It is a tricky matter to select the best course of action with these things. First mantra of course is to "do no harm", which is certainly something we kept in mind a lot during the last couple of months with Tazzie. But, when a vet or oncologist dismisses an alternative drug because it is not proven, well, at least in our case they themselves were using 'unproven' therapies that they personally felt were best even though there was no evidence as yet (and in some cases there was evidence against their personal preference).

For example, our oncologist from summer felt that Cisplatin was starting to be shown to outperform Carboplatin, plus the combined chemo regime (Cisplatin/Doxy) vs. the single drug regime of Carboplatin, even though she says papers are not really out yet that document this (certainly there are older papers that compared these drugs so I'm not sure what the difference would be). Yet the evidence does not really seem to show support for that and I don't think it was necessarily that wise given the side effects are worse for most dogs with Cisplatin and Doxyrubin than with Carboplatin.

Another oncologist who helped us in September from long-distance, thanks to Maximutt and his fleet of Drs, is doing research on metronomics and includes the diabetes drug Actos because it has the potential to cut off the sugar supply to the cancer. Yes, she is in the process of collecting data and it seems reasonable and we did it (and I think it was probably wise and would recommend it to others). I am just saying that while people should definitely be alert to potential problems of wasting lots of time and money on unproven therapies as Jake's Mom says, it is certainly not as though all the therapies used or preferred by the oncologists are proven either.

Lots of "our" dogs are involved in studies, some of which may obtain promising results, but others will not. If something is logical, has some promising results, is affordable, and does no harm or prevents other worthwhile courses of action, why not? On that basis, I selected metronomics and also Artemisinin after Tazzie got his met.