Cancer: A Call for a New Health Science Research Paradigm

The age normalized cancer death rate in America has only dropped 5 percent over the last 55 years despite the dramatic advances in cancer screening. Most of the small reduction can be accounted for the large drop in smoking over this time period. Science, under its current paradigm, has largely failed to adequately address cancer, and many other leading diseases. The costs of clinical studies are very expensive so we cannot afford to test the numerous potential pre-clinical treatments clinically; therefore there is a need for selection of the best potential treatment for clinical testing. However, under the current science paradigm the selection of treatments for clinically testing is biased and flawed, and therefore leads to many failed clinical results and little improvement in cancer death rates. Part of the current science problem is that there is a selective bias of publishing positive results, and when researchers fail to replicate a finding it is often not published, and/or ignored. Basic science research is largely politically (mainly at the scientist subfield level), and/or profit driven, as in every other aspect of society. It tends to be the large, well funded, labs or pharmaceuticals that can push a treatment to clinical testing, rather than the actual best treatment. Only when the built in biases in our science are eliminated will the optimal pre-clinical treatment be identified and significant improvements in cancer death rates affected. What is required is a

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