STAT

The modern tragedy of fake cancer cures

In medicine, virality means false hopes, dashed dreams, and a whole lot of hype. We are desperate for a solution.

So it happened again. An underreported story about a half-baked advance in cancer medicine caught fire and scorched its way through social media, onto network TV, and into the minds of millions of people.

To start, no. There won’t be “a complete cure for cancer” in a year’s time, as the chairman of a small Israeli biotechnology firm predicted to the Jerusalem Post. The claim, absurd on its face, was particularly frustrating to those who

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