Last month Suzanne Somers was flapping her over-inflated lips — and speaking of huge lips, nice jeans Suzanne! — about Patrick Swayze and how chemotherapy basically killed him. It’s no surprise that she has a book out this month (her 19th), “Knockout”, which is about seeking alternative methods to treating cancer.
It’s great that Suzanne Somers wants to explore non-traditional approaches to deal with her own health. But she also claims that chemotherapy isn’t effective in treating lung and breast cancer. Somers survived breast cancer after a lumpectomy and radiation.
The American Cancer Society is concerned.
“I am very afraid that people are going to listen to her message and follow what she says and be harmed by it,” says Dr. Otis Brawley, the organization’s chief medical officer. “We use current treatments because they’ve been proven to prolong life. They’ve gone through a logical, scientific method of evaluation. I don’t know if Suzanne Somers even knows there IS a logical, scientific method.”
More broadly, Brawley is concerned that in the United States, celebrities or sports stars feel they can use their fame to dispense medical advice. “There’s a tendency to oversimplify medical messages,” he says. “Well, oversimplification can kill.”
Suzanne Somers needs to shut her mouth. She’s certainly entitled to an opinion, but she’s a celebrity and there are some whackos out there who will make medical decisions based on what Suzanne Somers has to say. Frightening, but true. Saying that chemo isn’t effective in the battle against cancer is wholly irresponsible. People’s lives have been saved by that poison.
And regarding the whole Swayze snafu, Somers issued your basic, insincere apology to his family: “I shouldn’t have said anything. I apologized to his family. We all know that chemotherapy does nothing for pancreatic cancer.”
Look at all that sun damage on her chest! Anyone who follows Suzanne Somer’s “medical” advice over their doctor’s or oncologist’s…well that might be natural selection at work.
ummm. I understand you exist to give out your opinion. So saying someone else needs to shut their mouth for giving out their opinion is ironic. If someone wants to use Suzanne Somers as their only medical advisory…..as the post above says…natural selection. She is not responsible for the dumbest. And by the way, I took care of a woman who got chemo for breast cancer. She died anyway because the chemo gave her leukemia. She spent the last year of her life totally suffering…not from cancer, but the affects of chemo and leukemia it gave her. But hey, it killed the breast cancer!! If Suzanne brings anything to light is that chemo is not always the answer and perhaps needs to be used as a last resort. Maybe the woman is off center at times and not everything she says is worth following. But what probably would have saved my patient was a total breast removal and radiation. But the doctor peddled chemo as the way to go. Yaaa, Western medicine! It’s about time other forms of medicine become incorporated with Western medicine.
wow, that is very sad to hear that woman lost her battle not to the breast cancer but to the treatment.
that is not at all uncommon.
You are correct that the chemo / radiation can have side effects that wind up killing the patient before the cancer does! My former boss died last year from the pneumonia he developed while undergoing chemotherapy.
Many of us know that chemo is basically poisoning in the hope that the cancer cells will die before the person dies.
Someday we’ll have better ways to target the cancer cells only and eventually chemo will probably be seen as one of those barbaric treatments.
Mastectomies themselves used to be much more disfiguring and drastic until doctors realized that you could accomplish the same thing by removing less tissue.
This was a huge debate not that long ago and doctor’s staked their reputations on one postition or another.
So to think that Suzanne Sommers is wrong and should keep her mouth shut is doing her and people who want to look at new and alternative treatments is to show an ignorance of the recent past as well as the present trends in cancer treatments.
And people who are unhappy with the “traditional” treatments, which haven’t been around very long and are constantly evolving anyway, are going to keep investigating their options regardless of what Suzanne says.
Your boss may have died from his cancer earlier if he hadn’t received any treatment at all. Cancer rarely just sits there. It grows and grows. Death from cancer isn’t pretty whether you have treatment or not.
