
Why James Watson Has Become Optimistic about Curing Cancer - dnetesn
http://cancer.nautil.us/article/191/why-james-watson-has-become-optimistic-about-curing-cancer
======
jszymborski
As a cancer researcher who has an allergic reaction to popsci articles on
cancer & CRISPR, the concepts in this article were presented extremely well.

I will say re: optimism that science for me is always both exciting in that
there are always new questions, new answers and new possible treatment, but
can also be very disappointing if you expect any one answer to be without very
real and confining limitations.

The headline "Why [scientist] Has Become Optimistic about Curing Cancer" could
have been written a million times about a million emerging or maturing field
in cancer research (see: DNA repair, angiogensis, immunotherapy, onco-
viruses).

We make progress everyday, but my brain usually goes to hibernate when
somebody says they're "optimistic about curing cancer". If that time ever
comes, I don't imagine it'll explode on the seen, but be a victory of
iterations that creeps up on us.

I often think of how AIDS is now a treatable chronic illness instead of
terminal one, and how that was a success that nearly goes unnoticed since
treatments simply got incrementally better over time.

~~~
Waterluvian
I'm naive to medical science so forgive me if I'm wrong.

Aren't there numerous famous examples of medical breakthroughs exploding into
the scene? Penicillin and vaccines coming to mind. (at least I don't think
those slowly crept up on us?)

I don't think a miracle cure is around the corner, but I can see why the
layperson may feel like it's plausible, when you look at the miracle cures we
have learned about growing up.

My perspective is that there are numerous awful diseases that we have sent
into oblivion with medical science done by people with far fewer resources
than our scientists have today.

~~~
Mz
They tend to be quickly forgotten. Thousands of schizophrenics were cured and
released from asylums when antibiotics were discovered. Their mental health
problems were rooted in having syphilis. Once cured of syphilis, they were no
longer crazy either. Many people have not heard of this incident.

We prevented Y2K from becoming an Apocalypse. People now remember Y2K with
derision, like "Those fools ever thought it was a threat. Ha!" When oil wells
were set on fire as Saddam Hussein departed Kuwait, it was predicted they
would burn for years and be a global environmental catastrophe. When it was
resolved in six months, it was a footnote in stories with more human drama. It
was not celebrated with the degree of fervor that the potential catastrophe
was loudly decried.

People have a way of sweeping good news under the rug, forgetting it was ever
a serious problem and finding something new to loudly bellyache about.

------
faitswulff
Haven't read the article, but it's bizarre that I _just_ read an article from
the same publication (Nautilus) saying just the opposite, basically:

"But if all life, including cancer cells, continues to exploit niches, no
solutions from technologists will be final.

Cancer cells are not simply a disorder or breakdown in a mechanism, but an
organism going on a full-tilt offensive, using multiple, often shifting
strategies to produce and use molecular fuel, win resources, and evade the
immune system. If so, then the rules of the game may change—these insights
suggest that the war on cancer may be endless. Still, we can get better at
treating it as an evolving entity within the context on its ecology, through
the idea of “living drugs,” such as engineering the body’s own immune cells to
sense and mobilize an attack on cancer."

[http://cancer.nautil.us/article/186/cancer-isnt-a-logic-
prob...](http://cancer.nautil.us/article/186/cancer-isnt-a-logic-problem)

~~~
benchaney
I'm not at all an expert in this field, but I don't find that argument from
Nautilus compelling. Cancer in an individual results from a mutation of a
healthy cell. It doesn't get spread from some other person who has cancer.
Because of this, there is no mechanism for it to get better at fighting
against modern medicine in a global sense. It might improve somewhat within
the context of a single person, but this wouldn't pose a long term issue to
developing medication that could eventually beat it with a high degree of
certainty.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Some cancers are, in fact, spread from person to person. The HPV virus, for
example, is responsible for many instances of cervical cancer - and I'm pretty
sure it can cause throat and/or penile cancer as well. Not everyone that gets
the virus gets cancer, but it is exceedingly common.

~~~
benchaney
My understanding is that the virus increases the likelihood of contracting
cancer because it suppresses the immune system, which is normally responsible
for killing cancer cells. The cancer itself is still the result of a mutation
in a healthy cell from the same person who has contracted it.

