Michael Joyce is a writer-producer with HealthNewsReview.org and tweets as @mlmjoyce
This is quite the unjustified headline from a Stanford University School of Medicine news release:
‘Magnetized wire could be used to detect cancer in people’
Stanford claims that antibody-coated, magnetic nanoparticles can be engineered to bind with circulating cancer tumor cells (CTCs). A magnetized wire, introduced via a catheter into a peripheral blood vessel, can then bind to those magnetized CTCs and — according to the Stanford research team — capture many more cancer cells than a standard blood draw.
Only later in the news release do we learn two critical limitations of the research, published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering:
Regardless, the news release proffers “the technique could even help doctors evaluate a patient’s response to particular cancer treatments … perhaps, most intriguingly, the magnetic wire may even stand to evolve into a treatment itself.”
Compelling as that possibility may be, it’s premature to project such human applications from this proof-of-concept study in pigs. The news release highlights that the technique “attracts from 10-80 times more tumor cells than current blood-based cancer-detection methods, making it a potent tool to catch the disease earlier.” That’s in an animal model. Just how it would work in a human with cancer is unknown.
The speculative statements–which were bolstered by some similarly-speculative comments by the lead author himself–also made it into at least two news stories.
There are two other considerations to keep in mind. First, this isn’t a novel research approach. It’s been investigated for at least a decade.
Second–although the news release mentions three funding sources–it fails to mention that five of the 20 study authors have filed for patent protection for the MagWIRE technology used in this study.
Given these caveats, the most appropriate and accurate headline would have been to replace “people” with “pigs” … but who would have clicked on that?
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like