Is there a male physician-scientist Cinderella in New York?

(This is a reader’s comment I wrote and posted on the Wall Street Journal today. In today’s issue of the Journal its Opinion section had one short opinion entitled “Chemistry's Cinderella Story  A Nobel winner who challenged dogma”. It stirred great interest and debates.)

I may be the modern Cinderella except I am a male physician-scientist who want to establish a brand new mindset for cancer. I published my viewpoints to the public at www.thedoctorxproject.com and set up a personal blog “Brand New Mindset for Cancer”. All I got so far are silence, ridicules and personal harassment. So when I read this short opinion this morning, I immediately called the WSJ and tried to contact this brilliant author. 

Cancer puzzle will be relatively easy solved if scientists change the way how they think and take totally different approaches. We will solve all three aspects of cancer: how it happens, how to stop it spread around and how to prevent it. This statement may be too bold to be believed. However, if you understand all three are intrinsically interconnected, it will become much easy to apprehend. 

The Shechtman story is really encouraging for me because what he was treated before he started to get any recognized. When I tried to recruit member for a local support team I told potential candidates that at this moment I only have one project, one logo and one dream, and no any other resource. I am currently making a living by working in other job but my dream of being a great scientist and making an impact to our society is still on.

Specially thank those WSJ readers who made great comments in this forum:

Gerald Hanner on common phenomenon and mentioned Thomas Kuhn’s landmark work (He invented the famous phrase “paradigm shift”)

Randy Watts On "group think" and the importance of persistence (In one widely circulated investigative report why there are still so many people dying from cancer the “group thinking” was listed as one of the major reasons of failure by the establishment.)

David Blanco On modern superstition and the Pharisees of Old

Paul Cooper on challenging the consensus at the fundamental level

Jared Potter on official opinion and his optimistic tone.

If you have a few minutes, check the information I mentioned above by yourself and make your own judgment. Don’t be the one who will say many years later that I am sorry I took a wrong side, but you know we are all human beings and make a lot of mistakes, just as several persons tried hard here to defense why Mr. Pauling and unnamed Dr Shechtman’s former colleagues are so wrong.

(P.S.: The WSJ withdrew this article few hours after posting.  Immediately after posting one reader said that the medicine seems to be the hardest to break into if one had different opinions from the rest because of their god complex. He gave a very good example of Helicobacter Pylorli, in which case hundred of thousand people's lives were destroyed (or the quality of the life was severely reduced) in many decades resulted from aggressive and unnecessary treatment regimens based on a popular, but faulty theory.)

The Brand New Mindset for Cancer Series: Part 9.0 Using hair loss after chemo as a marker for cancer R & D

(Key points: Hair loss is a marker for chemo therapy. It reflects all of pains and struggles the patients are going through. It is also an embarrassment for biomedical professional because a poor job was done and showed in public. In the near future the most powerful and effective anti-cancer drugs will come to the market without causing hair loss.)

Recently, there is an international figure who suffers from cancer. At the first it was news showing him looks like normal, and then few weeks later when he showed up again, all you found was he lost all his hairs. Even there are some drugs nowadays causing no hair loss, but for the majority of the patients who go through all those painful processes of chemotherapy, hair loss is not only a marker for a bad fortune, but also brings a lot of emotional struggles and embarrassment.

It is a landmark for chemo. Moreover, it is an embarrassment for the cancer R & D community as well as biomedical professionals because twenty years after Taxol brought into the market, there has been essentially no any improvement on this particular problem. All explanations are that the drugs kill cancerous cells, as a side effect it also kills normal cells because the hair follicle is where there is plenty of fast growing normal cells. When you want to know more and ask how to prevent or entirely avoid hair loss. Sorry, this is all on the table.

This has to be changed. Patients are expecting true breakthroughs in hair loss and cancer treatment. To achieve this result the doctors and scientists need to change their mindset and use new approach in the field of cancer research and treatment.

I have had strong interest in this field for a while. I still remember how exciting when I read an academic paper on hair stem cells, which was published by a research team in a famous cosmetic company headquartered in France. It is quite an unbelievable and fantastic project done by them. There are no many good studies on hair loss as a result of chemo.

We need to have an integrated plan for all aspects of cancer, from the mechanism of the disease to treatment regiments, including the prevention of hair loss. In three parts of the DoctorX Project, there is a section devoted to this narrow field. I am confident the day will come when the most powerful and effective treatment will cause no hair loss at all.

Any time you see a people without hair because of chemo, if it is a marker of pain and struggles for the person, it is more embarrassment for biomedical professionals because a poor job was done and showed in public. This has to be ended, the sooner, the better.

(This article is the ninth in a series of “the Brand New Mindset for Cancer” essays. It is published on 9/20/2011.)

