Oncology, Etc. - In Conversation with Dr. Otis Brawley (Part 2)

In the second edition of this two-part Oncology, Etc. episode, hosts Dr. Patrick Loehrer (Indiana University) and Dr. David Johnson (University of Texas) continue their conversation with Dr. Otis Brawley, a distinguished professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins and former Executive Vice President of the American Cancer Society.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts | Additional resources: elearning.asco.org | Contact Us

Air Date: 10/5/2021

 

TRANSCRIPT

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This is not a substitute for medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAVID JOHNSON: Welcome back to Oncology, Etc, and our second segment of our conversation with Otis Brawley, professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Pat, I don't know about you, but Otis is a very impressive man, and he had a lot of really interesting things to say about his career development, family, et cetera in the first segment. This second segment, we're going to get to hear more about his time at the ACS. What were your thoughts about segment one?

PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, I loved talking to Otis, and you too, Dave. Parenthetically, Otis once told me in a dinner conversation we had that he felt like Forrest Gump, and I can identify with that. Where over the field, our field of oncology over the last several decades, we've met some incredibly wonderful people, and we've been lucky to be part of the history. The three of us, I think, do have a deep sense of the historical context of oncology. This is a young field, and there's just some extraordinary people, many of them real true heroes, and Otis has his figure on the pulse of that.

DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, that's why he's been in some of the right places at the right time, and we'll hear more about that in this segment coming up now.

PATRICK LOEHRER: Now Otis has had a career in many different areas, including ODAC, the NCI, the ACS, now at Hopkins. So let's hear a little bit more about Dr. Brawley's experience at the American Cancer Society and particularly with his experience with the former CEO, John Seffrin.

DAVID JOHNSON: Sounds great.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OTIS BRAWLEY: John and I had a wonderful run at the American Cancer Society. Got to do a lot of things. Got to testify for the Affordable Care Act. Got to do some of the science to actually argue that the Affordable Care Act would help. And I was fortunate enough to be there long enough to do some of the science to show that the Affordable Care Act is helping.

DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean actually all of the things you accomplished at the ACS are truly amazing. Let me ask you, just on a personal level, what did you like most about that job, and then what did you like least about that job?

[LAUGHTER]

OTIS BRAWLEY: I like the fact-- there were a lot of things I liked about that job. There were a couple hundred scientists and scientific support people that you got to work with. And I used to always say, I do politics so you can do science. And what I used to like the most, every Wednesday afternoon that I was in town, I would walk around just to watch those people think. I used to joke around and say, I'm just walking around to see who came to work today. But I really enjoyed watching them work and watching them think, and that was fun.

Another fun aspect of the job was people used to call and ask a little bit about the disease that they are a family member would have. And sitting down with them on the phone in those days-- we didn't have Zoom-- and talking to them through their disease. Not necessarily giving them advice on what to do in terms of treatment, but helping them understand the biology of the disease or connecting them with someone who was good in their disease.

And I happen to, by the way, have sent some patients to both of you guys. That was a lot of fun. Then the other thing, of course, was the fact that you could actually influence policy and fix things. I'll never forget sitting across from Terry Branstad, then the governor of Iowa, and convincing him that the right thing to do is to raise the excise tax on tobacco in Iowa. Being able to see that you're effective and to see that you're positively influencing things.

The bad side, some of the politics. I didn't necessarily like how some of the money was being raised or where they were raising money from. I think that you have to have a certain standard in terms of where you accept money. And we always had that tension with the fundraisers. But it's also true-- and I will give them a nod-- you can't do the fun things unless you raise money.

So I really truly enjoyed my time at the American Cancer Society. And by the way, a shout out to Karen Knudsen, who is the CEO running the American Cancer Society now. And I'm fully committed to helping the ACS and helping Karen be successful.

DAVID JOHNSON: One of the things I read-- I think I read this that you had said that one of your proudest accomplishments was revising the ACS screening guidelines. Tell us just a little bit about that.

OTIS BRAWLEY: Yeah, going all the way back to the early 1990s, I started realizing that a lot of these guidelines for screening, or back then, this is before the NCCN guidelines for treatment even, that were published by various organizations, including the American Cancer Society. We're almost the equivalent of-- get the impression that in the 1960s, it would have been a smoke-filled room. But you gather a bunch of people into a room, and they come up with, this is what we should be doing.

