25% of people in developed countries die of cancer. One in 200 people are diagnosed with cancer every year. Almost everyone knows someone who has been afflicted with this horrible disease.
Cancer is terrifying because it seems to erupt like a bombshell without symptoms. Many of us know people who appear otherwise completely healthy (and often young) who suddenly develop melanoma, breast, or testicular cancer.
Cancer is also interesting because “the cure for cancer” stands out as a major scientific challenge for our species. The phrase regularly makes it into our common dialog.
“Nice solution. It’s no ‘cure for cancer’, but it sure is cool!”
“What do you want to do when you grow up, Billy?”, asks the teacher? “Why I’m going to find the cure for cancer!”, Billy proudly responds.
Can you think of a human achievement that would have a greater, instant, more positive impact on our species than curing cancer and alleviating the human suffering and lost productivity it produces every year? Imagine further if the cure was cheaply and widely available at almost no cost? Surely a potential solution like this would be front-page news in every major media outlet. What could possibly be more important to the American public?
Last week I stumbled upon this story in NewScientist.com. Researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) which has the potential to kill most cancers without harming healthy cells. They have demonstrated this solution outside the body and are now quickly moving to clinical trials. Because DCA has already been through Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials, they anticipate that the process will move forward much faster.
There are a lot of interesting aspects to this story. For instance, DCA is available in the public domain (no patent protection), so the funding from clinical trials won’t come from the pharmaceutical companies.
What I find most shocking is that nobody seems to care. On the day I discovered the story I couldn’t find one major news media outlet covering it. On the same day I was unable to find any outlet that wasn’t blasting me with information on the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
I had never heard of Anna Nicole Smith, but it sounds like the poor woman lead a tragic life that was on constant public display. I suppose the death of someone so young and who seemingly has everything you could want in the world is news. But is the story so critical to our lives and so interesting that we need constant, 24/7 updates for days on the situation? Does anyone really think that this story is more important than the prospect of a “cure for cancer”? What does this tell us about our human values?
Perhaps we should recognize that the public has grown cynical of “the war on cancer” after 40 years of little progress and billions of dollars spent on the fight. After all, DCA might very well turn out to be another “miracle” cure which works in the lab but is ineffective or harmful in the human body.
Nonetheless, this episode strikes me as another bizarre example of how the mainstream media doesn’t report news or put it into a meaningful context for the world. Fortunately, the old models are crumbling and we are entering a new age media where the public has the opportunity to drive the dissemination of news.
Consider this story my small contribution.
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