The Truth About Cancer
Produced by PBS

The Truth About Cancer is a 90-minute film that documents the journey of several patients with late-stage cancer, interspersed with commentary from leading oncologists.
More than 35 years after President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, we have yet to see a cure, the narration says. The truth about cancer is that we may not control our destiny, no matter how hard we fight or how positive we are during cancer. And we can’t always prevent it. “You can follow all the rules, and just have bad luck,” producer/director Linda Gorman says in the film.

The film opens with two patients, Gorman’s husband, who died from mesothelioma, and Jamie, a pancreatic cancer patient—two of the hardest to treat cancers. But the two patients share one trait—they are grounded in the reality of their situation and seem to worry more about their families than themselves. At one point, Jamie worries that after her death, her family will think she didn’t fight hard enough and goes through the motions of second opinions and searching for the “miracle” that may not be there.    

David Ryan, MD, Jamie’s oncologist tells the camera: “It’s very American to think you can control your destiny … but when it comes to metastatic lung cancer or pancreatic cancer, it’s all biology.

“Lance Armstrong is associated with if I’m strong enough and if I fight hard enough and I’m smart enough, I’m going to beat it,” Dr. Ryan says. “They don’t understand that Lance Armstrong won the lottery, essentially. He had the world’s most sensitive cancer to chemotherapy—testicular cancer. It had nothing to do with him being an Olympic athlete.” 

The film also examines drug discovery and development at pharmaceutical companies and research hospitals, and the push for cancer screening and prevention. Throughout the film, oncologists carefully balance the hard truth with hopeful optimism. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s George Demetri, MD, mentions that for every 10 drugs in clinical testing, only one will likely reach approval. “It’s not a great track record.”

Highlighted in the film were some of the successes in oncology: Gleevec, a magic bullet for chronic myeloid leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumor; the accumulation of small successes that increased the pediatric five-year survival rate to nearly 80 percent; and the eventual approval of the investigational drug Larry Gorman received in a clinical trial, which extended median survival by four months. “At the time, it hardly seemed a victory to me…,” Linda Gorman tells the viewer. “Still, I must confess, I’d give anything for four more months with Larry.” Dr. Demetri hopes a new investigational agent, a PI3 kinase inhibitor, may soon add to those and other treatment successes.  

The film closes with a young metastatic breast cancer patient who has been on at least 10 different drugs over the past eight years. She looks at each as small successes, she says, each working for a time, giving her more time.    

The Truth About Cancer, which premiered on PBS in April, is available for purchase ($19.95 plus shipping) at www.pbs.org and includes bonus footage of Linda Ellerbee’s panel discussion with four medical professionals and downloadable resource materials.

—Elizabeth Whittington