Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
As lifespan increases due to prevention and treatment of infectious disease and heart disorders, long-term issues like cancer become more prevalent. At the same time detection and treatments are becoming better, an increasing frequency of false information about detection and treatment obfuscates the public understanding of cancer treatment. In the worst-case scenarios, bogus claims and fake cures have the potential to do great harm, yet they dominate discussion on social media. Dr. Skyler Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. We discuss his recent work in describing the depth of false information in cancer space.
Talking Biotech is a weekly podcast that uncovers the stories, ideas and research of people at the frontier of biology and engineering.
Each episode explores how science and technology will transform agriculture, protect the environment, and feed 10 billion people by 2050.
Interviews are led by Dr. Kevin Folta, a professor of molecular biology and genomics.
Talking Biotech 370
Cancer Misinformation with Dr. Skyler Johnson
===
Kevin Folta: [00:00:00] Hi everybody, and welcome to this Week's Talking Biotech podcast by Col Labra. Now as time goes on, we're living longer and with longer life. The odds are facing long term degenerative or aen proliferative proliferative. Easy for you to say. Proliferative diseases increase. So we're either going to break down and fall apart, or sloppy cellular processes start to give rise to these cells that lose control of their ability to divide.
So proliferation and differentiation. It's the genetic generic commonality to the disease state we think of as cancers. Now, currently one in three families will be touched by some sort of cancer, and it'll happen with increasing frequency as surveillance and detection continue to improve. now, as you look back over seven and a half years of podcasts, the talking biotech, you find quite a few that are dedicated to novel strategies to detect and [00:01:00] treat certain cancers.
And the newest techniques borrow from many molecular approaches, which are super cool, including elements that look more like the Covid vaccine than traditional chemotherapy. And innovation is just rampant in this space with startups everywhere. In plant biotech, people are pushing back against innovation.
In medical biotech, people push back in a different way. They state that alternatives might be better or safer, maybe more natural. You know, you get the picture. Sadly, the tremendous advances in cancer therapies, they've evolved hand in hand with misinformation and sometimes disinformation about the efficacy of these tested in proven treatments, and they push the fantasy of alternative or integrated therapies.
And we've seen it, you know, you see it online anytime there's a discussion of chemotherapy herbal concoctions, joint [00:02:00] manipulation, nostrums, isolated from your wiz, you know, all these different ways that hucksters everywhere feel they can solve a complexity like cancer with some sort of alternative treatment that sometimes can be extremely expensive, not covered by insurance and it doesn't work.
which is the main. So today we'll explore the cancer misinformation space. We're speaking with Dr. Skylar Johnson. Dr. Johnson is an assistant professor at the Huntsman Cancer Center at the University of Utah, and he'll be speaking this week at the University of Florida on November 15th at 11:00 AM So if you're in the Gainesville Metropolitan area, stop by and give it a listen.
So welcome to the podcast, Dr. Johnson. ,
Skyler Johnson: thank you for having me. Excited
Kevin Folta: to be here. Yeah. I'm excited that you're here too. I'm, as I mentioned in the intro, you know, we talk mostly about biotechnology breakthroughs, and there's so many that are happening in the area of cancer, but when you start to talk about [00:03:00] new technology and cancer, you also are prone to the other side of this, which is the bad information.
Cancer and your recent articles have been really nice in this area. So let's start out by talking about the good information that's available. How would you rate the internet in providing objective, credible information about different types of cancers?
Skyler Johnson: Well, you know, it's, it's really difficult question to answer because as you probably know, and many of your listeners probably know, the answer is, it depends on where individuals are going.
And there's a lot of. High quality, credible data that's available online in terms of cancer. Screening, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. The problem is, is that there's a ton of misinformation as well, and it becomes really hard for your, you know, lay cancer patient to be able to discern what's credible and what's not necessarily But you know, I, I typically will tell my patients to look [00:04:00] at websites.
