{"id":413,"date":"2008-10-24T05:22:38","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T05:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/10\/24\/the_drugs_dont_work\/"},"modified":"2008-10-24T05:22:38","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T05:22:38","slug":"the_drugs_dont_work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/10\/24\/the_drugs_dont_work\/","title":{"rendered":"The drugs don’t work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elsewhere on NN, Anna<\/del> Cath takes issue<\/a> with the framing of cancer as a ‘bioterrorist’. Personally, having sat through another hour-long talk on jun<\/em> and fos<\/em>, I’m going to take issue with the framing of cancer as something to be cured.<\/p>\n

\nWe have been trying to find a ‘cure for cancer’ for more than thirty years. We don’t have a single cure, and nor are we likely to, because ‘cancer’ is a word that describes many, complex and different conditions. We might then suppose we could come up with multiple cures–but after thirty years of serious research we don’t seem to be getting anywhere: the increase in long-term survival after radio- or chemotherapy is still disappointingly low. The state of affairs with regard to therapy was brought home forcibly to me this week: today was the funeral of a member of this department. She died on Monday night, of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n

\nWhy is this happening? Why is this still<\/em> happening?<\/p>\n

\nWhen you look at the genesis of cancers they all follow pretty much the same pattern. A mutation in a gene causes a protein to go wrong, which in turn releases the brake on cellular proliferation. There are numerous oncogenes, myriad pathways, all telling the same sad story.<\/p>\n

\nBut there was a telling moment in the seminar when the speaker justified his research (he’s working for CRUK<\/a>, after all) by overviewing a transcriptional regulation pathway and talking about ‘pharmaceutical opportunities’. If we could find a control point in a cancer cell that differed from normal cells, and use it to turn the cell ‘off’, that would be an obvious place to throw a drug. Much effort and money has been expended in trying to understand different cancers, so that we might be able to do just this. And, actually, we don’t seem to be getting very far.<\/p>\n

\nThe problem is that we’re trying to do the equivalent of reducing the number of people killed in road accidents by building faster ambulances and more hospitals. This is completely arse-backwards. The only way to significantly reduce cancer mortality is to prevent<\/em> cancer, not to cure it. There are attempts to do this–eat less meat, more vegetables, stop smoking–but not only are they rather half-hearted we don’t even know the mechanisms by which lifestyle and diet cause cancer (except for smoking and exposure to known carcinogens), so how can we advise people what to do? <\/p>\n

\nSo shouldn’t we devote more effort into researching causes rather than cures? So that we can treat the source, not the symptom? I think so, but here we run into trouble. There is intense political and economic pressure to not<\/em> find out what causes cancers. I could say that drug companies have no interest in curing cancer, because they want to sell drugs–but that would be a cheap shot and might mark me out as a nutter. But I think it’s fair to say it’s easier to point to thousands of scientists working on a maze of twisty biological pathways, all alike, and say we’re doing something<\/em>, rather than examine our manufacturing processes and the like. When the companies that support the Pink Ribbon campaign might actually be contributing<\/a> to breast cancer<\/a>, wouldn’t it be best just to keep quiet?<\/p>\n

\nIf the incidence of cancers in the developed world is increasing, what does this say about our lifestyle, and about the products that our consumer society insists on having? Even if there is no link, wouldn’t it actually be a good idea to find out? <\/p>\n

\nIs it time to say that cancer research–as we know it–doesn’t work? Is it time to divert the majority of scientific effect towards identifying and preventing–or repairing–that initial mutation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elsewhere on NN, Anna Cath takes issue with the framing of cancer as a ‘bioterrorist’. Personally, having sat through another hour-long talk on jun and fos, I’m going to take issue with the framing of cancer as something to be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}