2006_09_01_archive

What is a breakthrough, anyway?

The first article I saw on this week's Science Magazine article on

gene therapy and melanoma was in the Wall Street Journal; their

headline reads "Scientists Use Gene Therapy to Shrink Malignant

Tumors: Study is Hailed as Potential Cancer Breakthrough." I read the

word "breakthrough" and it made me sneeze, as always. So even though

the breakthrough was qualified as "potential," I thought it'd be fair

to look it up.

The American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd ed., defines "breakthrough" (n),

thus: 1. An act of overcoming or penetrating an obstacle or

restriction. 2. A military offensive that penetrates an enemy's lines

of defense. 3. A major achievement or success that permits further

progress, as in technology.

My question to the dictionary editors would be this: how do you define

"major" and "permits further progress"? Shouldn't every incremental

advance in scientific knowledge permit further progress? According to

the press release from the National Institutes of Health, the gene

therapy took (i.e., produced major tumor regression) in only two of

the 17 patients in whom it was tested (though that didn't stop NIH

scientists from hyping the results further). Nobel laureate David

Baltimore, who does similar research, pointed out that there were no

controls in the study, according to the WSJ, which means that the

study can't prove that the treatment worked - although highly

unlikely, the tumors could have regressed on their own.

After reading the American Heritage's definition, I feel a little less

allergic to the word breakthrough. I'd be willing to accept that this

is an important finding from the perspective of scientists; for

example, according to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, "These results

represent the first time gene therapy has been used successfully to

treat cancer" (again, from the science point of view, I might grant

him successful). But what does the word "breakthrough" convey to the

casual reader of a newspaper? to someone who wants to invest in

cancer-treatment technologies? or to a patient with melanoma who's not

in the study? Headline writers love the word; it sells papers. But can

it also sell false hope?

For further analysis on news coverage of this story, check out Gary

Schwitzer's blog.

breakthrough