> What these antiseptic descriptions mask is "killing a patient's bone marrow" is roughly equal to poisoning that person just a tiny bit shy of killing him or h

> What these antiseptic descriptions mask is "killing a patient's bone marrow" is roughly equal to poisoning that person just a tiny bit shy of killing him or her. That's a description of most cancer treatments, especially the traditional ones. Cancer cells are so similar to normal healthy tissue, they're difficult to target with high specificity. Most treatments (especially chemo and radiation) work by killing cancer cells marginally better than they kill (most) normal cells. The targeting is getting better for both classes of treatment, but the collateral damage is still significant. Killing all bone marrow cells indiscriminately sidesteps the targeting issue, with the trade-off that you effectively remove an entire vital organ. This is just as drastic, but in this particular case happens to be a surmountable obstacle.