Chemonomics.

It is said that cancer touches everyone in some shape or manner. My mother is a cancer patient and though it is a horrible emotional and physical battle for her and all those who care for her, we are lucky to be at a point in history where scientific development has given my mother, and many cancer patients, a second chance to live out their lives as best as they can.

For many, the strategy is to keep the cancer at bay, buying more time for better treatments to come out. The luckier ones will have an opportunity to get "cured." Seeing my mother go through numerous cycles of chemotherapy, I have often wondered whether the demand curve for chemotherapy is vertical. An interesting question that over the last couple of months, I have come to think that the answer is "no." These are my two reasons:

1. The conventional answer: you can always choose homeopathic remedies, or experimental treatments, or diets/supplements, or you can choose to not treat at all. The latter is a choice that some cancer patients do make, and not always for financial reasons.

2. Less conventionally: the problem with the question is that it's treating "chemotherapy" as if it were "food." Sure there's not much of a substitute for food, but we never choose "food or no food." We chose among specific foods.

In my mothers case, there are multiple treatment regimes for MM, and each one of them has its own costs, both monetary and otherwise. Her doctors had to make one such decision before her first round of chemo because of her kidney issues. She had to make another with her maintenance treatment, talking through the trade-offs with the oncologist. No doubt, we'll continue to have to think through the trade-offs among substitutes as the years unfold. The demand curve for any concrete (as in Menger) form of chemotherapy is not vertical.