Oncologists reminded us it would be years until the tests were done and the results were in. But the story of this escapee says much about what happens when hope breaks out as it does these days with the frequency and suddenness of a news report. We live now on the cusp of cures. Cures for AIDS, for diabetes, for cancer. One week, tamoxifen is touted as a preventative for breast cancer, the next week angiostatin and endostatin are seen as cures.
Science is practiced in public.
The understandable urgency of a patient conflicts with the necessary patience of a researcher. Today hope springs and science treads deliberately, checking its footsteps. Hope talks of breakthroughs and science is as deliberate as the researcher in Folkman's lab who had to collect 50 gallons of mouse urine drop by drop. Today, somewhere a man dying of cancer has read that there is a book in the works about Folkman's therapy. Let it be so.