I'll give them specific examples of websites that are credible. You know, there's the National Cancer Institute website, cancer.gov. It's, it's the usual recommendation. Now, you wanna stick to.gov.edu. Non-profit organizations in most cases, but even then there's, there's some gray areas.
Kevin Folta: Well, is it cancer specifically?
I mean, if you compare against other things like say heart disease or, you know Alzheimer's, whatever, Parkinson's does it seem like more misinformation happening around long term developmental issues like cancer?
Skyler Johnson: You know, I don't think that there's any data to suggest that that's true. What we do know is that there are a lot of cancer patients, obviously, and there are a lot of cancer survivors.
As our treatments improve, our cures increased and that there's a lot of misinformation surrounding unproven and disproven cancer treatments and supportive therapies. And it's a multi-billion dollar per year industry. And so [00:05:00] there's a huge draw for many cancer patients to want to pursue, you know some of these unproven therapies that are the result of misinformation online.
In terms of whether I could compare that to other disease sites, I don't think there's any data to support that.
Kevin Folta: And I guess I always think of the kind of marquee examples like, you know, the Brazinski stuff in Mexico and all the folks who are making claims about curing these unusual cancers by using, you know, urine derivatives and all this kind of stuff.
But is it a much more pervasive problems with like over the counter type of therapies and ideas that people are passing on that are, you know, just maybe a much more lower level? Or are they really just a few big marquee cases? Of people making claims about either detection or cures.
Skyler Johnson: It's, it's really quite complicated.
There's so many granular recommendations that are coming from many different sources. So one of the studies that we're conducting right [00:06:00] now is actually evaluating from a multi-institutional perspective, the exposure. Of basically misinformation to cancer patients in terms of the unproven and disproven treatment recommendations that are coming their way where those are coming from, how they, you know, determine whether those recommendations are credible.
And it preliminarily it, it appears as though there are many, many recommendations. It's quite shocking how many different types of unproven or disproven cancer treatment recommendations are being. And it makes it really difficult to study because it's hard to evaluate potential negative complications and interactions that might occur with all of the hundreds of different types of unproven therapies that a person might be using with the many different types of cancer treatments that we have available.
Kevin Folta: And is most of this happening in social media or are these more coordinated websites or NGOs that are spreading the false inform?
Skyler Johnson: It's [00:07:00] a combination so much of the misinformation that is being spread comes from. Word of mouth. So, you know, whether it be a well intentioned family member or friend.
Much of it comes from online sources. We know that there's many individuals who get their misinformation from cancer support groups online via Facebook support groups or things like that. Those, those groups are private, obviously difficult to study. But we also know that there's misinformation generally from cancer articles online, which was what our most recent study in this space was evaluated.
Kevin Folta: And can you drill down on that study just a bit like how much of information that was out there turned out to be suspect?
Skyler Johnson: Yes. So this study evaluated the most popular cancer article shared on online, basically through social media applications, namely Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter. We evaluated 200 cancer articles that [00:08:00] were shared.
And these were evaluated by NCCN guideline panel members who are cancer treatment experts to evaluate whether these articles had misinformation and whether they also had the potential for harm. And if so, what types of misinformation and what types of harm that they held. This study suggested that one.
Of the articles that are on social media applications have misinformation and most concerningly of these articles that contain misinformation, four out of five of them contain the potential for harm for patients who use those potential therapies.
Kevin Folta: So is it harm from the therapy specifically, or is it harm from using that therapy in lieu of a real effective.
Skyler Johnson: Yeah, so how these were graded as part of the research were in these specific categories, namely, Was it a harmful action? Meaning did the therapy have some potentially toxic [00:09:00] effects of doing kind of the suggested therapy? It could have been a harmful inaction where it led to some delay or not seeking medical attention for what was a treatable or a curable condition.
And then there's these harmful interactions that are known or unknown, medical interactions with curative therapies. For example, a herbal remedy that inhibits or. Amplifies kind of the metabolism of chemotherapies, either making those chemotherapies less effective or even more toxic than they would be normally.
