About cancer, soda, press releases and Russian media

It is well known that the main scientific news in Russia is about cancer, and they are divided into two categories. From the first, we learn that some food product causes or, conversely, prevents cancer. News of the second category appear approximately once a quarter and report the opening of the treatment method that promises the next final solution to the problem. Given the number of new drugs for cancer that we have learned from the media about in recent years, this disease should have been caused by no more anxiety than February runny nose. Alas, this is still wrong. The news of the next miracle method recently in Russian media is a great reason to understand the reasons for some dissonance between publications in the press and reality.

This time we are not dealing with an innovative drug or complex technology, but with an old contender for the role of a panacea with a pretty, however, soaked a reputation. “Scientists told how soda can save from cancer”-this is how, not a little, the headlines of the news published by Ribrate.ru, the agency of RIA-News and the TC “Zvezda” look.

Attempts to treat cancer with ordinary baking soda have been made since the first gross dimensions of the pH of tumors showed that they are characterized by more acidity than for healthy tissues. Immediately there were those who declared this change not one of the consequences of the pathological process, but the only immediate cause of all cancer. And where is the new theory of cancer, simple enough to create an illusion of the possibility of a simple solution in the patient, there are the worst of medical charlatans - those who are ready to earn on the fear of people's lives or loved ones.

One of the most famous such fraudsters was the Italian doctor Tulio Simoncini. In January of this year, he was sentenced to five years, and his assistant-two years of imprisonment, after their attempts to treat a 50-year-old patient killed with baking soda. Perhaps this victim was not the first: her death stopped Simonchini's activity only because an ambulance refused to indicate death from natural causes. Alas, Simonchini is only one of the hundreds of soda doctors. For example, a search on the Internet in Russian will quickly bring you to the site of a whole network of Moscow medical centers that offer to treat cancer and other deadly diseases with hydrogen peroxide. Probably, they feel quite comfortable and nothing threatens their work. In any case, until there is a tragedy that will be difficult to conceal.

At the same time, the idea of ​​manipulating PH of cancer tissues in order to influence the course of the disease has quite serious reasons in itself, so as not to be ridiculous. PH changes are very characteristic of tissues of certain types of cancer. In particular, in tumors, a decrease in extracellular pH may be observed while maintaining or increasing intracellular. As a result, the extracellular environment becomes more acidic than intracellular. Since the norm is usually opposite, this phenomenon is called a detailed pH gradient. It is believed that a detailed gradient plays a certain role in the processes of growth and metastasis of tumors. A number of studies showed that adding ordinary soda to drinking water laboratory mice is sufficient in order to partially normalize the pH of tumor tissue. At the same time, clinically significant effects were also observed: although it was not possible to reduce the size of the tumor or stop its growth, at the mice, which were searched with water with soda diluted in it, metastases appeared less often.

So what are we dealing with when we are talking about treating cancer with soda: with a dangerous quackery or with a promising area of ​​scientific research? Perhaps the time for fraud and the murder of Simonchini is an incomprehensible genius that ahead of the science of his time?

Despite the fact that attempts to influence the course of cancer by changing pH began back in the 1990s, a medicine based on this principle was still not created. Soda is not suitable for this role. As often happens, it is impossible to simply repeat on a person what was done on laboratory animals. The equivalent of the dose used on mice, which would be approximately 0.18 g/ kg/ day for humans, is enough only to neutralize acid produced by a tumor with a volume of not more than one cubic millimeter. At the same time, regular doses in exceeding 0.5 g/kg/day (this is only three, not even more times more), can cause uncompensated alkalosis and lead to the death of the patient long before the minimum benefit of slowing metastasis will be obtained. Alas, no matter how you want to treat a dangerous disease with penny soda, no prospects for this approach are visible. However, it cannot be ruled out that someday there will be drugs that normalize the pH-gorad in a different, more subtle way. For example, suppressing the operation of proton pumps built into the cell membrane.

As for the study, which served as the reason for the noise discussed in the Russian press, there are no sensational statements in the scientific article published in Cell based on the results of this work. The research group found that an increase in the acidity of cancer tissues leads to the fact that the intracellular signaling complex MTORC 1 “falls silent”, which, in turn, violates the operation of the so -called circidous watches - an intracellular mechanism that can play the role in the development of oncological diseases, and, under certain circumstances, to merge the susceptibility of cells to chemotherapy. A small part of this work was a partial repetition of previously mentioned experiments with mice -the use of soda into their drinking water normalized in some cases the pH of the tumors and again launched circus hours. In other cases, however, it was not launched.

