Obese people are less likely to survive cancer, and one reason may be a surprising inequality: The overweight are undertreated. Doctors often short them on chemotherapy by not basing the dose on a person's size, as they should. They use ideal weight or cap the dose out of fear about how much treatment an obese patient can bear. Yet research shows that bigger people handle chemo better than smaller people do. Even a little less chemo can mean worse odds of survival, and studies suggest that as many as 40 percent of obese cancer patients have been getting less than 85 percent of the right dose for their size.