And then there's even the risk of economic harm where out of pocket financial costs associated with these treatments, or even travel to international locations such as Mexico or, or even you know, some European countries which don't have quite as, as stringent. Protections for cancer patients as we do in the United States.
Kevin Folta: And I guess maybe an important question then, so you're in your practice, do you have a personal example of this that kind of [00:10:00] brought you into this area, or has this always been kind of an interest? Oh,
Skyler Johnson: it's a, it's a, it's a interesting question. So when I was a second year medical my wife was diagnosed with what was a Hodgkin's lymphoma, and I, I guess I should preface this story by saying that she's doing really great now.
And it's cured from her cancer. But at that time I did what I imagined most people do and, and her and I, you know, we immediately went to the internet and we searched for, you know, what the treatment was and what the prognosis was. And I was really. Surprised even at that point at how much misinformation there was online about cancer treatments and how to approach you know, curing a person's cancer.
And I was really caught off guard by this because even though I had a little bit of medical knowledge, it was really difficult even for me to discern what was credible and what was not credible. So that experience really stuck with. And, you know, fortunately, you know, for my wife and for [00:11:00] everybody who knows and loves her, she, you know, followed the recommendations of her, of her physician and we weren't swayed by any of the misinformation that was online.
And she, you know, got a, a cancer treatment that cured her cancer. So, you know, throughout. That experience that the one that kind of drew me towards cancer care as a medical specialty, I encountered numerous patients who were declining, recommended conventional cancer treatments like surgery or chemotherapy or even radiation for their curable cancers.
And then we were often seeing these patients come in many years kind of down the line or maybe even many months down the line with cancers that were then incur. And sadly saw many of these patients die. And the, the very really difficult part about how to advise these patients or to know what the data says is that it's difficult to study them.
Because oftentimes when they say they're not gonna receive curable or they're not gonna receive a conventional cancer treatment, they will. Fall off [00:12:00] kind of the map and it will be hard to follow up, look at what their outcomes are, evaluate exactly what they did. Interestingly during my residency I encountered a national cancer database that collects somewhere around 70% of all of the cancer diagnoses in the United States.
They're associated cancer types, the treatments that the people received, it's all de-identified data. But it's one where we often will publish comparative effectiveness research and national outcomes. And I stumbled across this group of patients who were using unproven cancer treatments in lieu of their conventional cancer therapies.
And this research demonstrated that there's an, obviously an increased risk of death associated with that decision. So it's one of the largest and most. Studies comparing what happens to patients when they follow their physician's recommendations versus when they use unproven cancer treatments.
And this was you know, amongst patients with the most common cancer types like [00:13:00] breast, lung. Colorectal cancer, prostate cancer.
Kevin Folta: And when they're getting this false information, is it coming from, you know, you mentioned earlier maybe you know, a friend or a loved one, something like that, But how much is it coming from somebody either using the title doctor as you know, a naturopath or something like that?
Someone who's, who's taking a position of credibility and authority in saying, ignore the conventional medical system. We know something.
Skyler Johnson: Well, I'll tell you anecdotally that we hear that quite often and one of the kind of really interesting things that's in occurring in this space of misinformation is determining what trusted, credible sources patients view for accurate inform.
And despite kind of news media and TV and newspaper falling in rates of trust amongst individuals cancer physicians remain really high with nearly 80 to 90% [00:14:00] of patients suggesting that they still trust physicians. Interestingly we are in the process of publishing some data that compares users of unproven cancer therapies with non-users of unproven cancer therapies.
And we show that these rates and trust in physicians is similar. However it appears as though those individuals who use unproven cancer therapies also have increased trust in practitioners that fall kind of outside of the. Traditional medical paradigm and include chiropractors and natural paths often who don't have any cancer specific training.
And so that is a little bit concerning and this is when we look at subgroup analyses of patients who are using treatments specifically for a cure of their cancer, it's even higher for those types of provider.
Kevin Folta: Yeah, it kind of drives me crazy because if you talk to legitimate oncologists who tell you that, you know, cancer is not one [00:15:00] thing, and, and that there, that there's different ETI ideology and different manifestations of all the different types of cancers, the treatments, detection, everything's different.
