Separating hope from hype in news about cancer research
by Paul Hennessy
In these highly health-conscious times, reports of medical advances and "breakthroughs" appear almost daily in the news media.
Such coverage can lead news consumers to believe cures are being found for many of the world's health problems, including cancer. Because studies have shown the news media are a primary source of public health information, exaggerated claims about new treatments can raise false hopes among those suffering from diseases. Research into the causes and treatments of cancer are yielding promising results, and mortality rates for many major cancers are declining, but cancer is still the second-leading cause of death in the U.S., after heart disease.
As one of the most complex disorders challenging modern medicine, cancer is a focus of intense interest, accounting in part for why it's so often hyped as "cured" in media coverage. A much-discussed example was a front-page 1998 New York Times story that quoted a prominent scientist predicting a cure within two years.
Most oncologists are reluctant to use the word "cure" when referring to cancer as a whole because it is unlikely there will ever be a single cure for the more than 100 types of malignancies that characterize the disease. An informal survey of Dana-Farber scientists showed a clear consensus that, despite much progress, cures for some types of cancer will probably not be found for at least several decades.
As Emil Frei III, M.D., Dana-Farber's physician-in-chief emeritus, whose 40-year career has been dedicated to battling cancer, observes: "The most important thing to appreciate is that progress in cancer control will be incremental, not all or none. There are some cancers we can cure 80 to 90 percent of the time, and others where it's 10 percent. The answer to whether cancer can be controlled depends on what variety of the disease is in question."
New research — such as deciphering the human genome — may lead to advances in treatment that will make cancer, like high blood pressure or diabetes, a chronic but controllable condition. Meanwhile, to help media watchers achieve a better understanding of how to separate hope from hype in cancer-research coverage, we asked eight Dana-Farber physicians and researchers to engage in the wide-ranging roundtable discussion of the subject excerpted on the following pages.
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