by: Scott Morefield
Since the Dark Ages when the black plague swept through Europe, few diseases in human history have elicited such a deadly combination of fear and ignorance. In this modern age full of the wonders of technology, cancer is our greatest fear, and our greatest unknown. A UK poll found the highest percentage of respondents, one in five, feared cancer over anything else, including Alzheimer's, heart attack, or job loss. Even more disturbing, fully a third believed whether they got cancer or not was up to fate, that there was nothing they could do to reduce the risk.
A foundation of sand
To exacerbate the problem, a recent Reuters article admits that recent cancer research is unreliable at best, if not completely fraudulent. C. Glenn Begley, former head of global cancer research at Amgen Inc., chose 53 'landmark' publications for his team to double-check and build on for future drug development. Out of the original 53, he was only able to replicate six. Scientists at Bayer conducted a similar project and were only able to reproduce less than a quarter of the 47 cancer projects they had previously conducted. Begley wrote in the journal Nature, "It was shocking. These are the studies the pharmaceutical industry relies on to identify new targets for drug development. But if you're going to place a $1 million or $2 million or $5 million bet on an observation, you need to be sure it's true. As we tried to reproduce these papers we became convinced you can't take anything at face value." . Read more…
Since the Dark Ages when the black plague swept through Europe, few diseases in human history have elicited such a deadly combination of fear and ignorance. In this modern age full of the wonders of technology, cancer is our greatest fear, and our greatest unknown. A UK poll found the highest percentage of respondents, one in five, feared cancer over anything else, including Alzheimer's, heart attack, or job loss. Even more disturbing, fully a third believed whether they got cancer or not was up to fate, that there was nothing they could do to reduce the risk.
A foundation of sand
To exacerbate the problem, a recent Reuters article admits that recent cancer research is unreliable at best, if not completely fraudulent. C. Glenn Begley, former head of global cancer research at Amgen Inc., chose 53 'landmark' publications for his team to double-check and build on for future drug development. Out of the original 53, he was only able to replicate six. Scientists at Bayer conducted a similar project and were only able to reproduce less than a quarter of the 47 cancer projects they had previously conducted. Begley wrote in the journal Nature, "It was shocking. These are the studies the pharmaceutical industry relies on to identify new targets for drug development. But if you're going to place a $1 million or $2 million or $5 million bet on an observation, you need to be sure it's true. As we tried to reproduce these papers we became convinced you can't take anything at face value." . Read more…
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