Indeed, the American Cancer Society in 1991 endorsed annual PSA screening for prostate cancer based purely on getting a group of primarily urologists into a room, and that's what they came up with. There was very little review of the science. There really was no science at that time except the science to show that PSA screening found cancer. There were no studies to show that led to men benefiting in that they didn't die.

Indeed, in 1991, there was no study to show that treatment of early prostate cancer saved lives. The study to show treatment of prostate cancer saves lives was first published in 2003, and the radiation saves lives in 1997, 1998. Surgery saves lives in 2003 and screening has a small effect published in 2009. But they started recommending it in 1991 in this almost smoke-filled room kind of atmosphere.

When I got to the American Cancer Society, I started an effort, and we involved people from the National Academy of Medicine, we involved people from the NCCN, from the American Urological Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians. And we got together in that almost smoke-filled room again, but the idea was, how do you make responsible guidelines?

And we wrote that up into a paper guide widely accepted by all of the organizations, and it involves a review of the literature that is commissioned by someone. And they spend a long time reviewing the literature and writing a literature review. And then you have a group of experts from various fields to include epidemiology and screening, social work, someone who's had the disease. Not just the surgeons and medical oncologists who treat the disease but some population scientists as well.

They sit down and they reveal all of the scientific data, and then they start coming up with, we recommend this. And then they rank how strong that recommendation is based on the data. We published this in 2013 in The Journal of the American Medical Association. I do think that was important, you're right. That's Otis trying to bring his policy and his belief in orthodox approach to science and bring it all together.

PATRICK LOEHRER: So let me reflect a little bit more on something. There is a book that I also just recently read by Dax-Devlon Ross, and it's a book entitled, Letters to my White Male Friends, and it was a fascinating read to me. You have this public persona and professional persona of being an outstanding physician, clinician, public speaker. But what we the three of us have never really had the conversation today is we have much more interest now in DEI.

One of our other speakers talked about the fact that there's a tax that is placed upon underrepresented minorities and academics. They are all expected to be on committees. They have to be doing different things. And so the things that they love to do, they can't do it because they have to represent their race or their gender or their ethnicity.

OTIS BRAWLEY: I have been blessed and fortunate. There are problems, and there are huge burdens that Black doctors, and women doctors by the way, have to carry. I have been fortunate that I have skated through without a lot of that burden. Maybe it has to do with oncology, but I will tell you that I have been helped by so many doctors, men and women, predominantly white, but some Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Christian.

I don't know if it's oncology is selective of people who want to give folks a fair shake and really believe in mentoring and finding a protege and promoting their career. I have been incredibly, incredibly fortunate. Now that I say that, there are doctors, minority doctors and women, who don't have the benefits and don't have the fortunes that I have had, and we all have to be careful for that.

As I said early on, John Altman told me that I will thank him by getting more Blacks and women into the old boys club. And so that was his realizing that there is a-- or there was a problem. I think there still is a problem in terms of diversity.

Now I have seen personally some of the problem more outside of oncology in some of the other specialties. More in internal medicine and surgery, for example. By the way, there are also some benefit.

I did well in medical school in third and fourth year in medical school at the University of Chicago because there were a group of Black nurses who were held that I wasn't going to fail. The nurses took me under their wing and taught me how to draw blood, how to pass a swan. The first code I ever called, there was a nurse standing behind me with the check off list.

And so there are some advantages to being Black as well. But there are some disadvantages. I've been very fortunate. My advice to Black physicians is to keep an open mind and seek out the folks in medicine who truly do want to help you and truly do want to mentor you. And for the folks who are not minority or not women in medicine, I say, try to keep an open mind and try to help everybody equally.

PATRICK LOEHRER: Thank you.

DAVID JOHNSON: I want to go back to your book for a moment. And again, for those who've not read it, I would encourage them to do. So it's a really honest book, I think, well-written. You made a comment in there-- I want to make sure I quote it near correctly. You said that improvement in our health care system must be a bottom up process. What do you mean by "bottom up?"

