On:New frontiers in cancer therapy, medicine, and the writing process

Episode: 32

Date: December 2018

Background: oncologist, researcher, and author of the “The Gene”, “The Laws of Medicine”).

Key Subjects:

• Rules of writings:
  • No long stretches of science without a human element / pay-off.
  • Everyone should be able to read the book.
  • Only include research if it results in a concrete human intervention.
• Cancer and prevention.
  • Very few preventable, human chemical carcinogens of substantial impact.
  • Obesity may be one that has similar level of impact as smoking.
• The three laws of medicine.
  • Strong intuition is more powerful than a weak test.
    • Bayesian law.
    • Everything has priors, understand priors before understand posteriors.
    • Perhaps wired to be Bayesian.
  • Normals teach us rules, outliers teach us laws.
    • Anti-Bayesian law.
    • Complex interactions can produce outliers.
    • Less wired to understand outliers.
  • Every experiment is accompanied by a bias.
    • Every declarative claim comes with a bias.
    • Warrants skepticism.
• Cancer research (or, research more generally).
  • First: questions are non-linear.
    • Need to find the right paradigm, perspective.
  • Then: questions become non-linear.
    • Understanding the mechanisms within the new paradigm.
• Cancer and metabolics.
  • Does the metabolism of cancer cells differ from normal cells?
    • There may be many metabolic pathways for cancer cells that are different from normal cells.
    • Target these pathways and you may be able to affect the cancer.
  • When a drug is administered, does it change the metabolism of normal and/or cancer cells?
    • Reaction to a drug could be a mechanism by which cancer cells become sensitive or resistant to treatment.
• Skills:
  • Create: throw something at the world.
  • Be open: listen to what comes back.
• 8/10