Vanishing Act

When most people think of cancer, they don’t think of the disease vanishing without treatment. But that is exactly what new evidence is pointing to—cancers can vanish without treatment!

Don’t stop your treatment just yet though. So far, there is only data (from The Journal of the American Medical Association) that shows breast cancer and prostate cancer may disappear on their own. Furthermore, it’s tricky to decide if and when to stop treatments. On the brighter side, it is very promising that doctors and researchers alike are admitting that cancer does have the potential to go backward and stop. While there are still many skeptics, Dr. Robert M. Kaplan, chairman of the department of health services at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, states this about disappearing tumors: “At the end of the day, I’m not sure how certain I am about this, but I do believe it. The weight of the evidence suggests that there is reason to believe.”

Much more research is needed to fully understand the current state of cancer; however, its dynamic nature could lead to its own future demise.

To learn more:
Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How?

Rethinking Screening for Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer

Image Credit: The New York Times and Dana Neely/Corbis