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Right. I finally got around to writing an R function to do this, because this problem has cropped up a few times in the past year:

getPV <- function(prevalence, sensitivity, specificity){
        popnTrue <- prevalence;
        popnFalse <- (1-prevalence);
        popnTruePos <- popnTrue * sensitivity;
        popnFalsePos <- popnFalse * (1 - specificity);
        popnTrueNeg <- popnTrue * (1 - sensitivity);
        popnFalseNeg <- popnFalse * specificity;
        ppv <- popnTruePos / (popnTruePos + popnFalsePos);
        npv <- popnFalseNeg / (popnTrueNeg + popnFalseNeg);
        return(data.frame(prev = prevalence, sens = sensitivity,
                                            spec = specificity, ppv = ppv, npv = npv));
}

NCI tells me that 4% of the US population are cancer survivors, so I'll use that value for the population prevalence:

> prev <- 4 * 0.01;
> sensSpec <- rbind(c(94.8,54.7),c(81,78.7),c(62.1,94)) * 0.01;

> out.df <- NULL;
> for(i in seq_len(dim(sensSpec)[1])){
    out.df <- rbind(out.df,getPV(prev, sensSpec[i,1], sensSpec[i,2]));
  }
> out.df;
    prev sens spec ppv npv
1 0.04 0.948 0.547 0.08020305 0.9960546
2 0.04 0.810 0.787 0.13677812 0.9900409
3 0.04 0.621 0.940 0.30131004 0.9834779

So the best they can do for this test, according to the paper, is a 30% positive predictive value -- if this test comes up positive, there's a 30% chance that you actually have cancer (and that's allowing for 2% of "negative" results actually being cancer).

You really don't want to cook at higher temps since it promotes formation of Cancer causing compounds.

I find cooking at lower temps for a longer period produces more reliable results while avoiding an under cooked interior.

The effectiveness of vitamin D as a cancer treatment is highly debatable, and anyone claiming otherwise (for or against) is mistaken or selling something. Not all UV radiation has the same effect on your skin. Tanning beds are tuned to make you tan; they are not particularly effective for vitamin D production.

You should avoid tanning. I am sure no one who has had skin cancer would recommend the experience. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Even if vitamin D were effective as a cancer remedy, it does not follow that tanning is a good way to get vitamin D. How much sun or dietary components you need to fulfill your body's needs for vitamin D is also difficult to estimate, and depend significantly on latitude, but there is little evidence to suggest that the amount of sun exposure required would produce or maintain changes of skin tone.

For what it's worth, I'm from Alaska and pretty used to taking vitamin D supplements throughout the winter. That and heavy drinking. I prefer living in the tropics and maintaining a natural tan. My mother was taken in by the vitamin D crowd when my father developed cancer, not to the point of rejecting traditional medicine, however. It is easy to find biased sources of information promoting many natural remedies; it is harder to find good studies. Like they say, "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." If you're inclined to dispute any of the above please cite reputable studies. If, for any given remedy, one can't demonstrate a significant effect with a large group of people and a well-controlled study, it's a pretty useless remedy.

There is a simple long term study that proves that cell phones do not appreciably increase brain cancer risks. It is the basic cancer statistics. That graph covers the years 1992 to 2010. Over that period of time cancer rated have been pretty steady. Considering the explosion in subscriber after 1998 there should be an explosion in brain cancers. There is not. No correlation therefore no causation.

Thanks for the 8th grade science lesson. Unfortunately the real world is often much, much more complex. If the exposure needs to be over decades then the time frame is still too short. If there was a corresponding decrease of exposure to some other environmental cause, completely different but was phased out around the same time then it would not show up in your overly simplistic analysis. Also, FTA

Overall the lengthy research programme found no evidence that exposure to generally low frequency base station (mobile network) emissions during pregnancy affects the risk of developing cancer in early childhood, and no evidence that use of mobile phones can lead to an increased risk of leukaemia.

These seem to be the kind of overly specific details that one often uses in the hopes the naive public will generalize that there is no risk what so ever.

Finally, without knowing how the study was done the it really could be complete rubbish. What were the statistical methods used. See the /. article http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/02/12/2112254/why-p-values-cannot-tell-you-if-a-hypothesis-is-correct.

There is a simple long term study that proves that cell phones do not appreciably increase brain cancer risks. It is the basic cancer statistics. That graph covers the years 1992 to 2010. Over that period of time cancer rated have been pretty steady. Considering the explosion in subscriber after 1998 there should be an explosion in brain cancers. There is not. No correlation therefore no causation.

