Radiation Treatment

Home » Cancer Treatment Options » Radiation Treatment

The use of high-energy radiation from x-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, protons, and other sources to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation may come from a machine outside the body (external-beam radiation therapy), or it may come from radioactive material placed in the body near cancer cells (internal radiation therapy or brachytherapy). Systemic radiotherapy uses a radioactive substance, such as a radiolabeled monoclonal antibody, that travels in the blood to tissues throughout the body.

Get the latest on radiation treatment from the National Cancer Institute

Note: This article is aimed at bringing balance to the debate about Radiation use in cancer treatment. I’m not trying to dissuade you from having this treatment as it might be of some help, depending on your situation. I’m simply providing unbiased, independent information that you might otherwise not be made aware of, but which may be helpful to you.

Quick Summary
Research shows that Radiation:

shows a small to modest survival benefit in some instances
may help with symptom relief or local disease control
may help shrink obstructive tumours
sometimes causes secondary cancers
often causes lethal heart or lung damage
sometimes makes cancer more aggressive and lethal
“side-effects” can be mitigated to some degree by the use of Complementary therapies.

Dangers of Radiation

Important Safety Statement from Accuray, a manufacturer of radiation equipment:
Most side effects of radiotherapy, including radiotherapy delivered with Accuray systems, are mild and temporary, often involving fatigue, nausea, and skin irritation. Side effects can be severe, however, leading to pain, alterations in normal body functions (for example, urinary or salivary function), deterioration of quality of life, permanent injury and even death.

Radiation therapy to the chest can cause:

Source: Blood Cancer United

Lung damage (scarring, inflammation, breathing difficulties)
Heart damage (scarring, inflammation, coronary heart disease)
Osteosarcoma (bone cancer)
Breast cancer
Thyroid cancer
Hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism

Radiation therapy may double the incidence of solid cancers

Study: Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) allows dose to be concentrated in the tumor volume while sparing normal tissues. However, the downside to IMRT is the potential to increase the number of radiation-induced second cancers…
…Intensity-modulated radiation therapy may double the incidence of solid cancers in long-term survivors.

This study done at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found radiation actually induces breast cancer cells to form more tumors. Plus, malignancy in radiation treated breast cells was likely to be 30 times more probable. Radiation actually promotes malignancy in cancer cells instead of killing them, and it allows cancers to grow back with even greater force.

Cure worse than the disease

Study of 35,958 survivors of Head and Neck cancer (72% had undergone radiation) concluded:
Many long-term HNSCC [head and neck squamous cell carcinoma] survivors die from cancers other than HNSCC and from non-cancer causes.

[Note: For patients who survived at least three years from a diagnosis of HNSCC, secondary cancers and cardiovascular issues caused death in 44% of these patients, as opposed to 29% who died from the actual cancer. In other words, the cure is worse than the disease]

Breast irradiation causes breast and lung cancer

Young women treated with radiotherapy for Hodgkin’s disease (HD) experienced a threefold increased risk of breast cancer, which rose with higher radiation doses to the breast. HD patients treated with radiotherapy had a sixfold risk of lung cancer, with risk related to dose of radiation received.

Women who received pelvic radiotherapy for cervical cancer were found to have a twofold risk of new cancers in organs that were heavily irradiated.

Source: Second Cancers – Landmark Studies
The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute.

In a study, Radiation Treatment Generates Therapy Resistant Cancer Stem Cells From Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells, researchers from the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report that radiation treatment transforms cancer cells into treatment-resistant breast cancer stem cells, even as it kills half of all tumor cells.

In the study, Dr. Pajonk and colleagues eliminated the smaller pool of BCSCs and then irradiated the remaining breast cancer cells and put them in mice. They were able to observe the initial generation into iBCSCs in response to the radiation treatment through a unique imaging system. These new cells were highly similar to the BCSCs that had been found in tumors that had not been irradiated. They also found that these iBCSCs had a more than 30-fold increased ability to form tumors than the nonirradiated breast cancer cells.

Their findings show that if tumors are challenged by certain stressors that threaten them (such as radiation), they generate iBCSCs that may, along with surviving cancer stem cells, produce more tumors.

Last updated April 2026

Cancer Ireland – Celebrating 15 years of sharing ways to improve cancer survival.