CANCER: Newsweeklies Cover The “Orgy of Optimism”
On newsstands today, all three major newsweeklies -- Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report -- feature in-depth coverage and commentary on last week's news that a combination of two new drugs could, as the New York Times puts it, "cure cancer in two years." Each magazine provides readers with details of the research efforts, which are led by Dr. Judah Folkman of Boston's Children's Hospital, but the magazines spend ample energy dissecting the "orgy of optimism," as Newsweek coined the media frenzy that ensued after the story broke. It was "all anybody was talking about on the radio, on television, on the Internet and in phone calls to friends and relatives," Time reports. Newsweek is the only magazine to score an interview with Folkman, who has otherwise eschewed the press. The other two magazines, however, had no trouble recounting Folkman's now widely-known struggle to gain respect and recognition from a scientific community that thought his theory of cancer -- that malignant tumors needed a blood supply in order to grow -- was "dirt," (U.S. News & World Report), "just in his imagination" (Newsweek) or "crazy" (Time).
A Wild Ride
If Folkman is the hero in this story, then Wall Street might be his foil. All of the magazines cover the wild gyrations of EntreMed, the little biotech company behind Folkman's two wonder drugs. Entremed shares leaped from $12 a share to $85 the day after the New York Times profiled Folkman and his discoveries. The shares rose despite the hurdles that EntreMed must clear before the drugs can go to market. "So they cured cancer in mice. This is still 12 to 18 months away from trials in humans," said a biotech analyst quoted by US News. Physicians' phone lines were clogged by patients "begging for a chance to test the miracle cancer cure," Time reports, adding: "It was Viagra all over again, without the jokes." Scientists have not yet found a cancer cure, the magazines all conclude, nor is the cure only two years away. But they note that an innovative new approach has been discovered that could take science one step closer.
The Covers
U.S. News' cover features a photo of a lab mouse under the header: "A Cure? Meet the Mouse That Beat Cancer. Revolutionary science is yielding the most-promising treatments ever for malignant cells. How long will it be before humans benefit from this exciting new research?" Time's cover features a red "X" mark crossing out the word "cancer" in bold typeface. The sub-headline reads: "How to tell the hype from the hope." Newsweek's cover features an X-ray of a pair of lungs, with the headline: "The Hunt for a Cancer Cure: the hope and the hype behind the latest breakthroughs" (5/18 issues).