I saw a bottle at the pharmacist’s today that said “Shark Cartilage” on it. My curiosity was piqued, so I asked if it really was shark cartilage. My pharmacist said it most certainly was and that a lot of people take it for its alleged immunity benefits. She told me that sharks don’t get cancer, parasites, infections, etc, because their internal organ setup consists almost exclusively of a liver, and that sharks only die from being eaten or from starvation after they lose their teeth. Is this true? Am I missing the boat by not stocking up on shark innards, or is this a bunch of aquatic bunk? –KC, via e-mail
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Your first thought is: Oh, right, shark cartilage–that definitely sounds like it’d be effective against the big C. Your second thought is: Hey, they laughed at the guy who tried to make an antibiotic out of bread mold. (Guide for the perplexed: We’re talking about penicillin, goof.) A lot of pharmaceuticals were invented using some process that on first hearing sounded pretty stupid. Trouble is, a lot of stupid things start out pretty stupid, too.
Lane, however, has been the boldest advocate for the power of shark cartilage, making him either a daring medical pioneer, a flake, or worse, depending on whom you ask. To date the evidence is trending against pioneer. In 1998 a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that 60 cancer patients treated with shark cartilage enjoyed no detectable benefit. Cancer experts generally agree that taking cartilage powder orally is useless–digestive juices destroy the supposedly cancer-fighting compounds before they can do you any good. In 2000 the Federal Trade Commission ordered a firm owned by Lane’s son Andrew (and for which Lane himself is a consultant) to stop claiming therapeutic benefit for a shark-cartilage product it sold under the name BeneFin and pay a million-dollar fine. Evidently this did not have the desired inhibitory effect: in July 2004 a federal court ordered Andrew’s company to halt sales of BeneFin (and two other dubious products) and give customers their money back. Meanwhile, outraged shark advocates–what, you think nobody should speak up for the sharks?–say the $100 million shark-cartilage industry is hastening the extinction of many shark species.
