NYT Series on Cancer - Confusing Messages

November 15, 2009

If you have been reading Gina Kolata's series on the war against cancer here in the U.S., you might be confused. Ms Kolata's articles are surely dramatic, and the evidence she quotes sounds convincing, but you could walk away from her article with a very confused feeling.

For example, Ms Kolata suggests that the evidence, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat is associated with lower cancer risk (i.e., eating healthy foods helps to prevent cancer), is largely weak and inconclusive. She goes on to explain that while some experts certainly believe that obesity is associated with cancer, others are not so convinced. This is true, but it is only the first sentence of a paragraph-long explanation.

Ms Kolata is describing the nuance of epidemiology (the study of the factors affecting the health of a population). Epidemiology is a mix of biology and statistics, and experts try to understand how diseases like cancer are caused, and to do that, the experts seperate the suspect factors (like obesity) and study how those factors affect the risk of developing disease. This is a tried and true way to study diseases like cancer; researchers seperate the factors, study them, and then put them back together to understand the interaction and interplay of many many many complicated factors. In explaining the abiguity regarding the cancer treatments and causes, Ms Kolata fails to explain adequetely that researchers are still at the point in which they are seperating and studying factors; we have not yet been able to put all the pieces back together to understand fully the interplay between factors like healthy eating and obesity.

Ms Kolata's article addresses the effectiveness of some medications versus other medications, and she cites some large studies and the evidence provided by those studies. Again, the choice to take certain medications is between you and your doctor. The treatment of cancer is complicated and unique to each case. Broad sweeping statements like the ones that Ms Kolata makes are almost impossible to apply to each individual case, and THIS is what makes the study of cancer so very difficult.

Ms Kolata's article is a good read IF you read it with the intention of understanding exactly where we are in process of studying cancer. IT IS NOT something you should read to make judgements on what treatments and lifestyle choices are best for you. You should reserve those important decisions for conversations with your doctors and other health care providers.

Read Kolata's NYT Article

by Christian McEvoy, MPH, Director of Survivorship Information Connecticut Challenge

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