answer:There was an article on this very subject sometime in the past year, in some magazine, possibly Time: the title was something like “What if I don’t want treatment?” Some people do decide against the long and uncertain ordeal of treatment. My father underwent chemo for several months before opting out. He said the cure was worse than the disease. He stopped treatments in January and died of lung cancer in March. This was 1983. Treatments have improved a lot since then, but people still have different degrees of reaction and response to them. My husband was successfully treated at stage 3 eleven years ago.