New therapies, not tobacco ban, key to combating lung cancer: Nobel laureate

New Delhi: The key to combating lung cancer is the development of novel immunotherapies and diagnostic techniques and not a complete ban on tobacco that is impossible to enforce, says American Nobel laureate Harold Varmus.

Varmus won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Medicine – along with American immunologist Michael Bishop — for the discovery of gene mutations that can lead to the transformation of a normal cell into a tumour cell and result in cancer.

Dwelling at length on lung cancer, the leading cause of death due to cancer globally as well as in India, Varmus said, “Trying to prohibit tobacco or to ban tobacco entirely is a mistake because we know that you can’t enforce complete prohibition. That is the kind of thing that leads to various forms of crime and it doesn’t work.”