The resident "expert on everything" over at the Straits Times has drawn the ire of yet another biomedical professional for spouting misleading and sensationalized rubbish:'Catch' cancer? Not a chance
IT TAKES long and patient striving to eliminate medical myths from the popular imagination. So it is dismaying that Dr Andy Ho's column last Saturday (''Catch' cancer? Yes, you can') will set back efforts to educate the public on the (non-)infectivity of cancer.
A number of key facts are lost, overshadowed or misunderstood in Dr Ho's article:
Although certain strains of human papilloma virus (HPV) do provoke cervical cancer, the cervical cancer cells themselves do not produce the virus. Equally important, HPV-promoted cervical cancer follows frequent exposure to the virus as a result of unprotected sex with multiple partners. Developing cervical cancer, therefore, has nothing to do with being close to, hugging or kissing someone with cervical cancer.
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infections are extremely common. Most of us (95 per cent of adults in the United States) have already been infected with EBV. Therefore, if you have not had it already, your chances of contracting EBV are more likely to occur on an MRT train than in a cancer ward. The hospital dietitian was absolutely correct to say there was no danger in sharing a meal with a Hodgkin's lymphoma patient.
Kaposi's sarcoma is a cancer that has been linked to infection with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8), but arises only in patients with greatly debilitated immune systems, such as Aids patients. Promiscuous sexual activity increases the risk of contracting HHV-8, so the danger is not hanging out with Aids patients, but rather lifestyle considerations.
The most frequent cancer types in Singapore (breast, colorectum, lung, prostate and ovary) have no viral component whatsoever. This is also true of many other cancers and most leukaemias.
In summary, there is not a single malignancy that can cause someone to 'catch' cancer in any meaningful use of the term. The viruses behind a minority of cancers are either so widespread that you have probably been infected already, or they promote cancer only in circumstances that are avoidable or treatable (Aids, for example).
It would be a tragedy if Dr Ho's article prevented a family member or friend from hugging or kissing a cancer sufferer, since the chance of contracting cancer from the patient, either near or long term, is zero.
Mark Featherstone
Professor and lecturer in cancer biology
School of Biological Sciences
Nanyang Technological University
**********
It's difficult to find another writer who is so wrong about so many things. Yet Andy Ho seems to keep going and going - without needing to clarify his muddled points, correct his basic factual mistakes, or apologise for groundless insinuations - thereby dragging the Straits Times onto a slow train down into tabloid hell.
That suddenly reminds me of one of those insolvent financial institutions...
Would you like to know more?
Original article by Andy Ho
- 'Catch' cancer? Yes, you can
More Andy Ho pearls of wisdom
- Basic Fact Checking
Andy Ho's track record of dispensing pearls of wisdom
- Andy Ho: articles and ripostes (Elia Diodati)
In-depth analysis by fellow Clearthought bloggers
- Angry Doc
1. Can you catch cancer?
2. Is cancer contagious?
- Vexillum II
1. Catch up with the Facts, Andy
2. Cancer as a Transmissable Disease, A Public Health Issue?
*Update 11 March 2008: Another rebuttal by medical professionals - Cancer is not a contagious disease (Straits Times)
8 Comments:
Actually, I think it is correct to say that you *can* *catch* certain types of cancer.
Let me write something up tonight...
Hrmmm... you can increase your chances of getting CERTAIN types of cancer but I hardly think that constitutes catching it.
As for my area of work, EBV has always been an incidental finding in head and neck cancers but then again, as you have pointed out, EBV already infects most of our population.
It's a matter of semantics and definitions then, really. By that definition you can catch HIV but not AIDS. :)
Its more of a cause-and-effect vs correlation problem. Dr. Ho seems to have gotten it rather mixed up esp. with the parts I am familiar with. Gee, I wasted like close to an hour of my studying time reading up on head and neck cancers to blog, that better come out for my oral pathology exams next week.
To Angry Doc and Ed:
I think that Prof. Featherstone is so unhappy with Dr. Ho's article because it is a garbled and misleading mess.
For example, look at this excerpt:
"Specifically, my relative has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - indeed, a relapse of the disease he first had in 2006. Cancerous lymphocytes multiply very fast to crowd out healthy tissue and create lumps, which he recently noticed again.
The first time around, it was a very aggressive variant that spread to his brain. Yet he was cured, thanks to the efforts of the National Cancer Centre's doctors and nurses. Now it is back with a vengeance.
At lunch last Sunday, his 16-year-old son asked in a low voice: 'Can I catch it from Dad?' His mother had a benign breast lump two years ago and another one again recently. Though he had been assured by adults that cancers were not contagious, it seemed to him that tumours struck by households.
It is folk wisdom that you cannot catch cancer like a cold. However, a recent Johns Hopkins University study revealed that if you have had oral sex with six or more individuals, you are thrice more likely to get oral cancer. This is caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV)."
He goes from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to breast lumps to folk wisdom to oral sex to a claim that HPV causes oral cancer.
What's all that supposed to mean???
That non-Hodgkin's lymphoma can spread to other people and cause breast tumours?
That folk wisdom is wrong and you CAN catch cancer like a cold, in particular oral cancer because everybody knows that colds are typically caught through oral sex?
This sort of rambling prose is classically Andy Ho and gives me a splitting headache every time.
It gets worse. Later, he writes:
"Take the case of an outdoorsy Secondary 3 boy named Cao Yuanchi from Raffles Institution who suddenly developed leukaemia within days of completing an Outward Bound School course in January. The leukaemia caused fatal bleeding in his brain. Did he catch something outdoors that triggered the fatal leukaemia?
Yet if you could catch cancer like that, oncology doctors and nurses should have extraordinarily high cancer rates. They don't.
However, this could be because, first, you probably do not catch cancer viruses from the air; and second, these professionals are meticulous in handling patient body fluids, the possible vehicles of transmission of cancer viruses."
Now what's that supposed to mean???
That you can catch leukaemia during outdoor activities?
That oncology doctors and nurses should have extraordinarily high cancer rates because they are frequently involved in outdoor activities and thus susceptible to catching "something"?
And is Andy Ho insinuating that the boy caught his leukaemia from somebody's body fluids?
Without clarifying what's the point of raising that example, he suddenly reverts to talking about non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and doesn't mention leukaemia for the rest of the article.
What a terrible piece of writing.
It is without doubt, a horrible piece of science writing. On top of that, he attempts to make it readable with unsuitable anecdotes which make his whole article a garbled mess.
More people have rebutted his article today in the ST online forums. I wonder if he will bother about them.
You are right - it is a pretty poor piece of journalism (I won't use the term 'science writing'), but I suppose my biased mind zoomed in on the message that some forms of cancer are 'caused' by infectious agents and therefore preventive measures are possible and ignored the leaps of logic and baseless recommendations made by the writer.
What strikes me though is how the two letters rebutting him in the forum yesterday and today seem to do so not out of a simple desire to point out factual errors, but out of fear of how the misinformation might affect how families of cancer patients behave towards them.
Or am I being too clinical?
True, both parties seem to be worried about the possible aversion the public may develop towards cancer patients now that Dr. Ho has declared them infectious.
Perhaps they are the ones who deal regularly with cancer patients and hence are concerned about the psychological welfare of their patients. Given that Dr. Ho has now made claims that certain types of cancer could be due to promiscuous sexual behaviour they seem to be worried about the possibility of this generating a negative social stigma towards patients who have those diseases.
Post a Comment