For someone to tell you, I can cure cancer automatically should disqualify. Them from, from giving you any kind of treatment because it just seems like like even the experts, these are perplexing problems that require a high degree of specialization. And to say that by cracking a certain vertebrae is gonna give you some sort of stimulatory effect to combat you know, a solid tumor.
I mean, I don't know where this comes from and it's really upsetting, but, but this kind of thing does happen. Yeah, it does. And I
Skyler Johnson: think some, some really interesting data that came out of the Covid Pandemic in terms of belief, misinformation, belief demonstrated that, that patients really wanted sureity.
Right. And I think as a scientific communicator and as scientific communicators, we all realize that when in, in science, really we don't [00:16:00] talk in terms of a hundred percent confidence. And we say things like maybe, or likely, and this is often how I communicate with patients, so I can. You know, despite the frustration that I have with this, I can also understand from a patient's perspective who has a really aggressive cancer and wants to do everything they can to cure their cancer.
When they come to me and I say, Hey, there's a 60% chance that we could cure your cancer. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make sure you're in that 60%. And then they may go to somebody else who says, Hey, listen, there's a hundred percent, a hundred percent chance that I cure your cancer, and you're not gonna have any side.
I mean, those, those discussions are, are completely different. And I think it's clear to us which one of those discussions is, is ethical. But to patients, it's, it, you know, unfortunately they're encountering unscrupulous providers and. I think I'd add, and they don't mean to pile on you know, alternative care practitioners.
There's a lot well intentioned providers out there who kind of stay within the limited data that [00:17:00] supports the use of their, their treatments for subjective wellbeing. I think that there's also a major issue with medical providers, MDs NDOs, who don't have cancer specific training who. Try to provide credibility or they're unscrupulous in their practice to recruit cancer patients to receive specific treatments that they're offering.
They often charge tens of thousands of dollars. These patients are paying out of pocket for their services, all because they have a credible degree behind their name. Yeah.
Kevin Folta: Yeah. Very, very disturbing you speaking with Dr. Skyler Johnson. He's at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.
He's a physician scientist and assistant professor of radiation oncology. And actually, we'll be speaking at the University of Florida next week. I believe that's November 15th if I, This is the Talking Biotech Podcast by Col Labra, and we'll be back in just a moment. And now we're back on the Talking [00:18:00] Biotech Podcast by Col Labra.
And we're speaking with Dr. Skylar Johnson. He's a physician scientist at the University of Utah who works in radiation oncology and has published a recent paper on misinformation and cancer biology and or a cancer, I guess you won't say biology, but detection treatment. Is most of this based on treatment or is it more treat misinformation around causes in detection, or where does it really.
Skyler Johnson: Yeah, so most of my research is, is fallen basically within the area of cancer treatment misinformation. You know, there's obviously a lot of misinformation in the screening space and the diagnosis space. But it, the treatment space is where we've focused the majority of our research. That's where you can.
Published you know, objective outcomes regarding survival that really impact cancer patients directly. So that's where we focus most of our attention.
Kevin Folta: Well, then I think one of the aspects of this that really bothers me is that, [00:19:00] Hospitals seem to be actually integrating and recommending non therapy and that they're, in a way, it kind of legitimizes the treatments.
So a lot of the hospitals are offering these, you know, integrated medicine things where they're bringing in, you know, acupuncturists and reiki healers and energy field manipulators, and how much does that legitimize bogus treatments that really. Can't do what they claim to be doing and really just confuse this issue.
Skyler Johnson: Yeah, it's really, it's really quite a, a challenge. You know, obviously a lot of these centers are being put in place for not necessarily Evidence based reasons, but oftentimes financial incentive reasons. And it, it can be quite challenging because it does legitimize some therapies that could potentially harm a patient, especially if they forego.
What are the. You know, recommended conventional cancer therapies. You know, I will say [00:20:00] it's a, it's a little bit of a double edge sword, however, because although there is, there's risk of legitimizing and it does happen where online, a blogger or you know, a medical article will say this, you know, unproven cancer treatment's gonna cure your cancer.
