[Dean's World] Dean: Cancer Genome Project: A Waste Of Money?

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Posted by Dean:
Cancer Genome Project: A Waste Of Money?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1174259806.shtml


   Scientific American has a pretty good article this month by Francis S.
   Collins and Anna D. Barker that is [1]cautiously supportive of the
   Cancer Genome Project. If you read it, you will learn that the
   consensus view for some time now is that cancer is caused primarily by
   genetic mutation, and that they believe that by mapping every cancer's
   genome we can learn more about how to prevent or cure cancer.

   However, this week's Newsweek has a pretty hard-hitting piece by
   Sharon Begley that [2]fairly thoroughly blasts the project:

     When the government dangles $1.5 billion in front of scientists,
     they rarely say, oh no, please, keep it, there are better ways to
     spend the money. But as the biomedical establishment gears up for
     yet another megaproject, some leading scientists are doing exactly
     that, making the heretical suggestion that this latest extravaganza
     is poor science and bad policy.

   Prominently quoted is our friend George Miklos. It touches on other
   issues we've discussed here on Dean's World in the past--and by the
   way, Miklos has said he'd like to write an article on this for us on
   this, so stay tuned.

   Here's the problem in a nutshell: what if genes have little or nothing
   to do with cancer? If so, what are we pouring all this money into this
   project for? Especially when we are spending very little research
   money on alternative theories?

   Miklos will tell you that he believes, as a growing number of
   biologists do, that the entire search for the "oncogenes"
   (cancer-causing genes) and mutation has been a decades-long
   multibillion$$ boondoggle that's wasted countless lives, because
   that's not what causes cancer.

   You might reason that, because we don't know for sure, research on
   cancer genetics is a good idea. That is a very defensible argument.

   Repeat: that is a very defensible argument.

   But, virtually all the money the government and private industry now
   spends on cancer research is going into that one area. Which means
   that we may well be learning all sorts of interesting things, but we
   aren't learning much that will actually cure cancer.

   This goes to a quote I've picked up from Al Gore, which applies well
   here:

     "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary
     depends upon his not understanding it."

   The cancer research establishment today works under a system they call
   "peer review" which is quite different from what peer review was 30,
   50, or 100 years ago. What "peer review" used to mean is that if a
   scientist did some research, she'd write it up and then submit that
   writeup to anonymous review by some well-qualified peers, who would
   critique it before publication and give her a chance to make changes
   or corrections, or even occasionally say "you've made a major error,
   you need to rethink and re-do this whole thing."

   However, in the last few decades, that system has changed, so that now
   the "anonymous" peer reviewers not only critique each others' work,
   they also control who gets funding for their research and who does
   not.

   Which creates an obvious conflict-of-interest problem that's never
   been properly addressed: if a scientist comes along with brand new
   ideas that challenges the establishment in a major way, that scientist
   can become a threat to the income--as well as the prestige--of many of
   their peers.

   What's most insidious about it is that if you take up the cudgels to
   defend one of those mavericks, you can get branded a "conspiracy
   theorist" and a "pseudo scientist." Worse, you might even be accused
   of "letting politics interfere with science"--as if people who accept
   taxpayer money should not be subject to scrutiny and hard questions
   from voters.

   Worst of all, if you're a practicing scientist you may find your own
   grant money suddenly drying up if you even express support for a
   maverick. Neat trick, eh?

   Peer review is a good system for vetting papers. As it's currently
   constructed, however, especially when it comes to money, it's in
   desperate need of reform. And taxpayers have every right to demand
   reform, by the way.

   You might be wondering what, other than genes, might cause cancer.
   Well there are several alternative theories, but the one making the
   most waves right now is the aneuploidy theory. A growing number of
   respectable scientific publications have begun to acknowledge that
   aneuploidy may just be the most important area of research in cancer
   that's come along in decades. It's still getting relatively little
   funding--after all, it's not about genes or viruses, and there's very
   little funding $$ for non-genetic, non-viral causes of cancer right
   now--but any computer programmer can instantly recognize aneuploidy as
   a very promising theory. To put it in computer terms, the aneuploidy
   theory is simple:

   You have this long chain of DNA in every cell, that DNA being divided
   into sets of chromosomes. Whenever a cell divides, it replicates the
   DNA. Think of the genes as individual bytes of data. Think of the
   chromosomes as the data demarcation points--this set of data starts at
   point A and ends at point B.

   You've got millions of cell replications happening all the time. Every
   time a cell divides, you have a chance for replication error. Most
   errors will be minor, but once in a while you'll have an error that
   destroys the structural data integrity. And, with all these millions
   of replications going on all the time, occasionally the
   badly-replicated data is not just corrupted, but it interacts with the
   replication process in such a way that error compounds upon error. You
   wind up with more than just corrupted data, but an out-of-control
   Frankenstein monster that corrupts the replication process itself,
   with bad data spreading and overwriting the good all over the place.

   The individual bytes of data (the genes) haven't got much to do with
   it. It's an out-of-control replication error.

   If so, then the fact that you've got weird mutated genes in cancer
   cells would be completely unsurprising. Furthermore, spending billions
   of dollars and years of effort to study the corrupted data ("Oh look,
   here's another error! Let us study the significance of each individual
   bit of bad data!") would be ridiculous when what you really needed to
   look for was what corrupted the replication process in the first
   place. Or how to detect a replication error and correct it sooner.

   I suppose I'll have lost most people on the above explanation, but
   I'll bet most of my hard-core computer buddies get it just fine.

   The establishment wants 1.5 billion dollars and several more years to
   find and study individual errors in replication, because each of those
   errors might point somehow to the cause of the problem. They haven't
   bothered to ask whether the errors are the symptom rather than the
   cause.

   Is the aneuploidy theory correct? I can't say. Something else might be
   correct. But it's fascinating to look at how all competing theories
   have been locked out by this supposedly pristine "peer review" process
   of funding, and the obsession with individual genes.

   The need for reform of the system has never been more urgent. It's not
   just taxpayer money that's at stake, it's lives that are at stake.

References

   1. http://scientificamerican.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=CC1E538E-E7F2-99DF-3F44D06D3B292CF3
   2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17662288/site/newsweek/