T-shirts, and media reports hinting at blockbuster new drugs that are always just around the corner. All of them, taken together, give the impression we are surely winning the war against cancer.
Hidden from the hope and optimism, the feel-good industry of cancer, is the battlefield – where a simple body count will tell a far different story.
This year almost 600,000 Americans will die from cancer the equivalent of one world trade center collapsing on society every day.
But beyond the raw numbers are the survival statistics, and they all lead to an uncomfortable conclusion we are not winning the war against cancer; we are no closer to cures than when Nixon declared the war on cancer in 1971 in fact, we may be further away.
This is surprising considering, my generation, following in the wake of the irascible baby-boomers, has reaped the benefits of a class-action suit that their demographical-bulge seemed to have filed against aging itself compiling a resume of success against almost every conceivable malady except cancer.
Something has gone terribly wrong.
Everybody should be asking the question –what has gone wrong in our generational war against cancer?
As a country, we spend more on cancer research that any other disease – 200 billion since 1971 with tremendously little to show for it.
(Not even considering the fact cancer is under constant investigation at every major pharmaceutical company around the world.)
Many have suggested answers to this question that seem to just skim the surface but the real answer may be much deeper. This situation couldn’t exist unless there was a profound and fundamental flaw in the way we’re thinking about cancer This article is an attempt to shine light on exactly what the flaw might be.
Cancer is a genetic disease – right?
Cancer is a disease of DNA. If you’ve had a biology 101 class you know this. One hundred years of slow and painstaking detective work has firmly established the primacy of DNA as the critical macromolecule responsible for cancer.The link between DNA and cancer is through genes called oncogenes, genes that when mutated result in the formation of cancer. Textbooks tell us we all carry oncogenes within our DNA the seeds for cancer are already baked into each and every one of us, just waiting for activation.
The established theory on the genesis and progression of cancer is called the ‘Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer’, and it contends that exogenous agents like cigarette smoke, chemical carcinogens, radiation, and so forth, eventually damage, and activate (by mutations) the critical oncogenes responsible for keeping cellular growth organized unleashing aggressive and uncontrolled proliferation the hallmark of cancer.
The Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer is to cancer researchers what gravity is to physicists It is scientific dogma, it is learned early by all students and never questioned again.
Because cancer is a disease of DNA, in order to completely understand it, providing the foundation for potential cures, researchers would have to identify and catalog all the mutations that cause the disease, the drugs then developed to target these ‘driver’ mutations would be quick to follow.
When the war on cancer was declared in 1971 the idea of sequencing the entire genome of multiple types of cancers was still science fiction, existing only in the imagination.
As is often the case, technology eventually transforms imagination into reality, and right now laboratories throughout the world are churning out the genomic sequence of multiple types of cancer with inconceivable speed and efficiency.
This technologically ambitious, NCI-funded project is called the Cancer Genome Atlas Project it is the Manhattan project of cancer, it is an outcome based endeavor and its sole reason for existence is to win the war against cancer.
The Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA) which began in 2005 will compare the sequence of normal DNA to that of 9 different types of human cancer in order to determine the exact mutations responsible for the origination and progression of the malignancies.
Researchers would finally know cancer in its entirety – they would be staring the relentless shape-shifting enemy directly in the face, with nowhere for it to hide.
Make no mistake, everything has led to this If you could fast forward over 100 years of cancer research every intellectual avenue would lead to the Cancer Genome Atlas Project as the flagship endeavor required for a cure.
Almost every cancer researcher on the planet will tell you cancer is through and through a genetic disease, and the TCGA is the culmination of lifetimes spent trying to reveal the elusive details of this insidious foe the details necessary to develop real and enduring cures.
This was to be the final battle in a protracted war. This one project would vindicate the generations that have fought and succumbed to the disease.
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