I will do my best.  Way back in the 2nd world war, a cargo ship full of mustard was accidentally hit by a missile.  Needless to say, the ship, which was unarmed, was destroyed and the mustard on board was sent flying into the air in a gaseous state.  A doctor, forgot his name, noticed an increase in patients who were feeling overly tired and he also noticed some patients who were injured during the war and whose bleeding would not stop flowing from their wounds.  He deduced that this must have been from something that had happened closeby.  This doctor knew about this ship that blew up and it's contents, so he figured it must have been mustard gas.
He started on some statistics reports with this mustard gas.  And found it to be very effective in destroying bone marrow.  Hence, chemotherapy was born.  This was all in an experimental phase for the next 25 years.  In 1966, or 67, the first chemo treatment was born.  (Please forgive me if I have the dates wrong).  Before this time, Leukaemia was considered a fatal disease but hard working doctors and scientists discovered this fantastic treatment that gives one his/her life back.
As of recently, there is a new chemotherapy which was developed in France called IcE.  I forgot what the letters stand for but it is abbreviated for the names of 3 drugs.  It produces less side effects and more chance of remission.


In the future, we can expect all sorts of miracles to evolve.  A new treatment for tumours and Cancerous growths is something called the Cyber-Knife.  Only a handful of hospitals in the whole world carry this technology today but with funds raised by the different Cancer groups around the world, we can expect more of these miraculous tools to be in more hospitals to save more lives.  Now what does a cyber knife do?  Well I'll tell you.  The cyberknife is operated by a robotic arm which is connected to a computer.  A doctor takes a computer scan of the area with the tumour in it and inputs it into the cyber-knife.  The cyber-knife works in 3 dimensions.  Once this information is stored, the cyber-knife goes to work on the tumour with about 120 different shots of a radio-active laser penetrating the tumour.  This is so accurate that the patient is not too move during this whole procedure.  Once the tumour is destroyed, the white cells gather around what's left of it and quickly pick away all the dead bits and destroy them.  This is in use today but is very expensive and very hard to find since there are not that many hospitals with this kind of technology.  But this technology will only evolve with the publics and the governments help with funding.  Doctors and scientist cannot work for free.
 
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