Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here, you've probably heard this fringe theory before,
Speaker 1: perhaps even from a generally reliable source. A cure for
Speaker 1: cancer exists, but pharmaceutical companies and perhaps even government health
Speaker 1: agencies and cancer charities are suppressing it because they make
Speaker 1: so much money from treating the disease or fundraising for it.
Speaker 1: In other words, there's a secret cabal of pharma exects,
Speaker 1: scientific researchers and cancer nonprofits that are letting more than
Speaker 1: eight million people die every year worldwide so they can
Speaker 1: line their own pockets with cancer money. Such a plot,
Speaker 1: if true, would be nothing short of medical genocide. We
Speaker 1: spoke via email with Ted Ganceler, the Strategic director for
Speaker 1: Pathology Research with the American Cancer Society, where he serves
Speaker 1: as the editor of c A, a cancer journal for clinicians.
Speaker 1: Canceler had heard the hitting cure story so many times
Speaker 1: that he went out in conducted a survey in two
Speaker 1: thousand two about the most common misconceptions about cancer. In it,
Speaker 1: he asked nearly a thousand Americans if they believed that
Speaker 1: there was a conspiracy to hide a cancer cure of
Speaker 1: respondents believed the myths, and another fourteen percent were uncertain.
Speaker 1: Canceler said the result was even more shocking than I expected.
Speaker 1: The secret cancer cure is a typical conspiracy theory, although
Speaker 1: its popularity is caused partly by ignorance, misunderstanding, and mistrust
Speaker 1: of science. Psychological research indicates that inventing and spreading conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories is a way for some people to cope with
Speaker 1: feelings of vulnerability. Cancer is scary, and few of our
Speaker 1: lives have been untouched by its devastating reach. But just
Speaker 1: because the medical establishment hasn't yet found a blockbuster cure
Speaker 1: for all cancer doesn't mean that they're hiding it from us.
Speaker 1: As Cancer Research UK wrote in a post addressing ten
Speaker 1: persistent cancer myths, if Big Pharma indeed had its hands
Speaker 1: on a cure, even one based on generic drugs or
Speaker 1: cheap alternatives, it could figure out a way to package
Speaker 1: the molecules into a patentable therapy that would still make
Speaker 1: them loads of money. People pay thousands of dollars for
Speaker 1: cancer treatments currently, wouldn't they pay even more for cure
Speaker 1: if it did exist. Then there's the raw fact that
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical executives researchers and government officials and their families are
Speaker 1: not themselves immune to cancer, Againstler said, can any conspiracy
Speaker 1: be so complete that oncologists and even world leaders would
Speaker 1: be willing to die of cancer in order to protect
Speaker 1: this alleged secret. But perhaps the most compelling reason why
Speaker 1: the hidden cure theory is false is that there simply
Speaker 1: could never be one single cure for cancer, because cancer
Speaker 1: is not one single thing. Under the umbrella of cancer
Speaker 1: are hundreds of related diseases that vary substantially in their
Speaker 1: causes and underlying mechanisms, and even the same type of
Speaker 1: cancer can evolve in unique ways among individuals, requiring different
Speaker 1: treatment regimens for different patients. The reality is that there
Speaker 1: are some cancers, when caught early, that now have long
Speaker 1: term survival rates of seventy percent er higher, notes Canceler.
Speaker 1: These include breast cancer, prostate cancer, urinary bladder cancer, and
Speaker 1: melanoma of the skin, though Ganceler added, unfortunately, some kinds
Speaker 1: of cancer are very resistant to all of the treatments
Speaker 1: that have been studied so far. While the hidden care
Speaker 1: conspiracy is absolutely false, it's worth asking if the current
Speaker 1: approaches for funding cancer research and drug development are the
Speaker 1: best ways to find effective and affordable cures for both
Speaker 1: common and rare forms of cancer. The budget of the
Speaker 1: National Cancer Institute, for example, a leading funder of scientific
Speaker 1: and medical research in the United States, was five point
Speaker 1: six nine billion dollars. Even though the dollar amount earmarked
Speaker 1: for the n c I goes up slightly each year,
Speaker 1: its true value with inflation has gone down consistently since
Speaker 1: two thousand three. The n c I usually partners with
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies or universities to conduct clinical trials. The U
Speaker 1: s National Institutes of Health also set aside nearly six
Speaker 1: billion dollars in its twenty seventeen budget for cancer research,
Speaker 1: with additional funds invested in specific categories like cancer genomics,
Speaker 1: breast cancer, cervical cancer, and childhood leukemia. But those public
Speaker 1: investments are chump change compared to private pharmacutical companies, which
Speaker 1: are funneling and estimated fifty billion dollars annually in two
Speaker 1: cancer drug research and development. The imbalance between private and
Speaker 1: public funding of cancer research has led some critics to
Speaker 1: argue that big pharma is actually slowing the search for
Speaker 1: a cancer cure by focusing so much money on developing
Speaker 1: patentable single drug treatments rather than testing combination therapies or
Speaker 1: exploring the repurposing of existing, cheaper generic drugs, like, for example, aspirin,
Speaker 1: a one hundred year old medication that sells for pennies
Speaker 1: a pill, is now the subject of clinical trials to
Speaker 1: confirm observational data that breast cancer survivors who take daily
Speaker 1: aspirin are fifty percent less likely to relapse and die
Speaker 1: from the disease. We also spoke with Eugene Brown, a
Speaker 1: scientific advisor for Global Cures, a nonprofit organization that helps
Speaker 1: cancer patients find evidence based therapies that are outside of
Speaker 1: the typical standard of care. Those include the use of
Speaker 1: supplements or generic medications that have shown promise in speeding, recovering,
Speaker 1: or alleviating side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Global Cures
Speaker 1: also advocates for research that repurposes existing drugs and FDA
Speaker 1: approved compounds not originally created for cancer treatment, an approach
Speaker 1: that's often ignored by for profit pharmaceutical companies and underfunded
Speaker 1: by government agencies. Brown disagrees that big pharma is the
Speaker 1: biggest problem preventing us from finding cancer cures, and says
Speaker 1: that expecting pharmaceutical companies to invest in drug repurposing is
Speaker 1: equivalent to forcing a square peg through around whole. He
Speaker 1: said there should be more collaboration where government and public
Speaker 1: institutions and charitable organizations see this as an important goal,
Speaker 1: and in fact big pharma can be incorporated into the
Speaker 1: whole scheme. He notes that a repurpose drug would need
Speaker 1: a clinical trial in order to be prescribed for cancer,
Speaker 1: and a pharmaceutical company could provide that either free of
Speaker 1: charge or a cost as a gesture of goodwill. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics on
Speaker 1: the fringe, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.