From a recent Moss report on PolyMVA, an anti-cancer "supplement".
"I am familiar with all the obstacles that exist for publishing innovative medical work. Indeed, a
dozen years ago it was very difficult to get a serious hearing anywhere for innovative cancer
treatments. But today that situation has dramatically changed. The US government now spends almost
$100 million per year researching alternative medicine. Both the National Cancer Institute and the
National Institutes of Health have offices whose charge is specifically to examine such treatments.
There are half a dozen peer-reviewed journals that are eager to publish findings on non-conventional
approaches.
Publication in peer-reviewed journals is the accepted meeting ground of science: most genuine
scientists try extremely hard to put their research in front of their peers. The conspicuous
absence of peer-reviewed research on PolyMVA is therefore inexplicable. If there are really 300
physicians currently using PolyMVA routinely in cancer treatment, as some of the drug's proponents
suggest, why has none of them published data on the clinical benefits of the treatment? How could
a board-certified physician conclude that the "war on cancer" has been successfully concluded
through PolyMVA and yet not explain the basis of that earthshaking conclusion in a reputable
medical journal?
Even though anecdotal evidence cannot take the place of thorough clinical trials, such evidence is
not entirely without value as a tentative indicator of merit. It might, for example, be worthwhile
for PolyMVA proponents to carefully sift through the many anecdotes to put together a serious
presentation to the Cancer Advisory Panel on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAP-CAM) of the
National Institutes of Health. That panel was set up, with great effort, precisely to review claims
of benefit from alternative treatments. If there were still sufficient interest after the
presentation, this could lay the groundwork for a proper clinical trial. Without even the most basic
scientific groundwork, however, the evidence for PolyMVA's effectiveness remains flimsy at best. "
Peter Moran