How fruit flies may be key to the fight against cancer
In the fight against cancer, will an unconventional
approach end up being on the mark? Patients battling cancers resistant
to standard treatments certainly hope so. Our Cover Story is reported
now by Susan Spencer of "48 Hours":
Atlanta businessman Mark Beeninga had long made health and fitness a priority.
At age 45 he was preparing to bicycle across the United States. "I was jumping rope for 45 minutes a night, and I was in excellent shape," he said.
And then he went to the doctor for a routine physical.
"And he's poking around my neck and he goes, 'Oh, Mark, well, what's this?' I said, 'Feels like a golf ball.' And he says, 'Oh, we gotta get this checked out.'
"So we go to this surgeon and he says, 'Oh, you've got cancer and you gotta get this out right away.'"
But Beeninga had no symptoms. "So what goes through your mind when somebody says you've got cancer?" asked Spencer.
"He's wrong, he's wrong," said Beeninga.
But the doctor wasn't wrong. Mark's diagnosis: Medullary Thyroid Cancer, rare and deadly. No question, he needed surgery right away.
The issue for him and his wife Kathy was, "Then what?"
"He goes through, oh, radiation and chemo and just a laundry list of stuff," Beeninga said. "So I ask him, 'So after somebody goes through all that, how many survive?' He said, 'Zero.' He didn't blink an eye. Didn't, like, pause or hesitate. Zero."
The year was 2001. Mark Beeninga faced a very tough fight. His wife, Kathy Beeninga, went into research mode, " 'cause that's how I know how to approach things. You start finding pockets of expertise around the world, and you kind of go after those pockets of expertise, 'cause there's nothing else to do."
So far, Beeninga has tried more than a dozen different treatments, clinical trials, even a vaccine in the Bahamas, and every single time his disease has come back. His experience of setbacks, and then hope, and then more setbacks, is very much like this country's War on Cancer.
Forty-three years ago, when President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, victory seemed in sight. "Everything that can be done by government, everything that can be done by voluntary agencies in this great, powerful, rich country now will be done," the president said.
Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer, told Spencer that one of the great problems with the War on Cancer is that many people have been way too optimistic.
"When the bill was signed in 1971, there were actually Congressman who were predicting that there would be an end to cancer by the Bicentennial in 1976," he said.
But we haven't even come close, said Dr. Brawley. Almost 600,000 people died of cancer in this country just last year.
Back in 1971, cancer was the leading killer in America -- and it may become that again.
"Cancer's the number-two killer of people in the United States, only outranked by cardiovascular disease," he said. "Over the next next decade or so, we project that cancer will become the number one killer as cardiovascular disease deaths go down."
There IS some good news: Since 1991, breast cancer deaths are down 35 percent. So are deaths from colorectal cancer, but thanks largely to better screening -- not to any miracle cure.
Dr. Brawley says the biggest promise now is so-called personalized care, where treatments are specifically tailored for each individual. It's based on the finding that the genetic mutations causing cancer vary from patient to patient.
"We can actually find what we call 'targets,'" said Dr. Brawley. "If I have a target and I have a drug that hits that target, then I'm cooking with gas." After exhausting every other avenue, that's what Mark and Kathy Beeninga are betting on now.
Atlanta businessman Mark Beeninga had long made health and fitness a priority.
At age 45 he was preparing to bicycle across the United States. "I was jumping rope for 45 minutes a night, and I was in excellent shape," he said.
And then he went to the doctor for a routine physical.
"And he's poking around my neck and he goes, 'Oh, Mark, well, what's this?' I said, 'Feels like a golf ball.' And he says, 'Oh, we gotta get this checked out.'
"So we go to this surgeon and he says, 'Oh, you've got cancer and you gotta get this out right away.'"
But Beeninga had no symptoms. "So what goes through your mind when somebody says you've got cancer?" asked Spencer.
"He's wrong, he's wrong," said Beeninga.
But the doctor wasn't wrong. Mark's diagnosis: Medullary Thyroid Cancer, rare and deadly. No question, he needed surgery right away.
The issue for him and his wife Kathy was, "Then what?"
"He goes through, oh, radiation and chemo and just a laundry list of stuff," Beeninga said. "So I ask him, 'So after somebody goes through all that, how many survive?' He said, 'Zero.' He didn't blink an eye. Didn't, like, pause or hesitate. Zero."
The year was 2001. Mark Beeninga faced a very tough fight. His wife, Kathy Beeninga, went into research mode, " 'cause that's how I know how to approach things. You start finding pockets of expertise around the world, and you kind of go after those pockets of expertise, 'cause there's nothing else to do."
So far, Beeninga has tried more than a dozen different treatments, clinical trials, even a vaccine in the Bahamas, and every single time his disease has come back. His experience of setbacks, and then hope, and then more setbacks, is very much like this country's War on Cancer.
Forty-three years ago, when President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, victory seemed in sight. "Everything that can be done by government, everything that can be done by voluntary agencies in this great, powerful, rich country now will be done," the president said.
Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer, told Spencer that one of the great problems with the War on Cancer is that many people have been way too optimistic.
"When the bill was signed in 1971, there were actually Congressman who were predicting that there would be an end to cancer by the Bicentennial in 1976," he said.
But we haven't even come close, said Dr. Brawley. Almost 600,000 people died of cancer in this country just last year.
Back in 1971, cancer was the leading killer in America -- and it may become that again.
"Cancer's the number-two killer of people in the United States, only outranked by cardiovascular disease," he said. "Over the next next decade or so, we project that cancer will become the number one killer as cardiovascular disease deaths go down."
There IS some good news: Since 1991, breast cancer deaths are down 35 percent. So are deaths from colorectal cancer, but thanks largely to better screening -- not to any miracle cure.
Dr. Brawley says the biggest promise now is so-called personalized care, where treatments are specifically tailored for each individual. It's based on the finding that the genetic mutations causing cancer vary from patient to patient.
"We can actually find what we call 'targets,'" said Dr. Brawley. "If I have a target and I have a drug that hits that target, then I'm cooking with gas." After exhausting every other avenue, that's what Mark and Kathy Beeninga are betting on now.
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