July 18, 2018 • 6 mins
Like many fringe theories, the idea that there's a massive conspiracy to conceal a known cure for cancer is mostly misplaced wishful thinking. Learn why in this episode of BrainStuff.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum here, you've probably heard this fringe theory before,
perhaps even from a generally reliable source. A cure for
cancer exists, but pharmaceutical companies and perhaps even government health
agencies and cancer charities are suppressing it because they make
(00:22):
so much money from treating the disease or fundraising for it.
In other words, there's a secret cabal of pharma exects,
scientific researchers and cancer nonprofits that are letting more than
eight million people die every year worldwide so they can
line their own pockets with cancer money. Such a plot,
if true, would be nothing short of medical genocide. We
(00:44):
spoke via email with Ted Ganceler, the Strategic director for
Pathology Research with the American Cancer Society, where he serves
as the editor of c A, a cancer journal for clinicians.
Canceler had heard the hitting cure story so many times
that he went out in conducted a survey in two
thousand two about the most common misconceptions about cancer. In it,
(01:05):
he asked nearly a thousand Americans if they believed that
there was a conspiracy to hide a cancer cure of
respondents believed the myths, and another fourteen percent were uncertain.
Canceler said the result was even more shocking than I expected.
The secret cancer cure is a typical conspiracy theory, although
its popularity is caused partly by ignorance, misunderstanding, and mistrust
(01:29):
of science. Psychological research indicates that inventing and spreading conspiracy
theories is a way for some people to cope with
feelings of vulnerability. Cancer is scary, and few of our
lives have been untouched by its devastating reach. But just
because the medical establishment hasn't yet found a blockbuster cure
for all cancer doesn't mean that they're hiding it from us.
(01:51):
As Cancer Research UK wrote in a post addressing ten
persistent cancer myths, if Big Pharma indeed had its hands
on a cure, even one based on generic drugs or
cheap alternatives, it could figure out a way to package
the molecules into a patentable therapy that would still make
them loads of money. People pay thousands of dollars for
cancer treatments currently, wouldn't they pay even more for cure
(02:12):
if it did exist. Then there's the raw fact that
pharmaceutical executives researchers and government officials and their families are
not themselves immune to cancer, Againstler said, can any conspiracy
be so complete that oncologists and even world leaders would
be willing to die of cancer in order to protect
this alleged secret. But perhaps the most compelling reason why
(02:35):
the hidden cure theory is false is that there simply
could never be one single cure for cancer, because cancer
is not one single thing. Under the umbrella of cancer
are hundreds of related diseases that vary substantially in their
causes and underlying mechanisms, and even the same type of
cancer can evolve in unique ways among individuals, requiring different
(02:56):
treatment regimens for different patients. The reality is that there
are some cancers, when caught early, that now have long
term survival rates of seventy percent er higher, notes Canceler.
These include breast cancer, prostate cancer, urinary bladder cancer, and
melanoma of the skin, though Ganceler added, unfortunately, some kinds
of cancer are very resistant to all of the treatments
(03:17):
that have been studied so far. While the hidden care
conspiracy is absolutely false, it's worth asking if the current
approaches for funding cancer research and drug development are the
best ways to find effective and affordable cures for both
common and rare forms of cancer. The budget of the
National Cancer Institute, for example, a leading funder of scientific
(03:39):
and medical research in the United States, was five point
six nine billion dollars. Even though the dollar amount earmarked
for the n c I goes up slightly each year,
its true value with inflation has gone down consistently since
two thousand three. The n c I usually partners with
pharmaceutical companies or universities to conduct clinical trials. The U
(04:00):
s National Institutes of Health also set aside nearly six
billion dollars in its twenty seventeen budget for cancer research,
with additional funds invested in specific categories like cancer genomics,
breast cancer, cervical cancer, and childhood leukemia. But those public
investments are chump change compared to private pharmacutical companies, which
are funneling and estimated fifty billion dollars annually in two
(04:22):
cancer drug research and development. The imbalance between private and
public funding of cancer research has led some critics to
argue that big pharma is actually slowing the search for
a cancer cure by focusing so much money on developing
patentable single drug treatments rather than testing combination therapies or
exploring the repurposing of existing, cheaper generic drugs, like, for example, aspirin,
(04:46):
a one hundred year old medication that sells for pennies
a pill, is now the subject of clinical trials to
confirm observational data that breast cancer survivors who take daily
aspirin are fifty percent less likely to relapse and die
from the disease. We also spoke with Eugene Brown, a
scientific advisor for Global Cures, a nonprofit organization that helps
(05:06):
cancer patients find evidence based therapies that are outside of
the typical standard of care. Those include the use of
supplements or generic medications that have shown promise in speeding, recovering,
or alleviating side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Global Cures
also advocates for research that repurposes existing drugs and FDA
approved compounds not originally created for cancer treatment, an approach
(05:30):
that's often ignored by for profit pharmaceutical companies and underfunded
by government agencies. Brown disagrees that big pharma is the
biggest problem preventing us from finding cancer cures, and says
that expecting pharmaceutical companies to invest in drug repurposing is
equivalent to forcing a square peg through around whole. He
said there should be more collaboration where government and public
(05:53):
institutions and charitable organizations see this as an important goal,
and in fact big pharma can be incorporated into the
whole scheme. He notes that a repurpose drug would need
a clinical trial in order to be prescribed for cancer,
and a pharmaceutical company could provide that either free of
charge or a cost as a gesture of goodwill. Today's
(06:18):
episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang.
