My understanding is that chemotherapy is indiscrimate when it attacks cells - it affects cancerous and healthy cells alike. However, doctors assume the healthy

My understanding is that chemotherapy is indiscrimate when it attacks cells - it affects cancerous and healthy cells alike. However, doctors assume the healthy cells will recover from the weakening effects of chemotherapy. Meanwhile the cancer cells are stressed to a greater degree by the chemotherapy and thus suspectible to death. All this is presented as the "best outcome" scenario for chemotherapy treament. However, for some patients (and depending on their type of cancer) chemotheraphy can leave lingering side-effects and can even cause cancerous cells to recur or turn even more aggressive. For some cancer patients, chemotherapy is not about curing the cancer but slowing the cancer spread ("treatable but not curable" is the phrase used by doctors for some cancer conditions). Although chemotheraphy can be succesful for some (many?) patients, as you say it still feels like a crude, blunt approach to treating cancer. Doctors might baulk at that description. But consider: if someone has a non-metasized cancer (i.e. cancer in one part of the body that has not spread to other parts of the body), chemotherapy is applied with blunt force to the entire body including to the majority of healthy cells in the body. I can't see how anyone can say this isn't a coarse and crude treatment method even when the outcome is deemed successful.