Finding a Cure for Cancer Research

So what if cures for cancer have been discovered, but not recognized or pursued? Causes of cancer, it turns out, have been discovered and then ignored, so maybe cures have been discovered, or at least ways of visualizing cures, but then left unfunded and disregarded.

This may sound impossible or at least unlikely, but through the history of medical research accomplished experts in particular fields have unintentionally delayed the next unexpected breakthroughs.  The successful microbe hunters were often entrepreneur interlopers whose fields and research ideas were not thought relevant or worth funding. Researching the history of malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis and other diseases is sobering and depressing. Below is image of my disease bookshelf. Reading book after book on efforts to understand and treat malaria, as I did a few years ago, isn't good for your mental health (and reading the history of treatment for mental illness is even worse).

In the TED video below, Margaret Heffernan recounts Alice Stewart's 1950s research into rising childhood cancer.  Women medical researchers were rare in the 1950s and had difficulty getting research funding.  Dr. Stewart received a small grant from outside the medical establishment and began researching rising childhood cancer rates.  Surveys revealed a likely cancer cause and Dr. Stewart then documented and published her research, which was ignored for 25 years. This sad story is told in in the first few minutes of the TED presentation.

So this is one example of a cause of cancer discovered, documented, published, and then ignored for decades.

Roger Williams' research on biochemical individuality offers another avenue for understanding disease.  Williams' researched the role of nutrition and especially how dramatically different each person is in terms of nutritional needs.  We know that our bodies look different on the outside, but it turns out we are as different or more different on the inside.  Our hearts are in different places, are different sizes and shapes.  Our other internal organs various in shape and size from person to person, and their internal biochemistry varies too, much as our blood types are different.  Optimal vitamin and other nutrient needs vary from person to person, and without adequate diet and nutrition our personal individualized immune systems are less likely to capably deal with disease.

In this 1969 article in The Freeman, Williams outlines the findings of his research in biochemical individuality.

Here is another TED video with unexpected insights into the causes of cancer. Mina Bissell tells of her efforts over decades of cancer research, first to get funding for her ideas, and then to attract graduate students to expand research and communicate findings to a wider audience.  TED talks are one way to do an end run around the established cancer authorities who control funding of cancer research.  Dr. Bissell begins with a brief overview of genetics, which includes a big picture of President Obama.  This short bow to political authority may not please conservatives, but government pulls the funding levers for medical research.  Medical researchers critical of Presidents and Congressmen on key committees may find their research proposals and graduate students less welcome.

In any case, the 3-D cellular communication theory explained in this presentation seems to me similar to the mutual communications key to a healthy economy.  Just as nuclei and cells don't just issue biochemical order to surrounding tissue, companies can't order customers to buy their products.  Instead there is a complex dance of signals and adjustments between free people to coordinate actions in a market economy.  Apparently similar mutual signals and adjustments between cellular structures and surrounding tissues once thought inert are key to health.  When the 3-D structure collapses, healthy tissue turns cancerous.  And when the structure and communication is restored, cancerous tissue is quickly coordinated to health tissue.

It is a good thing that smart and wealthy people attend TED conferences (for one thing, tickets to attend in person are apparently $6,000).  And TED attendees inspired by presentations like these are likely to fund unorthodox cancer research and later fund start-up firms working to commercialize this research.