Popular cancer drugs increase risk of death, study finds

Saturday, February 05, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: drugs, death risk, health news

(NaturalNews) A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has revealed that the popular cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab) raises patients' risk of death by up to 350 percent when combined with chemotherapy. Designed to stop the production of new blood vessels in the body, and thus the spread of cancer cells, Avastin is also responsible for causing blood clots in legs and lungs when used as directed.

Vishal Ranpura and doctors from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York analyzed a series of 16 previously published randomized controlled trials involving more than 10,000 patients with tumors to see how Avastin was related to fatal adverse events (FAE). Depending on the combination of treatments, Avastin was linked with a significantly higher risk of FAEs, especially when combined with other conventional cancer treatments.

"Compared with chemotherapy alone, the addition of bevacizumab was associated with a 1.5 times increased risk of FAEs," states the study. "Bevacizumab was associated with a 3.5 times increased risk of FAEs in patients receiving taxanes or platinum agents (two specific forms of chemotherapy)."

Previous studies have identified other types of serious harm caused by Avastin, including one study published in the journal The Lancet Oncology that found that the drug literally punctures a hole in the wall of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, which can lead to death (https://www.naturalnews.com/026549_cancer_dru...). And in 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that Avastin can cause a rare form of brain bleeding that leads to serious headaches, seizures, blindness, and severe neurological disorders (https://www.naturalnews.com/020558_Avastin_Ge...).

Even without Avastin, chemotherapy itself kills thousands of people every year, while providing little if any benefit in actually eliminating cancer. Various studies have found that chemotherapy destroys brain tissue and cognitive function, as well as the entirety of a person's immune system. And chemotherapy does not even work to eliminate cancer in most cases, as the cancer it supposedly eliminated typically returns within a few years and becomes even more deadly (https://www.naturalnews.com/chemotherapy.html).

Sources for this story include:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110202/hl_afp/...