Being a Creative Mind Series: Part 1.0 Being curious, having strong curiosity

(Key points: A creative mind needs to have a strong curiosity. Curiosity is an intrinsic character that can show in everywhere and at any moment. Creating new knowledge begins from human’s curiosity toward nature.)

One of the goals of our education system is to nurture as many creative minds as possible. There are hundreds of thousand articles and books on how to be more creative. For example, when one searches the Amazon web site by using key words “creative mind”, there are 394 titles popping up. Some of those titles have a large number of reviews. You may think it is so easy to find an effective guide book so many of us could become a more creative mind. That’s why some people are looking for a quick and easy fix to enhance our creativity through some methods such as drinking coffee, just as claimed in one popular book. The truth is there are really not so many creative minds around. Many people believe that it is not an easy task to be real creative mind when we seem being embedded in so many trivial things in our daily routines.

Perhaps there are many characters of a creative mind. To dissect those characters may help us to follow the success paths some great creative minds took. One of those perspectives is curiosity. We know how our kids show their curiosity. When we talk someone and he/she shows curiosity, we immediately detect that message. But what’s curiosity and how it happens? Curiosity is a mystery, just like why we sleep so long every day. As David Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist, said in his co-authored book “Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness”, the curiosity is the premier driving force for the creative mind of many eccentrics. They have extreme degree of curiosity. But this is also a most neglected character for many adults because they fear being labeled as “immature” or “childish”.

Curiosity is an intrinsic character and can show up at any time and any environment. I still remember when I was a boy, I always curious about why airplane can fly so high. It is a magic for such heavy giant to take off, few of them can reach 250 tons!! Later on I learned the principles of aerodynamics. I made a lot of paper airplanes and competed with other kid to see who can make the most far. Even today whenever there is a plane flying over, I always give an extra glance.

The everyday life is full of wonders and calls our neglected curiosity. If I pass a tree which is growing on rock, I always wonder how those roots from the tree reach so deep into narrow gap between rocks. The tip of a root just has a cluster of few plant cells. What’s powerful mechanism for them to open a new world for the tree in the dark underground?

One of my most curious objects is ant, those tiny creatures underneath our foot and everywhere. I know that they use pheromone to mark a road so their fellow ants can find food or gathering place. I sometime make a prank just to see how fast they can rebuild a new path for a known destination. When I joined one university years ago, it has more than 13 libraries. The books about ant, more precisely myrmecology, scatter in different places. I read most of them. In particular, I admire one expert, Dr. Edward O Wilson, a Harvard professor who studied ants for several decades and earned a title “Lord of the Ant” as in a PBS’s NOVA program. There were some most beautiful pictures about ants appeared in an article in the National Geographic written by him. At present the ant study is well beyond its niche field, it has been applied to social science and more. One of the initial motivations for Dr Wilson was curiosity. So it may be confident to say that to have a strong curiosity is the beginning of gaining new knowledge.

(This article is the first in a series of “Being a Creative Mind” essays. It is published on 9/14/2011.)

The Brand New Mindset for Cancer Series: Part 8.0 Stop cancer cells moving around A bright future for treating late stage cancers

(Key points: For a long time the doctors and scientists have focused their attentions only on killing or removing cancer lesions. The results are not good as many patients, especially who have late stage cancers, are continually losing their lives. One of several future plans is to bring products which will disable cancer’s motility to the market.)

Why do cancers kill so many patients? The answer is quite simple. It is because cancer can move around either by metastasizing to remote locations or evading into the neighbor tissues. If this ability is blocked or eliminated altogether, then cancer will become a local problem being much easily managed.

However, all of current treatment options either focus on killing cancer cells, most often killing normal cells at the same time, or removing tumors, there is not any effective option available to deal with cancer mobility. Many new therapies like Iressa and several antibodies still use the killing strategy. Doctors and scientists may think the reason we don’t have such drug simply because we don’t understand well why cancer cells can move around. This excuse is half-true. In my not so humble opinion people, especially people in pharmaceutical industry really don’t consider this option is worthy to pursue when cancer is still left in the original place, even its mobility being disarmed.

Well, when so many patients continually die because there is no one method for cure, it is time to have a strategy review on how to deal with cancer, even it may not so sexy at the first glance like the method and treatment stopping cancer cells moving around. Cancer cells and other normal cells both have mobility. But cancer cells do have its unique mechanism in motility which is different from normal cells. That will severe as a target point which may bring cancer to its knee.

A group I used to collaborate is one of the premier research centers in the field of cancer cell motility. I am confident we can bring products which will disable cancer cell motility to the market. Cheer!

(This article is the eighth in a series of “the Brand New Mindset for Cancer” essays. It is published on 9/9/2011.)