Word: cures
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though patients long desperately for a "cure," extending life is the more realistic goal in treating cancer. The newer drugs, unlike chemotherapy agents, are "cancer stoppers," not "cancer killers," says Malkin. Chances are that they will have to be taken for many years, or even for the rest of a patient's life. But if such drugs can slow or stop the growth and spread of malignant cells, then cancer can be transformed from an acute and deadly disease into a chronic and manageable one. That doesn't make as sexy a headline as a cancer cure...
Last week's cascade of stories about drugs that can knock out cancer in mice sent patient hopes (and stock prices) soaring. But it also presented the type of challenge that is particularly important in covering potential medical breakthroughs, especially ones in which "cure" and "cancer" appear in the same sentence. "We were seeing a disturbing disconnect between the headlines and the actual science," says science editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt, whose staff was already reporting a cover on cancer. "We thought we could separate the hope from the hype with some expert explaining...
...just so much noise. A treatment that may be available five years from now or next year or even in a few months amounts to no treatment at all. So what if angiostatin and endostatin work only in mice? If there's even a minuscule chance the compounds will cure cancer in humans too, why should the dying have to wait another minute...
When Dr. Judah Folkman is asked whether he can cure cancer, he invariably replies, "Yes, in mice." That's not entirely self-effacing whimsy. Like every good researcher--and every responsible science journalist--he knows all too well that most drugs that work in lab animals turn out to be duds in humans. The field is littered with "magic bullets" that failed, among them monoclonal antibodies, tumor necrosis factor, interferon and interleukin-2. While all were initially hyped as potential cure-alls, they have turned out to have only modest usefulness in the war on cancer. At best, says...
...varies with diseases, though. He notes that rodents are better predictors of human reaction to cardiovascular or anti-inflammatory agents than to cancer or diseases of the central nervous system. But that's a trade-off researchers are more than willing to accept in their search for a cancer cure. "If you find a favorite agent doesn't work," Oliff says, "you simply throw it away and go on to something else...