The leukemia treatment itself kills through suppressed immunity, not the cancer.

Evidence

The next few weeks were very important, said Truman. He would attempt to induce a remission in James by using a combination of powerful drugs and radiation. The chances of a successful remission were good. There was, however, a 10 percent chance that James might die during the next four weeks. The greatest danger was not from the leukemia itself but from an opportunistic infection. Chemotherapy would kill cancerous cells in the blood and bone marrow, but it would also suppress the body’s ability to fight infection. A common childhood illness—the chicken pox, for example, or even a cold—could prove fatal. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 40

Categorization

• XREF: A canonical iatrogenic paradox: the cure’s lethality exceeds the disease’s in the short term. Connects to medical-tradeoff reasoning in risk and clinical-decision literature.