Will we one day look back on chemotherapy and radiation therapy as barbaric?

I've heard people say that before – that 50 or 100 years from now, the idea of giving people poisons and radiation to get rid of cancers will be seen as barbaric or bizarre. Weinstock says this is certainly possible. "I'm a medical oncologist. I give chemotherapy, I think radiation is kind of crazy, right? You're basically just taking a beam of radioactive energy and focusing it on an area.... I hope that 100 years from now yes, we look back and say all the stuff we're doing now is barbaric."

On the other hand, radiation therapy may actually be becoming more successful. When I spoke with Dr. Sartor, he was in San Francisco presenting a paper at an oncology conference about Radium-223, an element that he says will "kill pretty much any cancer you aim it at." As of now, it's limited to use in osteoplastic bone metastasis, but if we learn how to target it with other types of cancer, it could have a huge application.

Like some of the other doctors I spoke to, Agus wants to see cancer become more like a chronic disease, like diabetes. And as part of that, he wants to see a shift in mindset that goes along with referring to cancer as a verb, instead of a noun: "You're cancering."