Doctors have flagged an alleged attempt to exploit an average Malayali’s nostalgic fondness for jackfruit in the form of a study that claimed to have found a cure for cancer in its flour.
Media reports based on the study were published to mark World Cancer Day on February 4. Regular intake of food prepared from jackfruit flour can alleviate nerve pain, numbness, and tingling of limbs or body extremities felt by patients undergoing radiation or chemotherapy, the report said, quoting researchers, who claimed to have conducted a study in a Kochi hospital.
Commercial interest
Deepu Sadasivan, co-founder and admin of Infoclinic, a social media platform of doctors, pointed out on Sunday that scientific facts had been twisted to suit commercial interests of some people.
“Those undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer will face many side-effects during its course. They will gradually overcome those problems in normal circumstances. Just because they consumed green jackfruit flour during the treatment does not mean that it had acted as a ‘palliative’,” he said. Dr. Deepu noted that falsifiability or the capacity for a statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong, was an important part of any scientific study. “The researchers who came up with this study could not provide any such theory even after repeated queries,” he said.
Methodology
The methodology of the study was also problematic. Though it was claimed to be an “observational study”, in which the researchers do not participate, actually it was an “interventional study” as the researcher had advised the patients to consume the flour for two days along with food until the chemotherapy sessions were over. Dr. Deepu also objected to the finding that pectin, a polysaccharide present in green jackfruit flour, “reduced the side-effects caused by chemotherapy”.
Also, it had not followed the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research. “All clinical research involving human participants including any intervention such as drugs, surgical procedures, devices, biomedical, educational or behavioural research, public health intervention studies, observational studies, implementation research and pre-clinical studies of experimental therapeutics and preventives or AYUSH studies may be registered prospectively with the Clinical Trials Registry of India,” says the guideline.
There were no similarities between the two groups of patients on who the study had been conducted, Dr. Deepu added.
