Can Metastatic Breast Cancer Be Cured or Controlled by hemotherapy?

I would first like to discuss the concept of cure, because we tend to use "cure" as a general term for a variety of diseases, and I suspect that we mean different things in different situations. For example, a pneumococcal pneumonia cure is an entirely different concept from a cure in childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia, which also differs from a metastatic breast cancer cure. I believe that a cure is possible in all three of these diseases, but it may mean something different in each. If one reviews the existing literature and evaluates cure of primary breast cancer, one sees that while most recurrences occur during the first few years after initial diagnosis, there are actually documented cases of first metastasis or relapse between 10 and 40 years after diagnosis. Thus, one could make a case that it is impossible to decrease the hazard rate to zero in primary breast cancer. Does this mean that no patient is cured? Of course not. It simply means that we cannot establish an arbitrary number of months or years at which time all of those who remain free of recurrence are cured.