OTIS BRAWLEY: Well, much of it is driven by demand from patients and other folks. The name of the book was, How We Do Harm. And the synopsis is there are bunch of people who are harmed because they don't get the care that they need. And there's a bunch of people who are harmed because they get too much medicine and too much care. And they rob those resources away from the folks who don't get care at the same time that they're harmed by being overtreated, getting treatments that they don't need.

The other thing, if I can add, in American health care, we don't stress risk reduction enough. I used to call it "prevention." Some of the survivors convince me to stress "activities to reduce risk of disease." We don't do a lot in this country in terms of diet and exercise. We try to do some work somewhat successfully on tobacco avoidance.

We need to teach people how to be healthy. And if I were czar of medicine in the United States, I would try to make sure that everybody had a health coach. Many of us go to the gym and we have a trainer. We need trainers to teach us how to be healthy and how to do the right things to stay healthy.

That's part of the bottom up. And in terms of costs you know my last paper that I published from the American Cancer Society, I published purposefully, this is my last paper. Ahmedin Jemal who's a wonderful epidemiologist who I happen to have worked with when I was at the National Cancer Institute and again later in my career at the American Cancer Society, I pushed Ahmedin-- he publishes these papers, and we estimate x number of people are going to be diagnosed with breast cancer and y number are going to die.

He and I had talked for a long time about how college education reduces risk of cancer death dramatically. If you give a college education to a Black man, his risk of death from cancer goes down to less than the average risk for a white American. There's something about giving people college education that prevents cancer death.

I simply challenged Ahmedin, calculate for me how many people in the United States would die if everybody had the risk of death of college-educated Americans. And he came back with of the 600,000 people who die in any given year, 132,000 would not die if they had all the things from prevention through screening, diagnosis, and treatment that college-educated people. Just think about that-- 132,000.

Then I started trying to figure out what drug prevents 132,000 deaths per year? And I couldn't think of one until recently, and it happens to be the coronavirus vaccine. Which ironically has shown itself to be the greatest drug ever created in all of medicine.

But in cancer, there's no breakthrough drug that is more effective than just simply getting every human being the care from risk reduction and prevention all the way through treatment that every human being ought to be getting. The solution to some of that starts with fixing third grade and teaching kids about exercise, about proper diet.

PATRICK LOEHRER: We're going to have to wind things up here. But real quickly, a book you would recommend?

OTIS BRAWLEY: Skip Trump, who's someone that we all know, wonderful guy used to run Roswell Park Cancer Center, just published a book actually it's coming out in September called, Centers of the Cancer Universe, A Half Century of Progress Against Cancer. I got a preprint of that, and it is a great book.

It talks about what we've learned in oncology over the last 50 years since Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act. Keep in mind, he declared war on cancer on December 23, 1971. So we have an anniversary coming up in December.

PATRICK LOEHRER: I want to close. Another book, I read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. It's a wonderful read. It really is good. There were some endorsements at the end of this book, and one of them was written by a Benjamin Brawley, who wrote this review in a book called, The Negro in Literature and Art in 1921. And Benjamin Brawley was writing this about Frederick Douglass, but I would like to have you just reflect a moment. I think he was writing it about you, and I'm just going to read this.

He basically said, at the time of his death in 1895, Douglass had won for himself a place of unique distinction. Large of heart and of mind, he was interested in every forward movement for his people, but his charity embraced all men in all races. His mutation was international, and today, many of his speeches are found to be the standard works of oratory. I think if your great, great grandfather were here today, he would be so incredibly proud of his protege, Otis. And it's such a privilege and pleasure to have you join us today on Oncology, Etc. Thank you so much.

OTIS BRAWLEY: Thank you. And thank both of you for all the help you've given me over the years

DAVID JOHNSON: Great pleasure having you today, Otis. I want to also thank all of our listeners for tuning in to Oncology, Etc. This is an ASCO educational podcast. We really are here to talk about anything and everything. So we're looking for ideas. Please, if you have any suggestions, feel free to email us at education@ASCO.org. Thanks again, and remember, Pat has a face for podcasts.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the ASCO e-learning weekly podcasts. To make us part of your weekly routine, click Subscribe. Let us know what you think by leaving a review. For more information, visit the comprehensive e-learning center at elearning.asco.org.