Chemotherapy Chemotherapy is the process of using various chemicals to treat diseases such as cancer. This process can be delivered by infusion through a catheter, by injection, or in tablet form. These chemicals target the cause of the disease and try to kill it off. In the case of cancer, toxic substances are used to kill rapidly dividing cancer cells. These substances alter cancer cell division or DNA function and synthesis (“Chemotherapy’). However, chemotherapy is very controversial as there is a lot of question about whether it’s worth going through or not.
Over the course of my 15 years of life, I have known several people, some of which are family members, who have gone through chemotherapy. All of which have not survived more than five years. While I am not blood related to any of the family members, chemotherapy still scares me because of what I saw them go through. The most recent family member who got cancer elected not to go through chemotherapy because he didn’t want his last few months to be torture if he was just going to die anyways.
Throughout this section, I will discuss the negatives of chemotherapy, the positives of chemotherapy, and how snake venom could be used to improve chemotherapy. Chemotherapy causes permanent damage throughout the entire body, destroys the immune system, and it can actually cause other forms of cancer because of it being a highly toxic carcinogen. Tumors can also become resistant to chemotherapeutic drugs, rendering no effect (Scogna). These drugs are also cytotoxic, which means they are also harmful to normal cells as well.
They can cause severe side effects to the good cells even though they are treating the bad cells. These ide effects can include suppression of the immune system, vomiting, nausea, hair loss, anemia, kidney damage, other tumors, liver damage, and more (Blaser). But, these side effects can generally halt as soon as treatment is complete. In the United States, chemotherapy has an average survival rate of 2. 1% (Ransom). Of course, chemotherapy works differently with different types of cancer, but the collective survival rate is still less than five percent. For example, brain cancer is not typically responsive to chemotherapy drugs. While a two percent chance of survival is extremely low, it’s still something for the patient to hold on to.
Cancer patients would rather take the chance of being in that narrow two percent, than die anyways. According to the National Cancer Institute, half of Americans will develop some kind of cancer at some point in their lifetimes. For many of these Americans, chemotherapy will be a viable option as it has the possibility of either slowing the cancer or curing it (Aldridge). However, snake venom has the potential to help chemotherapy be slightly more successful. Snake venom is produced and stored in the snake’s venom glands. Snakes are constantly producing venom, so extracting venom will not kill the snake.
It’s basically saliva with a complex mix of proteins, peptides, enzymes, toxins, and non protein inclusions. There are three types of snake venom: hemotoxic venoms, cytotoxic venoms, and neurotoxic venoms. Hemotoxic venoms impact the cardiovascular system along with the blood functions of prey. Cytotoxic venoms target specific cell sites or muscles, and neurotoxic venom harms the nervous system. The cytotoxic effects can degrade tumor cells (Vyas et al). For example, snake venom contains induction of apoptosis, which is a top component of many anti-cancer agents.
Snake venom is a popular subject in cancer research, and actually incorporating snake venom into chemotherapy may soon become a reality. If someone were to walk into a room bustling with people and yell “snake! ” What would probably happen? Most likely, frantic running and screaming would occur. No one wants to take the chance of getting bitten by a poisonous snake. While there is good reason to be afraid of getting bitten by a snake, the chances of it happening are slim to none. Snakes use venom to inhibit prey long enough for the snake to begin eating.
Venom affects the human body in various ways, depending on the type of snake and type of venom that the snake produces. The three types of venom (hemotoxic, cytotoxic, and neurotoxic) impact the human body differently (Hess). Hemotoxic lowers blood pressure and encourages blood clotting. It may also go for the heart muscle if its goal is immediate death. Cytotoxic venom causes tissue death, which is why amputations are common after being bitten. Cytotoxic venoms can also spread rapidly throughout the body, increasing muscle permeability, which in turn allows the venom to penetrate at a quicker rate.
Finally, neurotoxic venom rapidly disrupts the function of the nervous system and brain. Paralysis, lack of muscle control, disruption of signals sent between neurons and muscles, and a disruption in the body’s supply of ATP are all potential results of neurotoxic venom in the human body (Thompson). While the effects that snake venom has on the human body are rather scary, almost all hospitals and treatment centers have anti-venom for around 300 venomous snakes. Fewer than one in 37,500 people in the United States are bitten by venomous snakes each year. The probability of dying from a venomous snake bite is one in 50 million.
So, there are about 5-6 snakebite fatalities per year. To put this in perspective, someone is nine times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than to die of a venomous snakebite (Johnson). With the constant increase in medical advancements and the current trend, I can predict that the number of people who die from snakebites, in the United States, will continue to decrease. Yet, people are still deathly afraid of snakes. This is similar to the common fear of sharks. The probability of getting attacked and killed by a shark is 1 in 3,748,067 (“Marine Exhibit”).
But, people are still squeamish. So, my point is that people tend to be more afraid of snakes than they need to be. A snake will only attack a human if it feels threatened; they’re just trying to survive. And even if a snake happens to bite someone, there’s almost no chance that the victim will die. Plus, snake venom has the possibility to help with cancer, which is groundbreaking. While I found a lot of information on what snake venom could do to cancerous cells, I struggled to find information about why snake venom would be induced into chemotherapy.
It’s the big picture question: why? From the research that I conducted about snake venom and its benefits to cancerous cells, I found that snake venom possesses induction of apoptosis. Induction of apoptosis is a #1 component for anti cancer agents (Vyas et al). But, while snake venom may be effective in treating cancer, what about the other harmful effects that it does to the body? My research said that chemotherapy can often times do more harm than good, with a 2. 1% survival rate (Ransom). It can even cause cancer. Chemotherapy goes after all cells–good and bad.
This is why my family members who went through chemotherapy had significant hair loss, among other symptoms. I’ve seen many pictures of what snake venom does to the human body and I researched it too, so this takes me to my overall question: why would we want to put another harmful substance in a human body along with a cancer treatment that has a survival rate of under five percent? Snake venom may treat the cancer, but I’m unsure if it would even be necessary if chemotherapy will just cause cancer all over again along with many other painful effects.
A potential answer to this question could be how the chemotherapy components react with the snake venom components to create a less harmful treatment. Although, since snake venom isn’t officially used in chemotherapy, more research needs to be done on the interaction between the two substances. For my application, I wanted to create a visual of how chemotherapy interacts with cancerous cells. To do this, I used Windows Movie Maker. This process was anything but short and it was extremely easy for me to get frustrated as the movie maker would not cooperate.
I also spent hours trying to convert the WLMP file to a file that was supported, so that | could share it. I originally wanted to make an interactive simulation, but there wasn’t any software that I could find that didn’t require a monthly subscription. I am happy with how it turned out, as it put more of a visual to the process of chemotherapy inside the body. Throughout making this video, I learned that I am not very good with computers. But, more importantly, I learned more about how chemotherapy looks while it’s interacting with cancerous cells. I am a visual and interactive learner, so this helped me to really absorb the content.