Cancer cured! Again!

Barely two weeks after the British press went bananas over cancer research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the US press took a turn. This time, though, the breathtaking results were published in that prestigious medical journal, the New York Times. It’s odd that the media went berserk over this article. The substance was not new — many reporters had written articles about the subject over the years. Dr Judah Folkman at Harvard Medical School has been working on two natural factors that cut off blood supply to tumors, angiostatin and endostatin. He reported in November in Nature that these anti-angiogenesis factors work surprisingly well in shrinking tumors implanted on mice. The Times’ suburban rival, Newsday, published an article in November. And back in January, the Times itself ran a long, thoughtful profile of Folkman and his work. The ‘news’ that created a tidalwave of follow-up stories was this: the New York Times article on Sunday, May 3rd had hot quotes and great play. Gina Kolata quoted James Watson saying, “Judah is going to cure cancer in two years.” The Times report also declared that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) had made the drugs their top priority. And to top it off, the story ran on page one, above the fold, giving the Times’ own influential imprimatur to the report. Of course, the Times dutifully reported that the breathtaking results were only in mice — human trials haven’t even started — and many caveats were responsibly placed high up in the story. But the words that resonated were simply these: cancer and cure. The first wave of stories mostly tried to match the Times. The banner headline in USA Today the next day was “Cancer War May Have New Weapon.” The story made it seem simple: “Mounting evidence suggests that doctors may be able to wipe out cancer by cutting off the tumor’s blood supply.” Sounds like a cure, even though Folkman himself was quoted saying, “Will this work in humans? No one knows.” The story played all day Monday on CNN and led national TV newscasts that night. Other reporters who tried to resist the story for its obvious hype were sucked into the vortex that the Times story itself created. First to go were the business reporters, after EntreMed, the company licensed to produce angiostatin and endostatin, saw its stock value quadruple in a matter of hours, on the basis of the Times story. Next, the more cautious science reporters were dragooned into doing the story after editors decided that it simply couldn’t be ignored.