17 Jan 2013 James Watson’s radical idea: antioxidants may be causing cancer
Antioxidant nutritional supplements may actually promote cancer progression in late-stage cancers patients, according to a new research paper published by Nobel laureate, James Watson.
Watson, who received a Nobel prize for his role in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, in a paper published recently in the journal Open Biology, suggests nutritional supplements containing antioxidants such as vitamins A, C and E may in fact block late-stage cancer treatment and promote cancer progression, thus lowering life expectancy and cancer survival.
A day after an exhaustive national US report on cancer found the country is making only slow progress against the disease, Watson, one of the America’s most iconic – and iconoclastic – scientists weighed in on “the war against cancer.” And he does not like what he sees.
On the $100-million US project to determine the DNA changes that drive nine forms of cancer: It is “not likely to produce the truly breakthrough drugs that we now so desperately need,” Watson argues.
On the idea that antioxidants such as those in colourful berries fight cancer: “The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer.”
That Watson’s impassioned plea came on the heels of the annual cancer report was coincidental. He worked on the paper for months, and it represents the culmination of decades of thinking about the subject. Watson, 84, taught a course on cancer at Harvard University in 1959, three years before he shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for his role in discovering the double helix, which opened the door to understanding the role of genetics in disease.
Other cancer luminaries gave Watson’s paper mixed reviews.
“There are a lot of interesting ideas in it, some of them sustainable by existing evidence, others that simply conflict with well-documented findings,” said one eminent cancer biologist who asked not to be identified so as not to offend Watson. “As is often the case, he’s stirring the pot, most likely in a very productive way.”
There is wide agreement, however, that current approaches are not yielding the progress they promised. Much of the decline in cancer mortality in the United States, for instance, reflects the fact that fewer people are smoking, not the benefits of clever new therapies…..
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Nobel laureate James Watson puts forth novel hypothesis on curing late-stage cancers