The ‘bomb’ of scientific communication

The highest aspiration of anyone working in a research centre is to find what he was looking for. A formula, a particle, a new mechanism of action of a drug, a vaccine... In biomedical research, that hope is even bigger, whenever possible, as the result of the discovery may have a direct impact on public health.

We all like hearing we move towards a world with less diseases and better treatments. It is no surprising, then, that sometimes we find news such as this one, published by the English newspaper Sunday Times a few weeks ago. "A British man with HIV hopes to become the first in the world to be cured of the disease by using a pioneering new therapy designed to eradicate the virus", started the text.

The first mistake was that it was already described a “first case” of a HIV-cured person a few years ago, after a long and complex bone marrow transplantation: Timothy Brown, known as the Berlin Patient. Other than that, within 24 hours Google Alerts published news such as "Definitive cure for AIDS announced in London"... followed by hundreds of e-mails and requirements full of hope addressed to doctors. Sarah Fidler, researcher of the English study that the news referred to, was forced to publicly deny it in this post. According to Fidler, anything said about the study was "premature" because the trial is still underway and all participants -including the man appointed on the news- remain with antiretroviral therapy throughout the study.

We cannot say that someone is "cured" of HIV if he/she is under treatment. It would be like telling a diabetic he is cured after injecting him a dose of insulin. Unfortunately, the only way to prove that a person has eliminated the virus from the body or is able to control it is stopping treatment and monitoring him/her during long periods of time. Indeed, scientists try to be cautious when talking about "cure" or "eradication" of AIDS and explain the case of the Berlin Patient as a case of "functional cure" where we don’t know what may happen in the future. Some examples of promising situations have taught us that, unfortunately, HIV really knows how to hide and reappear when we least expect it (see the "Mississippi baby" or "Boston patients" cases).

The right combination

Nowadays, communication is a bomb with a lot of cables which may easily be connected to exploit. In this case, the results of monitoring a promising clinical trial, probably commented in petit comité, reached a journalist who wanted to announce good news. Internet and free interpretation did the rest.

Scientific communication in such delicate matters, involving the health of patients, the feelings of relatives and the credibility of physicians, researchers and even the media, should be treated as rigorously as we want the research to be done in the lab: thoroughly and accurately, with a lot of pre- and post- deliberation. As it happens in the lab, it is not easy.

Bringing science and scientists to society is a teamwork effort. Researchers have to be very cautious when announcing results, learn to communicate in an understandable way and work with journalists in the headline, those few and dangerous characters... Communication departments should appease, find the headline without cutting up the base. Media have the duty of analysing, questioning, getting into the skin of the readers and, in cases of copy-pasting, doing it properly. On the other side, people should read from a distance and with a certain amount of scepticism and critical spirit. Looking for the source -whenever possible, the original press release or paper- would be a good exercise for anyone who runs into the next cure for cancer, diabetes, obesity or AIDS. Maybe then we will have reached the correct cable combination for a good scientific communication.

Beatriz Mothe, Júlia Bestard