And look even. Harvard or even Memorial Sloan Kettering or Huntsman Cancer Institute are offering this type of, of therapy and, and that's, that's a risk. You know, on the other hand, at times I will encounter patients who are trying to use an unproven cancer treatment. They have some baseline level of distrust in physicians, some baseline level of distrust in you know, the, the medical, I guess I'm using my, my error quotes here, the medical industrial complex or pharmaceutical industry.
And because of that distrust it at times has been nice to be able to send patients to. Evidence based center like the one that I feel like we have [00:21:00] here where they say, You know what yoga, massage exercise all these things are gonna make you feel better and we're gonna use these to try to help you get through your cancer treatments, but they're not a replacement.
So it's nice to kind of have an ally in that space where I can send patients to, to get what is a second opinion that will encourage them not to forego their conventional cancer treat.
Kevin Folta: Yeah. And I guess it falls in the category of wouldn't hurt, you know, you send someone for yoga or for massage therapy and you know, that that could have some benefits in other ways.
And even just treatment effects do have a benefit to a patient, at least in their wellbeing. And someone who's suffering from cancer diagnosis could use that. Yeah. So, you know, so I kind of see that side of the coin, right? I mean, it does seem to potentially have some Yeah, exactly.
Skyler Johnson: And, but the real challenge becomes again that, you know, people are using some combination of these therapies that a medical provider might recommend for just general sense [00:22:00] of wellbeing.
Like great, you know, go exercise, eat a healthy diet, get a massage. These are all things that I obviously support strongly, but then they'll combine these things to lend credibility to unproven expensive. Cancer treatments that are, have never been proven to cure cancer and could either potentially interact with a known conventional cancer treatment, or if you're forgoing with a proven cancer treatment risk, your chance at Cure and survival.
Kevin Folta: When you're talking about the unproven ones, you know, there's lots of 'em out there, obviously. What's the most egregiously, bad misdirection that you've seen? ? Yeah. Well, it's a, it's a
Skyler Johnson: hard one. It's a hard one to answer. Oftentimes what we know from. Our data and from others data is that patients are using a combination of multiple therapies again, which makes studying these incredibly difficult.
So a person might come in to see me and [00:23:00] they are doing IV vitamin C infusions, high dose IV vitamin C infusions, and they're also rubbing black solve on. You know, breast for breast cancer, and they're taking some CBD product for support, and then they're also getting massage and doing yoga. And so it's all of these combinations of therapies.
But I will say some of the most heartbroken break things that I've seen recently have been young patients with initially very curable cancers, forego a simple and easy conventional cancer treatment for an IV or topical therapy. Or a po kind of an oral herbal remedy and their cancer spreads and becomes metastatic and then they're incurable.
And I've, I've watched these patients die and that is very, very upsetting when you know that have they been treated up front? They had as high as a 90% chance of.
Kevin Folta: Yeah, [00:24:00] that's a heartbreaker. Is there any kind of culpability though, for the sources that give this kind of medical guidance? I mean, if you gave somebody bad information that was negligent, you would be on the hook for that and be held accountable and could even face any censored, a license revocation, All kinds of things could happen to you.
But what happens when the, you know, when the Internet's favorite doctor naturopath, you know, Dave, You know this herbal remedy is all you need. Isn't there some culpability?
Skyler Johnson: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I, it's, it's obviously my, my personal belief that there is culpability and they are responsible for early deaths.
The, the challenge really, you know, becomes how do you, how do you pursue that in a. In a pragmatic way. I, I will tell you what's been really surprising from a psychological perspective, being in my position watching these patients who have used unproven cancer therapies or followed the [00:25:00] advice of online gurus or a practitioner who they trusted greatly, even though they're cancer.
Spreads and becomes metastatic, and it's very clear that that treatment didn't work. They will stay loyal to those individuals and it's been quite surprising to see. Yeah,
Kevin Folta: but I think that's what we, I think that's what we see though, is that if it, if it didn't work well, it's because of obviously some influence from big pharma or something else.