------
reasonattlm
The described strategies in this article are still a matter of working where
the light is shining, not where it would be most effective. This is an age of
genomics, genomics is popular and widely appreciated, and it is thus easy to
raise funding for genomic work. Therefore people are trying to build
personalized and per-cancer methods based on specific genes. The ability to
raise funding for work is far more of a determinant of direction taken than
expectation of quality of results, sadly.

So this is just an incremental update of the old strategy of trying to find a
better chemotherapeutic for each cancer. It isn't going to work fast enough
and well enough. There are not enough researchers and isn't enough funding to
tackle every one of the hundreds of cancers and their subtypes in any
reasonable about of time via the one project per cancer approach.

The only viable approach to a sweeping cure for cancer is to identify
commonalities shared by very large fractions of all cancers. The chimeric
antigen receptor strategies are a step in this direction, producing a
technology base that has a much lower cost of adaptation to each new cancer in
the class that they can target, rather than needing a whole new project from
scratch. But is only a modest step.

The best way forward appears to me to be blockade of telomere extension:
sabotaging telomerase [1] and alternative lengthening of telomeres [2], a
small collection of mechanisms. If developed, it can be applied to all
cancers, as all cancers depend absolutely on telomere lengthening. They can't
evolve their way around it, as is the case for many existing methods of
targeting particular mechanisms in a type of cancer. It is too fundamental a
part of cellular biology. Blockade of telomere lengthening would be absolutely
and determinedly the full stop at the end of all cancers - and would cost no
more to develop than any one or two existing therapies that can treat only one
subtype of cancer.

[1]: [https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/usmc-
rtt1231...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/usmc-
rtt123114.php)

[2]: [https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-control-alt-delete-
ca...](https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-control-alt-delete-cancer/)

~~~
zaptheimpaler
>There are not enough researchers and isn't enough funding to tackle every one
of the hundreds of cancers and their subtypes in any reasonable about of time
via the one project per cancer approach.

Its partly the way the problem is framed. Perhaps we wrongly assumed that
cancer is one disease with a distinct root cause / cure purely based on
similarities in symptoms. If so, talking of "curing cancer" is like "curing
inflammation" \- its much too general a symptom to cure, even though doctors
are able to treat many cases of it by narrowing down the cause of
inflammation, or treat it partially etc. Maybe cancer will be cured piecewise
over the years rather than all at once, and people will laugh at how humanity
thought there was a disease called cancer.

~~~
ThomPete
So how would something like a melanoma be explained?

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I dont understand - melanoma (or any other type of cancer) would be explained
just as it is currently explained by medicine (i am not an expert), i am only
saying its possible that the cause of melanoma is different enough from the
cause of lung cancer that they might not deserve to be grouped under the same
name. In which case, we would not expect a single cure to be effective for
both.

Its a weird semantic point admittedly..

~~~
ThomPete
Well cell change is the shared grouping no? I am seriously asking

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I have no idea, im not a doctor. Based on pop-sci articles, i think the idea
is that a cell mutates to have DNA that makes it harmful to you. But this cell
is part of your body, so it gets nutrients from the body and divides like any
other cell, propagating its harmful DNA.

------
peter303
Watson was also the second person to have his fully sequenced genome published
(after Venter). At the time it was very expensive. And perhaps dangerous since
few knew what all that meant.

The most interesting fact about his genome that he had twenty genetic defects
for disease that had not expressed themselves for unknown reasons. This helped
lead to a moratorium on public genetic disease diagnosis from places like
23andMe, just lifted last week. Because you cant really tell the client they
will get sick or not for many of the defects.

~~~
tim333
I think people should have the right to the information anyway. I mean we all
dies one day and banning information on the likely ways doesn't seem to
achieve much.

------
sethish
James Watson has also been disgraced in the academic world and removed from
his academic positions for his views on women and people of color. His views
are offensive, but also not backed by solid science. Given his heterodox and
inaccurate views, I'm not much interested in his views on other topics, nor
convinced his opinion should hold much weight. Luckily the rest of the article
is just a survey of research having nothing to do with Watson.

~~~
loeg
Do you have a source for these strong claims? I'm curious to learn more.

~~~
Fomite
His Wikipedia page has the highlights. He is, in many ways, your racist old
grandpa, just with a Nobel prize.

~~~
hossbeast
Do you know something about my Grandpa that I don't know ...

------
madhadron
James Watson is a crank who made his reputation by stealing data and then
being an ass for the rest of his life. I'm not going to bother to read because
the chances of him having anything useful to say is essentially zero.

