Cancer treatment at a glance

Interactive site to compare the effectiveness of cancer treatments

Having heard a terrible diagnosis from a doctor - oncology - people first turn to the Internet in search of information about the most effective method of treating their disease. And there they fall into a real trap of deception, beliefs, and outright scams for money. To help ordinary people separate scientific fact from fiction, a group of UK scientists and journalists skilled in data visualization techniques created the Project Cancer Cure . The work was supported by the Mesothelioma Treatment Center, a legal organization helping victims of asbestos production.

The authors of the project presented more than a hundred methods of treating cancer, including medications, dietary supplements, technologies, pseudoscientific recommendations and witchcraft recipes.

"We set out to develop a comprehensive and authoritative resource to help people sift through the vast amount of information (and, unfortunately, misinformation) and opinions about cancer treatment and medications," Mesothelioma quoted ScienceAlert Center spokesperson Domenica D'Ottavio as saying. Ottavio).

“ This is a site about how to avoid being scammed by scammers who claim the incredible effectiveness of their cancer treatments. That is, it is useful for those, for example, who heard or saw on the Internet (which is more likely) an advertisement for the miracle vitamin B17, also known as laetrile, also known as semi-synthetic amygdalin, and decided to purchase it for themselves or for a loved one. And not necessarily in the presence of a certain oncopathology, the advertisement also talks about a powerful preventive effect ,” this is how toxicologist and scientific journalist Alexey Vodovozov assesses the significance of the project.

The project is freely available. It is an interactive infographic of a series of circles of different colors. Each circle represents one treatment method. The larger the circle, the more information about the method was found in the Google news section or in the scientific articles section of Google Scholar.

The main value of the project is that it shows in a convenient form scientific data that is inaccessible to most people. Usually people go to a search engine, type in “cure for cancer” and start following the first links presented in the search results. And there are rarely scientifically proven results. A special section is adapted for searching scientific articles - Google Scholar, but it is used mainly by scientists, teachers, and scientific journalists.

At the top of the infographic are cancer treatments that are very well proven to be effective. The lower, the more doubtful the therapeutic effect of the method or medicine, even to the point of dangerous effects on the body. The data is filtered by parameters such as clinical trials, their type and subject, that is, whether the treatment was tested on humans or other animals. By clicking on the circle, you can get detailed information about the treatment method.

The authors of the project draw attention to the fact that only 1.7% of oncology treatment methods demonstrate convincing evidence of effectiveness, and 34.5% are generally devoid of any scientific justification. Every tenth treatment based on dietary supplements turned out to be dangerous for patients.

Treatments such as immunotherapy, aromatase inhibitor therapy, surgery and chemotherapy have the strongest evidence of effectiveness in treating cancer. But there is no reliable evidence that popular dietary supplements, such as acai berries, selenium, vitamin C, treat cancer. The anti-cancer effects of marijuana and green tea have not been scientifically proven.

The infographic shows that a substance contained in apricot kernel extract, amygdalin, can be dangerous for humans. There is scientific evidence that a certain patient, trying to cure a relapse of prostate cancer with amygdalin, received cyanide poisoning. “ Now you can go to this website, click on the infographic on Amygdalin and see that it is proven to be dangerous. Indeed, amygdalin (essentially cyanide neutralized by glucose), under the influence of enzymes and an acidic environment, gradually sheds glucose residues and returns to its original, toxic state. Especially if you take it along with another extremely popular “preventative” - vitamin C. For which, judging by the infographics, there is no evidence of either benefit or harm. But, by the way, nothing is said about combinations, although with amygdalin the combination is literally lethal ,” says Vodovozov.

By the way, according to Alexey Vodovozov, the domestic website “XXII Century” two years ago developed a similar project in the form of infographics - “ Alternative cancer therapy. For good or for harm? " The project has recently been updated and now has even more information than the UK developers.

Tatiana Pichugina