The earlier posts wishing for more aggressive treatments in the past should be read in conjunction with later posts about the realities of overtreatment.
One of the difficult realities of cancer treatment is that everything comes with tradeoffs. It can be frustrating to work with doctors who aren't eager to apply every possible treatment at the earliest possibility, but those doctors also know the downsides and risks of those same treatments.
As I'd noted above, I think that's the most valuable and insightful article of Jake's series. Some really powerful messages, both on the medical side (what does and doesn't work, and how and why) and the psychological one (people in desperate circumstances virtually always cling to hope and agency).
(I'm wanting to do a proper write-up of that but am still organising my own thoughts. Meantime I can just strongly urge people to read the piece.)
Specifically, the post titled "More isn’t always better: death and over-treatment as a downside of agenticness" https://jakeseliger.com/2024/07/29/more-isnt-always-better-d...
One of the difficult realities of cancer treatment is that everything comes with tradeoffs. It can be frustrating to work with doctors who aren't eager to apply every possible treatment at the earliest possibility, but those doctors also know the downsides and risks of those same treatments.