For more on this and lots of other topics on
the fringe, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum here, you've probably heard this fringe theory before,
perhaps even from a generally reliable source. A cure for
cancer exists, but pharmaceutical companies and perhaps even government health
agencies and cancer charities are suppressing it because they make
(00:22):
so much money from treating the disease or fundraising for it.
In other words, there's a secret cabal of pharma exects,
scientific researchers and cancer nonprofits that are letting more than
eight million people die every year worldwide so they can
line their own pockets with cancer money. Such a plot,
if true, would be nothing short of medical genocide. We
(00:44):
spoke via email with Ted Ganceler, the Strategic director for
Pathology Research with the American Cancer Society, where he serves
as the editor of c A, a cancer journal for clinicians.
Canceler had heard the hitting cure story so many times
that he went out in conducted a survey in two
thousand two about the most common misconceptions about cancer. In it,
(01:05):
he asked nearly a thousand Americans if they believed that
there was a conspiracy to hide a cancer cure of
respondents believed the myths, and another fourteen percent were uncertain.
Canceler said the result was even more shocking than I expected.
The secret cancer cure is a typical conspiracy theory, although
its popularity is caused partly by ignorance, misunderstanding, and mistrust
(01:29):
of science. Psychological research indicates that inventing and spreading conspiracy
theories is a way for some people to cope with
feelings of vulnerability. Cancer is scary, and few of our
lives have been untouched by its devastating reach. But just
because the medical establishment hasn't yet found a blockbuster cure
for all cancer doesn't mean that they're hiding it from us.
(01:51):
As Cancer Research UK wrote in a post addressing ten
persistent cancer myths, if Big Pharma indeed had its hands
on a cure, even one based on generic drugs or
cheap alternatives, it could figure out a way to package
the molecules into a patentable therapy that would still make
them loads of money. People pay thousands of dollars for
cancer treatments currently, wouldn't they pay even more for cure
(02:12):
if it did exist. Then there's the raw fact that
pharmaceutical executives researchers and government officials and their families are
not themselves immune to cancer, Againstler said, can any conspiracy
be so complete that oncologists and even world leaders would
be willing to die of cancer in order to protect
this alleged secret. But perhaps the most compelling reason why
(02:35):
the hidden cure theory is false is that there simply
could never be one single cure for cancer, because cancer
is not one single thing. Under the umbrella of cancer
are hundreds of related diseases that vary substantially in their
causes and underlying mechanisms, and even the same type of
cancer can evolve in unique ways among individuals, requiring different
(02:56):
treatment regimens for different patients. The reality is that there
are some cancers, when caught early, that now have long
term survival rates of seventy percent er higher, notes Canceler.
These include breast cancer, prostate cancer, urinary bladder cancer, and
melanoma of the skin, though Ganceler added, unfortunately, some kinds
of cancer are very resistant to all of the treatments
(03:17):
that have been studied so far. While the hidden care
conspiracy is absolutely false, it's worth asking if the current
approaches for funding cancer research and drug development are the
best ways to find effective and affordable cures for both
common and rare forms of cancer. The budget of the
National Cancer Institute, for example, a leading funder of scientific
(03:39):
and medical research in the United States, was five point
six nine billion dollars. Even though the dollar amount earmarked
for the n c I goes up slightly each year,
its true value with inflation has gone down consistently since
two thousand three. The n c I usually partners with
pharmaceutical companies or universities to conduct clinical trials. The U
(04:00):
s National Institutes of Health also set aside nearly six
billion dollars in its twenty seventeen budget for cancer research,
with additional funds invested in specific categories like cancer genomics,
breast cancer, cervical cancer, and childhood leukemia. But those public
investments are chump change compared to private pharmacutical companies, which
are funneling and estimated fifty billion dollars annually in two
(04:22):
cancer drug research and development. The imbalance between private and
public funding of cancer research has led some critics to
argue that big pharma is actually slowing the search for
a cancer cure by focusing so much money on developing
patentable single drug treatments rather than testing combination therapies or
exploring the repurposing of existing, cheaper generic drugs, like, for example, aspirin,
(04:46):
a one hundred year old medication that sells for pennies
a pill, is now the subject of clinical trials to
confirm observational data that breast cancer survivors who take daily
aspirin are fifty percent less likely to relapse and die
from the disease. We also spoke with Eugene Brown, a
scientific advisor for Global Cures, a nonprofit organization that helps
(05:06):
cancer patients find evidence based therapies that are outside of
the typical standard of care. Those include the use of
supplements or generic medications that have shown promise in speeding, recovering,
or alleviating side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Global Cures
also advocates for research that repurposes existing drugs and FDA
approved compounds not originally created for cancer treatment, an approach
(05:30):
that's often ignored by for profit pharmaceutical companies and underfunded
by government agencies. Brown disagrees that big pharma is the
biggest problem preventing us from finding cancer cures, and says
that expecting pharmaceutical companies to invest in drug repurposing is
equivalent to forcing a square peg through around whole. He
said there should be more collaboration where government and public
(05:53):
institutions and charitable organizations see this as an important goal,
and in fact big pharma can be incorporated into the
whole scheme. He notes that a repurpose drug would need
a clinical trial in order to be prescribed for cancer,
and a pharmaceutical company could provide that either free of
charge or a cost as a gesture of goodwill. Today's
(06:18):
episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang.
For more on this and lots of other topics on
the fringe, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.
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