Response to your postings
June 19th, 2009Andrew, Bob, and Mike: Thank you for your kind comments. The work reported in our “Copy number analysis indicates monoclonal origin of lethal metastatic prostate cancer” paper does open major new opportunities to accelerate prostate cancer research, in my view.
I’d like to expand on Dr. Bob S Carter’s comment about sticking with an idea. We all want cancer research to help patients sooner, rather than later. The problem is that if you have the right questions, but ask them in the wrong place, you will not find answers that add up to a benefit to patients. Researchers are detectives. If a crime detective is limited to an office with no phone or computer, and can’t go out and talk to anyone involved in a crime, that detective isn’t going to solve many crimes. What we learned in this study is that it’s worth taking the time to build the right infrastructure (software and procedural) to achieve a broader perspective on the molecular biology and clinical aspects of metastatic cancer.
Mike, thank you again for your willingness to make that internet posting way back around 1995. All of the men (and their families) who joined the study were identified based on direct personal contacts with members of the extended study team in various ways, but it is possible that some of the men and families who chose to participate had heard about it from your posting, so it may have helped. I got to know many of the men in the study, and their family members, and I continue to be inspired by their love, generosity, courage, and senses of humor in the face of a very difficult time. We are going to continue to do our best to do what they wanted us to do…help others avoid what they had to go through. Steven Bova