Sharks Don't Get Cancer

Sharks Don't Get Cancer (subtitle: How Shark Cartilage Could Save Your Life) is a 1992 book written by I. William Lane and Linda Comac and published by Avery Publishing. Despite its title, the book does not claim that sharks never get cancer, only that they rarely do so, a fact which has been known since the first malignancy was found in a shark specimen in 1908.[1] Lane and Comac further claimed that this was because shark cartilage contained cancer-fighting elements, and so that powdered shark cartilage is an effective treatment for cancer and numerous other conditions.[2][3] However, there is no scientific evidence that shark cartilage is useful in treating or preventing cancer or any other disease.[4][5] In 1996, Lane co-authored another book on the same subject, entitled Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer.[6]

Background

Lane became interested in the potential health benefits of shark cartilage after watching a CNN story about a study in Science[7] that found that shark cartilage inhibited blood vessels from growing toward tumors.[6]

Publicity

After Sharks Don’t Get Cancer was published, Lane's claims received further publicity from segments on 60 Minutes in 1993.[4] One of these segments featured Lane and some Cuban physicians and patients who had participated in a clinical trial on the effectiveness of shark cartilage for terminal cancer.[6]

Reaction from scientists

After Lane's writings regarding sharks and cancer became well-known, scientists became concerned about the clinical trials he had been conducting in Cuba and Mexico.[2] It also later became known that the cartilage product Lane was testing in these trials was made by the company Lane Labs, which was run by his son, Andrew Lane.[2] Robert S. Langer, a co-author of the 1983 study showing that shark cartilage inhibited the growth of blood vessels toward tumors, along with Judah Folkman, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview that Lane was "inappropriately using our published work and our names to imply that we support his claims."[3] A 2004 paper in Cancer Research said that even if sharks did rarely get cancer, as Lane claims, "cancer incidence is irrelevant to the use of crude extracts for cancer treatment."[8]

References
  1. Judd, Xav (17 July 2015). "Five myths about sharks". Washington Post. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  2. Finkelstein, J. B. (1 November 2005). "Sharks Do Get Cancer: Few Surprises in Cartilage Research". JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 97 (21): 1562–1563. doi:10.1093/jnci/dji392. PMID 16264172.
  3. Burling, Stacey (14 June 1993). "Shark Cartilage: Can It Reverse Cancer?". Philly.com. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  4. Ostrander GK; Cheng KC; Wolf JC; Wolfe MJ (December 2004). "Shark cartilage, cancer and the growing threat of pseudoscience". Cancer Res. 64 (23): 8485–91. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-04-2260. PMID 15574750.
  5. "Shark Cartilage". American Cancer Society. November 1, 2008.
  6. Hendricks, Melissa (June 2000). "Predators Promise". Johns Hopkins Magazine. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  7. Lee, A; Langer, R (16 September 1983). "Shark cartilage contains inhibitors of tumor angiogenesis". Science. 221 (4616): 1185–7. doi:10.1126/science.6193581. PMID 6193581.
  8. Ostrander, G. K. (1 December 2004). "Shark Cartilage, Cancer and the Growing Threat of Pseudoscience". Cancer Research. 64 (23): 8485–8491. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-04-2260. PMID 15574750.
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