The Boy Who Cried Cure

(Note: The below is not meant to work through the details of cancer research today, but more with how the public views cancer. Nor is any impunity meant to the writers of the articles I reference.

I'm currently working on a project to elucidate how the public views health journalism, particularly with regard to cancer. My findings so far have been that the public a) doesn't go out of their way to read about cancer unless they or a close relative actually have cancer, because b) every day a new cancer breakthrough or etiological link is publicized, and yet people still keep getting and dying of cancer.

One would almost advocate just shutting up until we actually have a cure, if not for the fact that breakthroughs drive funding, and group that doesn't trumpet its findings may find itself out of a grant; and the public, although it may be sick of knowing, does have a right to know. Also, the idea of a "cure" may not even be clear, with words like prevention, early detection, remission, etc. If we can cure 95% of one type of cancer, can we say we have a cure for that cancer, if it involves catching it early instead of an administered drug?

We also need to break down some of the "cancer link" headlines, another sub-area of cancer research that is starting to set the public head spinning. Take the various links between breast cancer, hormone replacement therapy, the Pill, babies, etc. A woman setting out to not get breast cancer has a remarkable amount of sleuthing to do to discover how best to hedge her bets over the 30 reproductively active years of her life.

There have been remarkable breakthroughs that have changed the course of the disease. The survival rate for some cancers (like non-Hodgkins Lymphomas) is very good, if found early; people are starting to focus on early detection; we've finally got across the knowledge that smoking does, in fact, cause lung cancer; and various industries are realizing it's cheaper to protect workers and public from toxins than it is to pay health benefits. We've also made chemotherapy a slightly less horrible experience, with anti-nausea drugs and the like. And slowly, these breakthroughs do add up to a slow, steady progress towards fending off cancer. And research progress like this (http://dalnews.dal.ca/2009/04/08/cancer.html) is announced regularly. But take a look at some of the public comments at the bottom of the above article.

In my perception, the public is starting to notice how much money has been spent since the War on Cancer was declared by Nixon, and seeing very little to show. They don't want life made easier for chemotherapy patients in lieu of a cure. The bar has been raised by the sheer amount of money and effort put in versus the output. I don't think the public will fully lose its cancer cynicism until we have an honest-to-goodness cure. And while there is much to be said for better science journalism to soften some of the cynicism through understanding of the complexity and tenacity of the disease, we have to remember that a lot of funding comes from non-profit and government organizations that do come back to public funds, and the goodwill of the public both through giving and policy making may begin to run dry if the trumpeting of every "breakthrough" continues to fall short of their bar.

We also have to remember that reporting at the lab stage is a far cry from reporting at the patient-ready stage, and that using the umbrella term "cancer" is setting ourselves up for a fall. Someone who expects "cancer" to be cured is going to have to wait a lot longer than, say, someone who expects to have leukemia cured.

Some good reads relating to the above:
http://www.openmedicine.ca/ (an open-source medical journal by researchers trying to make medical research more publicly accessible)
http://dalnews.dal.ca/2009/04/08/cancer.html
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-01/ff_cancer
The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis