Paths of discovery are complex and rarely follow a well-established linear path; Basic research initially without any medicinal profit motives are always the starting point. Here, we are talking about an Outstanding Biophysicist from Jerusalem and then from the Technion in Haifa who started with a simple idea: we treat a number of neurological and psychiatric diseases with electrical stimulation – for example deep stimulation of the brain in Parkinson’s disease invented by A-Louis Benabid and his colleagues from Grenoble which is now classic. There is always debate about how it works – without having a clear answer – and researchers who desperately try to understand the mechanisms must admit that “and yet it works”. Based on this idea, Prof Palti imagined a device consisting of a metal plate placed on the skull above the tumor and a high voltage is passed continuously. The large studies carried out show an increase in life expectancy of 4 months on average, which seems little but is significant when you have a glioblastoma – graveyard of billions which resists almost everything. The device approved by the US and more recently European authorities has 2 disadvantages: skin problems below the plaque that must be removed from time to time and the price. Putting 200K per patient/year in the US and unless I’m mistaken, €20,000 for Europe is questionable given the simplicity of the system! but this is a real nuisance, innovative drugs/treatments are often very expensive without this being justified in terms of investments and manufacturing costs. Behind all this is a very real problem, how states are impoverished by policies that favor minorities at the expense of majorities – those who can bear the costs. For my part, it seems to me that all this is based on an excess of confidence in innovation at all costs, even though the repositioning of molecules already in use can sometimes obtain at least as much as 4 months of additional life expectancy.
