Finding a Crowdsourced Cure For Brain Cancer

Hugh Pickens writes "Salvatore Iaconesi, a software engineer at La Sapienza University of Rome, writes that when he was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, his first idea was to seek other opinions. He immediately asked for his clinical records in digital format, converted the data into spreadsheets, databases, and metadata files, and published them on the web site called The Cure. 'The responses have been incredible. More than 200,000 people have visited the site and many have provided videos, poems, medical opinions, suggestions of alternative cures or lifestyles, personal stories of success or, sadly, failures — and simply the statement, "I am here." Among them were more than 90 doctors and researchers who offered information and support.' The geneticist and TED fellow Jimmy Lin has offered to sequence the genome of Iaconesi's tumor after surgery, and within one day Iaconesi heard from two different doctors who recommended similar kinds of 'awake surgery,' where the brain is monitored in real time as different parts are touched. A brain map is produced and used during a second surgery. 'We are creating a cure by uniting the contributions of surgeons, homeopaths, oncologists, Chinese doctors, nutritionists and spiritual healers. The active participation of everyone involved — both experts and ex-patients — is naturally filtering out any damaging suggestion which might be proposed,' writes Iaconesi. 'Send us videos, poems, images, audio or text that you see as relevant to a scenario in which art and creativity can help form a complete and ongoing cure. Or tell us, "I am here!" — alive and connected, ready to support a fellow human being.'"

Comments

Support =/= Cure

[Anonymous Coward]

"Send us videos, poems, images, audio or text that you see as relevant to a scenario in which art and creativity can help form a complete and ongoing cure."

Cancer does not work that way.

Misguided

[Captain_Chaos]

'We are creating a cure by uniting the contributions of surgeons, homeopaths, oncologists, Chinese doctors, nutritionists and spiritual healers.'

This is incredibly misguided, and that is the most charitable way of putting it. Other things you could call it are bloody stupid, daft and irresponsible. There is no way in hell you're going to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff with such a volume of random input, most of it crap, and come up with any useful ideas, let a lone a "cure". Especially not if you're apparently going to accept most of the crap. Homeopaths? Chinese doctors? Spiritual healers? "Uniting their contributions" is going to drag the net worth of the resulting mess down to below zero...

Re:doesn't this rely rather strongly on the novelt

[Half-pint HAL]

It's in part novelty, it's in part the cult of the individual. We've seen the internet pay for doctors bills, legal fees, new houses, breast implants etc for individuals, to the detriment of bigger charities that are far more efficient (and often more deserving) because people like an individual person with an individual story -- it's more personal. A genuine "cause" is far more abstract.