There is the fable of a philanpisces (lover of fish) who had the forever urge to pull fishes out of water lest they get drowned. The Awareness –Jihads smacks of the same. Sucking persons-at-peace into their crusade with a definitive motive to convert  them into patient-at-dis-ease.

The above is closest to the Nixoniandictat of Conquest of Cancer, by the USA, by 1976, the 2^nd centenary year of American Independence. A headline of September 25, 2013 declares “Drug kills brain tumour cells in mice: Scientists have for the first time been able to completely erase human brain tumour cells in mice. The tumor-targeted is glioblastomamultiforma, known to be the deadliest of brain cancer.” This piece of research is clearly oblvious to the axiom that “natural or authochthonous cancer” is 100% resistant to the drugs that are100% effective against the so-called transplanted cancer” as in the results reported above. The Mumbai Mirror of October 30, 2013 reported on the emerging field of theranostics – a term that refers to nanoparticles that can diagnose and treat disease. “Chemical engineers from the University of New South Wales (Australia) have synthesized a new iron oxide nano-particle that delivers cancer drugs to cells while simultaneously monitoring the drug release in real time.” The report has obviously glossed over the fact that a drug against cancer has never existed. And what is euphemistically called a cancer drug has been a non-specific anti-cell agent as much capable of causing cancer as may be “curing” it.

All therapeutic breakthroughs remind you of the Hollywood movie – The Man who Never was. All therapeutic claims against cancer are therapies that have never existed nor shall ever do.

A special word about Gene therapy of Cancer. The very entity gene is sub-judice, nobody having defined it. The term is traceable to Bateson’s idea of there being a tiny representative – “gene” – in any genesis. It is interesting etymologically that the terms general, gene, genetics, genesis have a common root gignere (L), to produce or to cause. (The authors have an indexed article – An epitaph for the gene, an obituary for genetics, and an adieu to heredity). Gene is thus a basket or portmanteau term meaning whatever the user want it to mean. The moot point is “How do you refine or modify what you have never satisfactorily defined?”

We personally heard in 1995 Professor Kenneth Culler, the then Professor of Gene-therapy of Cancer, at the Iowa University, USA. He showed how the brain tumours in rats regressed under gene therapy. The only snag was that it was transplanted cancer and hence no cancer as such, and therefore the claims were as fallacious as the regression of transplanted cancers, nearly 100% in experimental animals, and o% when occurring in the animal/human body.

Gene therapy invokes recalling 6 teachers Kipling deployed to solve an issue. They are Who, What, When, Why, Where and How. Who are the therapist and the cancer. When when the cancer is fait accompli or that is is the Where. Why is because of the assumption that cancer is genetic in origin and hence available to modifications. The How and What are theory issues: How do you put a therapeutic gene into a cell – by a viral reactor whose side effects an nature remain undefined and therefore potentially dangerous. What is the gene harvested/manufactured elsewhere and hopefully carried into the cell. All 6 teachers honestly declare the unwisdom of gene-therapy that is good on paper but nebulous in practice.