Over 11 million people are diagnosed with cancer world wide each year, 7 million of which will not survive. With early detection, one-third of all cancers can generally be cured by surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy (1). Nonetheless, cancer treatment and detection is amongst the biggest medical challenges faced by our societies today. Ever since the late 1980s there have been reports, articles and stories about “cancer defying sharks” and how these fearful predators potentially hold the secret weapon in our fight against cancer. These stories were commercially publicized by an entrepreneur named I. William Lane, who claimed that shark cartilage could treat and cure cancer, arthritis, enteritis (an inflammation of the intestinal tract), macular degeneration, psoriasis, acne and poison ivy (2). These claims became widely publicized and many companies in the US began marketing these shark cartilage “supplements”. Oncologists also noticed that an increasing amount of their patients were asking about shark cartilage treatments or had already tried this form of alternative therapy (3). Many were so eager to believe the idea of finding such an idealistic cure for cancer, that they did not bother to search for the scientific evidence supporting the alleged “magical properties” of powdered shark cartilage.