You know, there's some, always some reason that the trusted therapy from the trusted source didn't work and some other somebody else's fault rather than, There's no evidence for it working, and it really gets into the psychology of this more, which, you know, my interest in misinformation are probably very similar to yours just in a different area, but the dynamics in the psychology of this are really tough.
So how much are oncologists trained and how to talk to patients about the potential mistakes they could make? [00:26:00]
Skyler Johnson: Yeah, that I would say that. Physicians, or at least you know, based on my own personal training and that of colleagues that I know is very limited. I mean, we do not get a lot of support in our education to deal with these challenging situations.
And I mean, you can imagine we've got most medical education in the United States is four years and you have to cover a lot of information in that time. And so a lot of medical schools you know, they don't, they don't take a lot, a lot of time to, to teach medical students and a lot of medical providers don't get a lot of experience encountering these types of.
Patients, and then you add onto that the additional systemic factors that exist in medicine where I may have 20 to 30 minutes to. To sit at maximum with each patient you know, and discuss what we'd like to do in terms of treatment and when they, That whole meeting may, may make me stretch for time. I may have multiple patients waiting, and then that [00:27:00] patient may say, Well, hey Doc, what do you think about me doing this?
And I, you know, I'm, I'm glancing up my watch, although I, I try to do it discreetly and it becomes a real challenge to be able to dedicate the time necessary to really delve into some of the psychological factors that lead somebody to wanna pursue these types of therapies. And then how do you even go about changing an individual's mind?
Now this is research that's been going on for decades about how you. Beliefs, how you change behavior and modified behavior in people who hold strong beliefs. And that's, that's a real challenge. And, and we're doing our best to research ways that we can help patients in this space. In fact I have a collaborator at the University of Florida and we're working on a a grant right now where we're trying to identify ways in which we can improve patient and clinician communication surrounding cancer.
Kevin Folta: So an oncologist already has a full plate. You've got a lot of patients, you've got limited time. So how much of this could benefit from [00:28:00] really deputizing other science communicators and getting people out there with the right information? So in other words, instead of you going out and correcting. The bad information, giving the rest of us who are scientifically literate and and willing to communicate, giving us the information so that we're more comfortable correcting the bad information.
So train the trainers rather than train the person seeking an alternative therapy.
Skyler Johnson: Exactly. I mean, I think that that's a really great idea. I think that there's some really novel approaches to figuring out how we can dress misinformation on a larger scale. And oftentimes we talk about how we can inoculate patients against misinformation almost like there's a, a vaccine, right, that will prevent patients from adopting misinformation.
And in the same way you kind. View misinformation as as, as almost like an infectious disease. You can view the response to that misinformation, almost like an infectious [00:29:00] disease where you have a bunch of early responders and individuals who are trained to be able to address that misinformation in hopes of preventing its spread.
I think it's a
Kevin Folta: great idea. Well, I know in the area of, you know, genetic engineering, which I speak about with respect to crops quite a bit, and in other areas, c really gotten to the front of addressing false information online. It has been always very difficult to, It took a long time to learn how to do it correctly by earning trust first, before trying to beat people over the head with facts and figures.
And I think that the scientific. Community generally is getting better, but how is the medical community doing? Are, are the me medical doctors still kind of the eggheads who are just want to beat you over the head with data? Or do you think they're trying to be a little more nuanced?
Skyler Johnson: Well, again, it's a real challenge.
I think it's a, it's a combination. Fortunately the National Institutes of Health and specifically the National Cancer Institute has made addressing [00:30:00] misinformation especially misinformation online, a health priority. And they are doing that by putting up the money to basically find to fund grants to be able to research this important issue.
It in terms of how individual physicians are doing right now, I, I would say that it, it's really probably not great. There's a lot of room for improvement. Again, we've got so many time constraints and as physicians we deal in uncertainty and this is the way that we discuss the science surrounding the benefits and the risks of the treatments that we offer.
