Hype about Ginger and Ovarian Cancer
April 12, 2006 by admin
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Last week was the annual scientific meeting for American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting (AACR), and with these types of meetings, we’d get journalistic interpretations of what’s “new and exciting.”
Each year, I’d wonder what is going to get hyped up. What I mean by this, is that journalists pick up something interesting. Then an article gets written, and suddenly what is an early piece of interesting science turns into something really promising when there is just no promise yet.
This year, it looks like ginger gets the spotlight. Forbes wrote about Ginger an Ovarian Cancer Killer. Even AACR’s website listed this in its “media coverage” section.
I’ve written in more detail about the consumer issues around this type of publicity. Hyping up the science when not much science is there yet does not help. It gives cancer patients false hope, and consumers a false sense of how much we know about this (right now, in treatment terms, next to nothing).
Browsing the b5 again today
This entry caught my eye because in our family we’re quick to note anything related to ovarian cancer (my Grandmother passed away several years ago from metastatized (sp?) ovarian cancer).
I saw the press release articles on the ginger, and noted they didn’t have any USEFUL information about it. Would you have to apply the ginger directly to the cancer cells? Could you eat ginger? Would spicing up your food be enough? Those sorts of helpful things. When they don’t give me that kind of information, I tend to think they’ve just noted some bit of a correlation, and the media blew it way out of proportion, and way too early in the game for it to be relevant.
It still gives me an excuse to indulge my fondness for ginger though
Hi Deb, coming from an Asian background, I personally love ginger too
It’s unfortunate that something this preliminary got so much press. In fact the other day I saw it show up on an Australian newswire.
This may not be a great example, but we can look to the lessons of saacharin years ago, when preliminary studies showed an relationship to cancer. What was not apparent to the consumer is that this was seen when animals were exposed to tremendous amounts – amounts that humans would not consume.
Thanks for your concern that the news on ginger may be overblown. But since I cured my cancer using ginger in 2002, my bias is different than yours.
For those that are interested,
How to Cure Cancer with Ginger
http://geocities.com/cure.cancer/