8/12/2019 Using Hair to Screen for Breast Cancer

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8/12/2019 Using Hair to Screen for Breast Cancer

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S IENTIFI EVIEW

Using Hair to Screen for reast CancerMICHAEL A R TChairman National Synchrotron Light SourceBrookhaven National Laboratory Upton NY USA

We have studied hair using fibre X-ray dif-fraction studies with synchrotron radiation andfind that hair from breast-cancer patients has adifferent intermolecular structure to hair fromhealthy subjects. So began a note in the scien-tific correspondence section of ature on 4March 1999 [ l ] All hair samples 23 out of 23)taken fr om breast-cancer patients exhibited thecharacteristic change in their X-ray scatteringpatterns. Of the samples taken from patients notsuspected of having breast-cancer, the scatteringpatterns of 86 24 out of 28 ) were normal.The ring that characterizes the hair fro m breast-cancer patients corresponds to a molecular spac-i n g of 4.44 0.06 nm .... Such a dra mati c claimand simple diagnostic demands follow-up and , ifsubstantiated, application.

To our knowledge, a t least five teams set outto substantiate t h e observation. During the In-ternational Conference on Small Angle Scatter-ing held at Brookhaven National Laboratoryfrom 17-20 May of this year, three of the teams

were able to discuss their findings with Dr.Veronica James. It was noted tha t:All trials, though small, had been set up asqualified clinical trials with p roper attentionto blind testing and analysis, etc.None of the five studies had been able tofind a correlation between the diagnosticfeatures mentioned in the ature articleand clinical knowledge of the state of thepatient.3)Ev en after several hours of extended discus-sion, no quantitative specification or recipewith which the participants could progress tore-analyze their dat a was available.Three of the five teams involved in the replica-tion attempt have agreed to summarize theirresults in this article an d Dr. James contributedthe comment that follows.

1 VeronicaJames JohnKearsley T om Irving Yoshiyuki AmemiyaDavid Cookson Nature Vol 398 age 33-34 1999).

omments on the Statements andExperiments ontained in this ReviewVERONICA JAMESResearch School of ChemistryAustralian National University Canberra NS W

Nowhere in our March 99 ature paper wasit stated that the experiment was trivial in execu-tion and consequently it is not only presumptu-o u s but, given the gravity of the situation, it isalmost culpable for any group lacking experi-ence in the study of hair to rush to deny (orconfirm) my findings, without first demonstrat-ing an ability to get good quality data on normalhair such as tha t in our earlier publications [1,2].None of the experiments in any way duplicated

the methodology used by my team though it wasreadily available and referenced. The resultspublished here cannot therefore in any way re-fute my findings. The various teams can onlystate that their method cannot be used. Mean-while we have just completed a further study ofhair from the USA where we correctly identifiedthe only positive person in the set of 1 9 supplied.Non e of the X-r ay scattering images shown tome a t the recent SAXS conference at Brookhaven

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