Chemo IS the way to go if the cancer has already spread to the lymph nodes. Mastectomy & radiation won’t do a thing for a person if cancer cells have already traveled out of the breast.
Lymph node involvement is determined from doing an axillary dissection (removing lymph nodes from under the arm) and looking at the removed nodes through a microscope to see if there are cancer cells present. Lymph node involvement can also be determined by doing a “sentinel node” biopsy when removing the tumor. A dye is injected into the area of the tumor and the first lymph node to take up the dye is removed and tested for cancer cells. If there are cancer cells present, you can be sure cancer cells have already reached the lymph system and circulated through the person’s body.
There are many different ways to treat breast cancer, and many factors determine the way that would be best suited for the patient. Not all breast cancers are equal, some tumors grow when exposed to the female hormones estrogen and progestin and some don’t. Therefore, if your tumor is “hormone receptive” you may need hormone blockers to keep any cancer cells from growing. Of course, these are not without side effects, just like chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Hormone receptors are just ONE test that will be done on breast tumors to help determine the best treatment modality. There is also a test to see if the tumor is genetic and a chemo drug is made specifically for that type of tumor.
Chemotherapy is always ultimately up to the patient. Fortunately, many doctors give patients the statistics based on their type of breast cancer and let the patient decide. It is then up to the patient to weigh the odds of the cancer returning against the potential side effects of the chemo. Not every patient will develop leukemia from chemo, but it is a possibility. Each patient needs to educate themselves about their specific type of cancer and ask many questions. If they don’t trust their doctor, they should find one they do trust.
Until you walk a mile in a breast cancer patient’s shoes, you will never know what you would do. It is totally different when it is YOUR life at stake. You seem to have seen the worst-case scenario involving breast cancer & chemo. Your patient may have known the odds and chose to try chemo anyway. Dying from untreated breast cancer is not without suffering, either.
Is she morphing into Donatella?
HAHA! What homeopathic concoctions can she take to get rid of the CAMELTOE!
Nice elephant toe, Suzanne!!!
Some people will follow Suzanne Somers’ advice. Others will do what “God” or their “guardian angel” tell them or what they learned in a dream or read in some other quack’s book.
People will always make choices in ways that seem to other people to be stupid or foolish. But it’s their right to do so.
I’m pretty holistic when it comes to my health. There are certain medical problems that traditional medicine hasn’t been able to help with- that I’ve found remedies for elsewhere. This doesn’t mean that my GP is incompetent or that science can’t heal.
Something else I’ve learnt is that if you’ve found benefit in something, that doesn’t mean other people will too. Tell the world how fantastic you feel, but don’t start telling other people how they should handle their own health.
As my Dad says, opinions are like arse holes – everyone has one!
Suzanne…Sweetie…Shut the F**K up…Thank you…
Yes, she’s entitled to her opinion. I have no problem with that.
But that half-assed apology to the Swayze’s basically just proves that she’s a bitch. And they’re “ain’t” no cure for that.
I once had my wisdom teeth out. That does not make me qualified to dole out advice about dental surgery.
Luckily, no one would listen to me if I tried to do that. But then I haven’t published a book, nor have I been invited by that self-righteous wind bag Oprah to come on her show and spread my half-baked opinions to her steadily dwindling (but still huge) viewership. The appearance of credibility can be very dangerous.
For being as old as my mom, Suzanne is hott! And like others posted I love her toe!
@Evil overload , follow your own advise- you obviously need some treatment ,judging on the level of your anger LOL
I have read one of your books and all she says is well knows facts that simply underestimated and not appreciated in the States anymore, because its is all controlled by brainwashing corporations. but it is still topical and popular in Europe and the rest of the WORLD!
I know one thing that book done for us- it made my man understand me better and made our relationship so clear now. i mean absolutely zero misunderstandings , which can go longer then a seconds to resolve.
I have to give her a respect for that. anyone who cares for others and ready to contribute to the society could write that book. so she was the one.
Thanks Suzanne!