Saturday, November 27, 2010

James Watson’s Quest: “A Geneticist's Cancer Crusade: The discoverer of the double-helix says the disease can be cured in his lifetime. He's 82.”


A terrific and hopeful piece in The Wall Street Journal today: An interview with James Watson, the legendary co-discoverer of DNA, sharing the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.    

The headline atop Allysia Finley’s story speaks to a positive can-do spirit rarely seen in healthcare journalism these days: “A Geneticist's Cancer Crusade: The discoverer of the double-helix says the disease can be cured in his lifetime. He's 82.”   In fact, Watson has been making this point for a while now; last year, in the midst of the Obamacare debate, he wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for victory in the war on cancer.  Yes, Watson was willing to use the “w” word: war.  Serious Medicine is a war against disease, while health insurance can be seen as a kind of accommodation--some might even say appeasement.   Yes, its true: cures are more important than care, even if the power class of Washington DC thinks the opposite--or at least acts that way.  

Here are some good parts of the new Journal piece:  

'We should cure cancer," James Watson declares in a huff, and "we should have the courage to say that we can really do it." He adds a warning: "If we say we can't do it, we will create an atmosphere where we just let the FDA keep testing going so pitifully."

The man who discovered the double helix and gave birth to the field of modern genetics is now 82 years old. But he's not close to done with his life's work. He wants to win "the war on cancer," and thinks it can be won a whole lot faster than most cancer researchers or bureaucrats believe is possible.

What’s missing in the political-medical discussion, Watson declares is one word: leadership:  

He says he's the better for it because it taught him how to be a leader, something he thinks there are too few of nowadays. "The United States is suffering from a massive lack of leadership. There are some very exceptional, good leaders. I'm not saying they don't exist, but to be a good leader you generally have to ruffle feathers," which Dr. Watson believes most people aren't willing to do.

Finley notes that Watson has some new enemies: 

"The FDA has so many regulations," Dr. Watson says. "They don't want you to try a new thing if there's an old thing that might work. . . . So you take the old thing, but we know cancer changes over time and we would really like to get it whacked early, and not late. But the regulations are saying you can't do these things until we give you a lot of s— drugs," he snorts. "Shouldn't this be the patient's choice to say I would rather beat the odds with a total cure rather than just to know that I am going to have all my hair fall out and then after a year I'm dead? . . . Why should [FDA commissioner] Margaret Hamburg hold things up? There's the cynical answer it gives employment to lawyers.” 

Ah, the lawyers. "Right now America is being destroyed by its lawyers! Most of the people in Congress just want work for lawyers." He quickly adds: "I was born an Irish Democrat, so I wasn't born into a family which instinctively says these things. But my desire is to cure cancer. That's my only desire."

And then some final words:

"I'm going to look optimistically and of course sometimes it doesn't work," he says. But "you move forward through knowledge. You prevail through knowledge. I love the word prevail. Prevail!"

Yes, prevail.  Win the war on cancer.   

6 comments:

  1. This is all good. But prevention is what we can do in short term until the science catches up to the disease. The secret is to actively eat healthy and avoid the concept of diets and replace it will healthy lifestyle. As my niece Christine always says, "Nothing tastes like thin feels. Sincerely, JT

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  2. Part the problem is that we really oughtn't be wasting time "catching up to the disease." Many folks with perfectly healthy lifestyles die from cancer. At least in the U.S. and western Europe you have to be living in a cave to be unaware of the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle.
    The whole point of SMS is to change the focus to the CURE!
    I think Dr. Watson is kind of loopy sometimes, but I also think he's correct in his assessment of the need for leadership on this front. I believe, Mr. Pinkerton, you've addressed this previously, but why can't NIH, CDC, et al, take this on as NACA/NASA did with space exploration in the sixties after President Kennedy's call to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely.

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  3. I fully agree, Jim, through personal experience. My wife of 30 years had two different female related cancers spaced ten years apart and today and confirmed by her oncologist, she is perfectly fine, cured, cancer free. My wife is working, taking care of our offspring (I had to say that because they are adults) and strong as a mule. Her prognosis is check ups but no no reccurence is noted. Now there are some qualifications and caveats here. Both tumors were caught early before they became invasive toward organs She had Mayo Clinic type doctors in a posh New York area. My father was a high profile Park Avenue Attorney and politician. When he was alive, his business took him to the best doctors in New York and I used to go to functions with him years ago so I knew who they were. Back in the 1950's I grew up in an Uptown New York Upton Sinclair neighborhood where cancer was thought of as a death sentence. If someone we knew had cancer walking down Broadway it was not long before we never saw them again.The family experience when a principle member has any cancer is horrible. While my wife had the benefit of early detection and high profile doctors, I do not think that this article was misdirected at all. She had two different cancers ten years apart and the tumors were in place and growing when they were discovered. I was aggressive and did whatever was in my power to help her. The very fact that she is fine now is hope for everybody.

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  4. What Watson said is correct in his hope. The molecule is a double helix. And we know (I think) all the chromosomes (DNA -RNA) in it. Therefore wouldn’t it be like a crossword puzzle? Seems logical. Maybe a Cray computer would help?

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  5. Dr. Watson and I are close to the same age. We have both seen the greed factor insinuate pathologically into medicine until it was so weakened from within that the professionals in greed and the bureaucrats moved in with little resistance from medicine's historic integrity - for lack of medical leaders.

    Dr. Watson's focus is cancer. I'm glad. I have chronic lymphocytic leukemia. But - the issues of medicine's lost way begins with failure of basics within medical education that began with the schism that eventually resulted in osteopathy and chiropractic. There are millions more disabled and disheartened by iatrogenic "benign" pain than cancer patients. While priorities must be balanced towards the saving of life, the injury to quality of life has also been ignored for far too long.

    I relate the story on my website: www.drgoodley.com.

    Be well,

    Paul H. Goodley, M.D.

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  6. The man who discovered the double helix and gave birth to the field of modern genetics is now 82 years old. But he's not close to done with his life's work. He wants to win "the war on cancer," and thinks it can be won a whole lot faster than most cancer researchers or bureaucrats believe is possible. Her prognosis is check ups but no no reccurence is noted. Now there are some qualifications and caveats here.
    If someone we knew had cancer walking down Broadway it was not long before we never saw them again.The family experience when a principle member has any cancer is horrible. We have both seen the greed factor insinuate pathologically into medicine until it was so weakened from within that the buy clomid online in greed and the bureaucrats moved in with little resistance from medicine's historic integrity - for lack of medical leaders.

    ReplyDelete