Cancer Trials are not Trys Icon | Stage IV Capitalism: A Cured Patient is a Lost Customer

TRIALS: ARE NOT TRIES

The Hidden Cost of Hope

“We came seeking collaboration. What we got was a presentation.”

When Dara sat across from her surgical oncologist, we thought we were discussing next steps. We had made it through six rounds of chemotherapy. We expected clarity. Instead, we were introduced to HIPEC — a procedure that sounded advanced, promising, and precise.

But what we learned afterward shook us.

HIPEC — Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy was framed as innovation. What it actually was:

  • Off-label

  • Never FDA-approved

  • Not part of standard care in most cancer institutions

  • And devastatingly risky, offering marginal, if any, benefit

In Stage IV Capitalism, we expose the truth behind this “treatment” and why patients are often guided into trials that prioritize data collection over their lives.

From Spa to Surgery — A Chilling Contrast"

Most of us understand that prolonged exposure to hot water comes with limits. The FDA recommends no more than 15 minutes in a hot tub at 104°F — beyond that, the risk of harm increases rapidly.

Now compare that to HIPEC — a procedure where cisplatin, a 60 year old known Group 1 carcinogen, is heated to 109°F and poured into the abdominal cavity, where it bathes your internal organs for up to 90 minutes.

Let that sink in:

  • 15 minutes in a hot tub is a cautionary limit.

  • 90 minutes with heated poison inside your body is considered “innovative care.”

What kind of system permits that level of experimental exposure without disclosing its lack of FDA approval, or grim statistical yield over the past 45 years?

What kind of care ignores its own contradictions?

“The same chemical that demands hazmat protocols in the workplace is poured into human bodies in operating rooms and called treatment.”

This isn’t medicine advancing with precision. It’s medicine gambling with your consent.

HIPEC Benefits: Is it worth the Risk?

We built a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) of HIPEC. A safety methodology from industrial systems and what we found was chilling:

  • Survival extension: just 1.5 months on average

  • ICU admissions in 63% of cases

  • 8-10 day hospital stay

  • Infections and kidney damage are common treatment injuries

  • The drug at the center, cisplatin, is a Group 1 carcinogen

Yet this was described to us as if it were routine. Worse: no one mentioned it was still experimental, not a standard of care after 45 years of trials.

Trials Feed Systems — Not Always Patients

Clinical trials are not always about healing. They are often about publishing, funding, and sustaining institutions.

Patients become units of data, not humans.
Hope is used as leverage.
And consent, when incomplete, is no longer consent.

“In oncology, hazard becomes innovation. Data becomes the goal. And patient suffering becomes the acceptable cost of progress.”

The Pediatric Reality

If HIPEC was marketed as innovation to us, what does that say about what’s offered to children?

In pediatric oncology, trials are more often the default path. Children, who cannot consent are enrolled in protocols that are still evolving. Parents, drowning in information, are guided toward decisions they may never fully understand.

“The scariest question we had to ask outselfves: What are we doing to children?”

This is not just a medical problem. It is a moral collapse — one where systems are protected, and patients, especially the youngest, bear the cost.

Want to see the receipts?

This webpage is just a window. The full analysis including citations, failure data, ethics contradictions lives in Stage IV Capitalism, particularly:

  • Appendices E, F, G, and H

If you're a patient, caregiver, or clinician who believes medicine should serve the human before the system, start here.

Use our Consent Decoder before your next appointment

Visit the Evidence Vault for downloadable safety analyses, doublespeak keys, and full citations

Protect your child: Understand trial enrollment before you sign anything

“Before you agree to a “trial,” ask yourself: Are you the priority or the prototype?”

References