This is, of course, interesting work, since it connects several areas that are now on the tip of research interest, and improves our understanding of how cancer arises and develops. But there is nothing in it about the "discovery of a cheap way of combating cancer." Hundreds of similar works are published annually with a description of new biological phenomena obtained in vitro 1 or on laboratory animals. Theoretically, almost all of them could contribute to the treatment of cancer. But fundamentally new working drugs for cancer appears very little: the abyss lies between the biological phenomenon observed in the laboratory, and in most cases insurmountable.

A significant part of the laboratory finds does not even have an attempt to create a medicine. If such an attempt is made, the chances of crowning it to the market for the market of a new drug are extremely small - they make up a percentage. Even medicines that have gone to clinical trials on volunteers complete the registration procedure on average only in 8–9% of cases. Moreover, in oncology this figure is even less - about 5%. What then explains the rampant enthusiasm of the Russian media?

The fact that they focused not on the balanced, without excessive sensationism, an article in Cell, but on a press release, published on the same day of Chi Van Dang, scientific director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research). Unlike a scientific publication, this release is full of optimism. The article in Cell is called “Acid with hypoxia suppresses circus watches by inhibiting MTOR”; The press release is entitled “How baking soda could improve cancer therapy”-do you feel the difference?

Almost the entire release is dedicated to the fact that in the original publication in Cell does not take up much space - thereby the mice that drank water from the baking soda diluted in it, and the reasoning that the discovered phenomenon can increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy. “The concept is incredibly simple,” Dr. Dan writes enthusiastically, “and it’s not about any medicine for $ 100,000. This is literally ordinary baking soda . ” Forgetting at the same time mentioning the inconsistency of baking soda on a person and that the idea itself is not new and the search for other ways to influence pH of the tumors has been going on for many years.

Russian journalists could only take a small step to bring the news to “perfection”. A little fantasy, a little unwillingness to study not only a press release, but also a scientific publication, some courage when choosing headlines, and now the news is diverging over the network and collecting comments like “I always knew that the cure for cancer has long been invented, and scientists hide it.”

I actually understand everything. And about the fact that the scientific director Dan needs to receive grants and report on outstanding discoveries, so he cannot release a press release with an honest, but unattractive name “Yet Another Vitro Phenomenon with No Clinical Relevance” 2 . And about the fact that Russian media make the news “more interesting” because they need traffic: after all, they need to sell advertising, premiums and career depend on this. But in any way, it is impossible to throw out of the head that unfortunate woman who was killed by Simonchini, and stop thinking that, perhaps, just now some desperate person is going on, having read the news, to treat his serious and dangerous disease to that very network of Moscow medical centers. And it may not return from there.

It is somehow more accurate, gentlemen.

Pyotr talents
co -founder of the Evolution Foundation,
Member of the Society of Evidence Medicine Specialists

The author of the article is a member of the Council of the Educational Fund "Evolution", created with the aim of popularizing science and scientific worldview. The fund exists thanks to the support of thousands of private donors and is currently maintaining a fundraising campaign.

You can support the “evolution” on her website at www.evolutionFund.ru .

Anatoly Bloshchinko, an oncologist, chemotherapist:

Without exaggeration, fifteen to twenty patients use non-traditional treatment methods: drink soda, peroxide, ASD, vodka with oil, camel urine, kerosene. The methods are captured by many positive fake reviews, simplicity, cheapness and, most importantly, the opportunity to treat at home, without the help of a doctor. Unfortunately, all this can lead to tragic consequences.

There are patients who, having learned about the presence of a disease or finding a neoplasm, do not go to the oncologist, afraid to find out the bad news, but resort to such methods. And they continue to “be treated” until one of the relatives will be on a doctor’s visit or until the patient is in the hospital due to complications. It is then that it turns out that the time when it was possible to begin adequate and successful treatment, only symptomatic, palliative therapy remained and remains.

It is hardly possible to reduce the flow of information about the “successes” of alternative medicine in the treatment of malignant tumors. Therefore, it is so important to discuss non -traditional methods with the scientific substantiation of their uselessness in the media, in social networks, to conduct educational seminars. And it is very important that oncologists communicate with patients (for which many do not always have time, however), explained that non -traditional methods of treatment are based on myths and give only false hopes.

1 letters. "In glass" ( lat. ). That is, in a test tube, on cell cultures.

2 Another in vitro phenomenon that does not have a clinical value ( English ).