One of the most common, and often the best way to treat cancer is with surgery, aimed at removing as much cancerous tissue from the patient as possible. In the history of cancer treatment, variously "radical" surgical procedures have been tried as the best or surest way to preserve life. Up until the 1970's, the most radical surgery imaginable was still occasionally performed for very extensive and malignant tumors: hemicorpectomy. The word means "removal of half the body", and involved removal - amputation - of the pelvis and both legs. This drastic procedure was only conducted (after obtaining informed consent) on very sick people who knew they were certainly doomed without surgery.
Almost all of those who survived the operation (many didn't) died of their cancer anyway, often within months, but everybody, doctors and patients alike, at least had the feeling that as much was being done as humanly possible. But after surgery, all of those patients existed in a living Hell. Not only were they mutilated and confined to a wheelchair, at best. They no longer had normal bladder or bowel function - which was enabled with messy and problematic artificial outlets - and they frequently still had considerable, sometimes intractable, pain. Advances in chemotherapy and radiation began to make such a procedure increasingly unnecessary, but the shift to more conservative surgery was also largely prompted by the realization that, for most people, simply extending life was not a beneficial outcome if the quality of life was so severely degraded - the cost, in well-being, too far outweighed even the potential benefit. Today, hemicorpectomy is a thing of the past. People still die of cancer, fewer than before, to be sure, but it's still a frequent outcome. But when they do, it's with the help of a medical profession which is keenly aware that the quality of life is, for most people, a very high priority, and if suffering need be inflicted, it must be kept to a minimum. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we have to do it. We have to consider the patient, the whole patient, and that sometimes means that doing less is better.
I am reminded of hemicorpectomy when I observe our involvement and fate in Iraq, and all of the spin-offs of that involvement. This is not even a case of "the operation was successful, but the patient died." The operation has yet to yield robust results, results which can stand the test of time. And the operation is on-going. More and more is being amputated, not only in Iraq, but in the United States, too. Lives and liberties are being lost in the most painful manner imaginable, namely, without tangible benefit. And all this at horrible financial cost, as well. What will it take for us to stop, and how can we do it? It's already too late, and we're in too far to get out easily, but it gets "too later" daily.