MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Abstract: Every year, approximately two hundred thousand females are diagnosed with breast cancer. Responses to breast cancer treatments over the years have changed drastically, along with the theories as to how the cancer exists in the body. Modern treatments have proven to be highly effective in battling the disease, as the survival rate has reached 41 percent as of 2014. When faced with the decision of how to respond to a diagnosis, breast cancer patients are presented a series of possible treatment options. The four options compared and contrasted in this paper are chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and surgery. Chemotherapy means the general idea of using cell-killing drugs to prevent cancer proliferation. Discovered in 1896, radiation therapy uses high-energy light at wavelengths much lower than the visible spectrum in order to kill cancer cells. The relatively recently discovered immunotherapy means using biological agents to create certain signals in the body in response to the cancer cells. Finally, surgery, though limited by an inability to fully kill cancer, has become a good way to kill cancer cells with the use of technology to pinpoint the growth. All of these methods have been proven to work in different situations, but each has their limitations and strength. This paper will explore each method and contrast them.

Reader Profile: I imagine the reader to be a recently diagnosed cancer patient. The purpose of this paper is to hopefully allow the patient to make a decision as to what the optimal treatment should be.

Response: The reader could say, “Couldn’t I have just asked my doctor this?” Or they could say that cancer is very specific to the patient. No amount of explaining each treatment method could tell a family with a cancer patient what to do when cancer is a very specific disease. Sometimes some treatments will work and other times they will not. Additionally, the reader could point out that age is not taken into consideration here.

M,

For the reluctant reader, this document can help fill the gap between appointments, as well as guide the questions to be asked in the appointments.

This sentence may not fit with the optimism you note:
Modern treatments have proven to be highly effective in battling the disease, as the survival rate has reached 41 percent as of 2014.

That is over all, right? Many b. cancers have better rates? Also, we generally need to know the years out, not just the survival rate.