Now, about Dr. Folkman. Folkman himself makes no claims for his therapy in treating cancer in humans. If you have cancer and you're a mouse, we can take good care of you. This comment is somewhat disingenuous, of course. Folkman didn't spend 30 years of his life working to cure mice.
Human ills are the ultimate target of any study involving lab animals.
But whether Folkman's therapy will help humans, or even be readily available to cancer patients within their lifetimes, is another matter. In addition, even if the drugs were approved tomorrow, it would likely be impossible to produce enough, quickly enough, to help all the people who are clamoring for it. It took nearly 3 million gallons of mouse urine to purify enough angiostatin to treat a dozen mice in Folkman's lab. For one thing, as urged by William Faloon, the Foundation's vice president, in last month's Life Extension magazine , cancer patients can become more politically active, as AIDS patients have been since the middle 1980s. When that happens, increased money and effort will help find techniques to produce adequate amounts of the drugs, and get them into the hands of patients.