Good idea rhino88, here is a copy of my letter. Hopefully if more people contact ASIC, we might get an answer.
Dear Sir/Madam, I am concerned that Fermiscan Ltd, in their Coporate presentation released 12 Jan 2007, might have included information and claims that are potentially misleading to uninformed investors. http://www.fermiscan.com.au/Documents/InvestorPresentationJanuary2007_000.pdf Specifically, on page 20, they claimed that the test was 100% sensitive, and quoted 3 studies to support their claims Nature (1999), J National Cancer Inst (2001), and Int Journal Cancer (2005). Now, the first study in Nature (1999), involved 12 patients, and the second study in J Nat cancer Inst (2001) was just a rehash of the same information, involving 7 patients from the original 1999 study, while the 3rd paper quoted ( 2005 Int Journal of Cancer) was actually mainly a study on mice! (see below) All the positive studies for the Fermiscan test was done by the same group led by Dr V James. Since the 1999 study, many independent international groups has naturally tried to replicate the experiment as a positive result would revolutionize cancer detection as we know it. All of them failed to find positive results. Specifically, 1) Amenitsch H et al 1999 Synchrotron x-ray study at Trieste: no correlation between breast cancer and hair structure Synchrotron Radiat. News 12 32–4 2) Briki F, Busson B, Salicru B, Esteve F and Doucet J 1999 Breast cancer diagnosis using hair Nature 400 236 3)Laaziri K, Sutton M, Ghadirian P, Scott A S, Paradis A J,Tonin P N and Foulkes W D 2002 Is there a correlation between the structure of hair and breast cancer or BRCA1/2 mutations? Phys. Med. Biol. 47 1623–32 4)Meyer P, Goergl R, Botz J W and Fratzl P 2000 Breast Cancer Screening Using Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering Analysis of Human Hair J. Natl Cancer Inst. 92 1092–3 5)Howell A, Can hair be used to screen for breast cancer? Journal Med Genetics 2000 Apr; 37 297-8 Please note that the above studies were larger,double blinded and involved hundreds of patients. My main concern is that none of the above information was made know to the public investor, instead, a blanket, inaccurate statement that their test was "100% sensitive" was made. Also, on page 12, under the heading "Scientific study to date" (also note how none of the above negative studies was mentioned under this heading) there was a description of of 503 Human samples in a paper in the Int Journ Cancer 2005. This is an abstract of the paper http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/109865072/ABSTRACT " Abstract A correlation between the incidence of breast cancer and an observed change in the X-ray diffraction pattern of hair from the afflicted individuals was first reported in 1999. Since that time, over 500 hair samples have been analyzed in double-blinded breast cancer studies with no false negatives being detected. To correlate this observed change with the presence of breast cancer, we examined whiskers removed from nude mice prior to and 8 weeks after subcutaneous implantation of a human breast cancer cell line. Here we show that the change observed in human hair was also evident in whiskers and that it appeared soon after cancer cell implantation." This is mainly a study on mice whiskers. In the actual paper, there was only 1 paragraph out of the 3 and a half pages stating what happened when they tested 503 samples of hair. (No details on the scientific process) Hence, in summary, my concern is not with what Fermiscan claim that their test can do, but that the relevant information that is well published in the scientific literature(which reflects negatively on their test) is not made known to the public, especially in their corporate presentation.
FER Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held