I think patients must be vigilant to their health, while consulting with doctors. I think medicine can be improved. It has been improved over the years, but still it has more room for more improvement. The average life expectancy was 30 years old until early 1900s. Now I think it's 68 or something worldwide. People where dying of simple injuries because there was no antibiotics to treat their infections. That's an improvement. A huge one.

The trend for medicine is to become personalized, which includes sequencing patients genome, to design medications and treatment for each person. It isn't feasible now, but with time it will be. Sequencing the first human genome took about 10 years and cost ~3 billion dollars, now it can be done with a few thousand dollars in a couple of weeks.

I'm not familiar with the details of chemo therapy, but I heard it is painful, and not highly effective. This is maybe because chemo therapy kills healthy cells as well (it's not a targeted treatment). With the advent of nano technology, there is a hope to target cancerous cell while keeping healthy cells intact. As I said, there are many improvements that can be made, and I think they are under development stage. Maybe we won't witness this at our times, but hopefully the future will be better for our children (for those who have/will have them).