Public talk: Questionable therapies on offer to cancer patients will come under the spotlight at a public talk in Dublin tomorrow evening.Lack of quality control raises doubts over treatment'sresults
Medical oncologist Prof John Crown will examine current approaches in cancer research and medical treatment, but his talk will focus on a range of alternative treatments for which extraordinary claims have been made. Examples include coffee enemas as a detoxification procedure and laetrile, a cyanide-containing compound found in the seeds of apricots.
According to Prof Crown, a consultant at St Vincent's University Hospital, alternative medicines are not subject to the same level of rigour, quality control and peer-review testing for safety as conventional treatments. "I just believe that people shouldn't take things that haven't been proven to work," he said.
He said the dangers of unproven treatments are manifold and noted there was a real possibility that alternative treatments could be toxic or contain compounds such as oestrogens or steroids that may be better avoided by cancer patients.
He added that some unproven therapies might interfere with conventional treatments. "There is evidence that some drugs - in particular megadoses of vitamins - may inactivate chemotherapy drugs and may rescue cancer cells from the effects of chemotherapy.
"There's just the whole dishonesty factor," he said. "When you consider how regulated I am in giving things that we have some smattering of information about, how can people say outrageous things about drugs which have no basis and be beyond the law?"
Prof Crown's research interest is in treating breast cancer with "smart" drugs that focus on specific molecular targets. The approach involves agents such as herceptin, an antibody that can recognise certain types of breast cancer cell, and avastin, which can inhibit the formation of new blood vessels to a tumour.
"Back in the old days, all we had was chemotherapy and you used to basically try to poison cancer cells," said Prof Crown, who recently won an award from the Irish Journal of Medical Science for his research into the disease. "Our focus now is on smart bombs rather than blunderbusses."
Tomorrow's talk on cancer therapies will be hosted by the Irish Skeptics Society, which aims to promote science and critical thinking by challenging extraordinary claims. The society runs six public talks a year which, according to founder member Paul O'Donoghue, provide a forum for the society to present scientific information and encourage people to ask questions.
He said the society chose the subject of cancer therapies for this lecture to draw attention to the risks in going the alternative route.
• The talk, Current Research and Treatment in Cancer and Questionable Therapies to Avoid, will take place on Wednesday, February 1st at 8pm in the Davenport Hotel, Merrion Square, Dublin 2. Admission is €3 for members of the Irish Skeptics Society, €6 for non-members.
