Friday Favorites: How Effective Is Chemotherapy? And How Much Does It Improve Survival?

Date: 2025-08-01 11:59:49

×

Most chemo drugs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration without evidence of benefit on survival or quality of life. If you put together all the new chemo drugs that had been approved over a dozen years, the average overall survival benefit is only 2.1 months.

What about preventing cancer in the first place? See:
• How Effective Is Chemotherapy? (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-effective-is-chemotherapy/)
• Fighting the Ten Hallmarks of Cancer with Food (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/fighting-the-ten-hallmarks-of-cancer-with-food/)
• How Not to Die from Cancer (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die-from-cancer/)
• Diet and Lifestyle for Cancer Prevention and Survival (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/diet-and-lifestyle-for-cancer-prevention-and-survival/)
• How Much Does Chemotherapy Improve Survival? (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-much-does-chemotherapy-improve-survival/)

This video first appeared in a webinar on Fasting and Cancer. You can now watch the recording of that webinar (https://nutritionfacts.org/webinar/fasting-cancer/), which includes a Q&A.

How Effective Is Chemotherapy? (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-effective-is-chemotherapy/)

How can we help prevent cancer in the first place? See, for example, The Best Diet for Colon Cancer Prevention (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-best-diet-for-colon-cancer-prevention/) and others on the cancer topic page (https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/cancer/).

New subscribers to our e-newsletter always receive a free gift. Get yours here: https://nutritionfacts.org/subscribe/.

Have a question about this video? Leave it in the comment section at http://nutritionfacts.org/video/friday-favorites-how-effective-is-chemotherapy-and-how-much-does-it-improve-survival and someone on the NutritionFacts.org team will try to answer it.

Want to get a list of links to all the scientific sources used in this video? Click on Sources Cited at https://nutritionfacts.org/video/friday-favorites-how-effective-is-chemotherapy-and-how-much-does-it-improve-survival. You’ll also find a transcript and acknowledgements for the video, my blog and speaking tour schedule, and an easy way to search (by translated language even) through our videos spanning more than 2,000 health topics.

Thanks for watching. I hope you’ll join in the evidence-based nutrition revolution!
-Michael Greger, MD FACLM

Captions for this video are available in several languages; you can find yours in the video settings. View important information about our translated resources: https://nutritionfacts.org/translations-info/

https://NutritionFacts.org
• Subscribe: https://nutritionfacts.org/subscribe
• Donate: https://nutritionfacts.org/donate
• Podcast : https://nutritionfacts.org/audio
• Books: https://nutritionfacts.org/books
• Shop: https://drgreger.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NutritionFacts.org
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nutrition_facts
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nutrition_facts_org