And, Sometimes that could really be off putting to patients. And so we know that patients oftentimes prefer anecdotes and stories and, and we're stuck kind of in this area of knowing the data and describing the data in ways that are not necessarily compelling to cancer patients. Yeah.
Kevin Folta: Welcome to my world.
I mean, we, this is what we battled with for years, right? But I think we're getting better. I, I [00:31:00] guess the last question I would have for you is the question of. How much information out there is false information because people just believe in their heart that that, you know, if you manipulate your, your energy field, you can cure the tumor versus how much of it is blatant disinformation where people are actively spreading false information knowingly with the intent of profit or some sort of political I.
Skyler Johnson: Yeah, it's a, it's a good question. I, I couldn't tell you what the, the data says because as, as you are, and your listeners are probably aware, it becomes really difficult to be able to discern intent from some of the sources that we're trying to evaluate in terms of cancer information. So we can say, Yeah, this is false, versus this is true, versus this is you know, likely not harmful versus harmful, but it becomes much more difficult to be able to say, this person is has ill intent.
And so I couldn't tell you exactly what that. How, you know what that [00:32:00] looks like? You know, I, I will tell you that it's not uncommon to see what I would consider the sources of disinformation online in terms of people who are you know, in scrupulous providers looking to you know, make money or earn clout from these types of recomme.
Kevin Folta: Yeah, I, I just was curious if there's any kinda idea. You're right, you can't judge intent very well, but there seems to me to be a lot of very well educated people who are working maybe in medical space or closely related field that pedal false information. And I guess I can. You know, I mean, I could name names and things like that, but I think people know who we're talking to.
They have tremendous online empires that sell products and have, you know, big stores attached to yet, and they have medical training and they know better because they have practiced legitimately in the past. But now taking this turn, It, it really surprises me. So I guess, you know, maybe to kind of wrap things up, if you had to [00:33:00] leave people with the best source of information to go with it, what were the best sources that we could go to?
Skyler Johnson: So, you know, my preferred sources are the National Cancer Institute. And cancer.gov. So these are the, the, you know, the best sources. They have cancer specific information not only on treatment, but also on screening and diagnosis as well as survivorship. So it's a really great, well-rounded source of information for cancer patients.
Kevin Folta: Well, Dr. Skyler John said if people wanted to learn more about these issues and follow you maybe on social media, where would they find you? So
Skyler Johnson: I'd have predominantly you know, shared most of my research and thoughts in the area to, you know, unpro cancer treatments and cancer misinformation on Twitter.
I'm not, I'm not sure how much longer that's gonna get persist, but right now it's, it's sky. Underscore underscore, John, j o h n. And you can also go read about our most recent research [00:34:00] updates on my lab website, which is found at the Huntsman Cancer Institute under my name Skylar Johnson.
Kevin Folta: Very good.
Well, thank you very much for a compelling discussion because this is a really important issue for anybody who has cancer in the family. You know, they're gonna turn to those types of, of treatments and as more of us survive the easy things. Like you know, falling down flights of stairs and heart attacks, things like that.
Things like cancer may increase in incidents with time and, and so this is a really important conversation. So thank you very much today. Well, thank
Skyler Johnson: you for having me. It was a great discussion. Hope to have many more in the
Kevin Folta: future. And maybe that's the most important point is the future and, and where are we gonna go?
As I mentioned before, as more rare cancers that receive less funding maybe begin to take more prevalence as people see this in their families. I think it's one in three families will be touched by some sort of cancer, that it's very easy and very appealing to look at an alternative therapy or some non substantiated.
Therapy as [00:35:00] something worth trying. Yet these can get in the way of conventional therapy. They can be expensive and maybe even not work at all. And too many cases where people have foregone actual treatment for any, some of these therapies with disastrous results. So Keep, keep up with Dr. Johnson and, and learn how to tell the difference and share that with your family and friends.
So thank you very much for listening This to Talking Biotech podcast by Collabora, and we'll talk to you again next week.