The ultimate survival from breast cancer, in short, had little to do with how extensively a surgeon operated on the breast; it depended on how extensively the cancer had spread before surgery. As George Crile, one of the most fervent critics of radical surgery, later put it, “If the disease was so advanced172 that one had to get rid of the muscles in order to get rid of the tumor, then it had already spread through the system”—making the whole operation moot.