Well, if that were the case we would have drugs that arrested the progress of cancer, but didn't cure it.

But we don't.

Of course we do: Biological Therapies for Cancer.

In some sense, increasing cancer mortality likely results from people in industrialized nations being killed less often by other stuff (cars, emphysema, smallpox, contaminated water). And walking 10 km (on a regular basis) probably has significantly decreased cancer mortality, probably by changes in hormone balance and metabolism. Cancer research may not always be flashy, but they do seem to dig up useful stuff over time.

In some sense, increasing cancer mortality likely results from people in industrialized nations being killed less often by other stuff (cars, emphysema, smallpox, contaminated water). And walking 10 km (on a regular basis) probably has significantly decreased cancer mortality, probably by changes in hormone balance and metabolism. Cancer research may not always be flashy, but they do seem to dig up useful stuff over time.

Just recently started a trial with a THC based compound that can be prescribed....

But yes.. I think growing and using something should be completely legal... Ie.. Personal use within ones home...

There are many really interesting properties of these plants...

One example : http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/patient/page2 and one quite big thing from there.. "Preventing the growth of blood vessels that supply tumors" and that is huge! Being able to use this cheap alternative to prevent tumors from growing bigger is HUGE! (even if would only be for a few cancer-types)

Yet alcohol is a risk factor for developing cancer of the throat, mouth, and basically the rest of the digestive tract. The anti-oxidants in wine are also readily available (without risk-factor alcohol) in the form of grape juice or grapes.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/alcohol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer (3.6% of cancer cases and 3.5% of cancers deaths are attributed to alcohol)

Research into a healthier alternative (maybe added to a high anti-oxidant blueberry juice) is certainly worthwhile.

...employees are getting hit pretty hard...

Except for those lucky few (sorry, the unlucky 1.6 million) people who'll get cancer next year. Or break a bone. Or get any one of a large number of additional diseases that are moderately or completely treatable with insurance but will totally fuck up your life if you get them without.

They're probably doing better overall.

But we do not even mitigate the biggest risk first. Arguably the biggest risk right now to us is cancer. However, in the US, the budget for cancer research is a pitiful 5 billion $/yr, which is rather small in comparison to the 79 billion $/yr for military research and testing.

Sources for budgets:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#By_title

10-year relative survival ranges from 84.1% in stage IA to 10.4% in stage IIIC
  Survival rates based on SEER incidence and NCHS mortality statistics, as cited by the National Cancer Institute in SEER Stat Fact Sheets â" Cancer of the Ovary http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/ovary.html

In Laymans terms if Ovarian Cancer is caught early then treatment such as Surgery and Chemotherapy have a reasonable chance of keeping women alive for 10 years or more, diagnose later and the chances are she will die. Screening really is about the only method of catching treatable cancers at an early enough stage that they can be treated since if you don't look for it , it tends to be already at an untreatable stage when it is eventually discovered.
Obviously screening doesnt make the untreatable , treatable but it does save lives where early treatment can make a difference. It's not pointless which is what you appear to imply.

Well, your impression isn't exactly concordant with the facts (it's complicated):

Between 2000 and 2009, overall cancer incidence rates decreased by 0.6 percent per year among men, were stable among women, and increased by 0.6 percent per year among children (ages 0 to 14 years). During that time period, incidence rates among men decreased for five of the 17 most common cancers (prostate, lung, colon and rectum, stomach, and larynx) and increased for six others (kidney, pancreas, liver, thyroid, melanoma of the skin, and myeloma). Among women, incidence rates decreased for seven of the 18 most common cancers (lung, colon and rectum, bladder, cervix, oral cavity and pharynx, ovary, and stomach), and increased for seven others (thyroid, melanoma of the skin, kidney, pancreas, leukemia, liver, and uterus). Incidence rates were stable for the other top 17 cancers, including breast cancer in women and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men and women.

Multiple studies show that certain cannabinoids prevent or inhibit the growth of certain types of tumors in mouse. This is not controversial.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthprofessional/page4

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthprofessional/page5

While the jury is still out and will be out for a long time, it is rather obvious that cannbinoids have certain effect on certain types of tumors. There's a lot more going on than wishful thinking by pot smokers and waaaay too many studies have been done to just dismiss their results as "not properly randomized". While it may be a bitch to do any study on "recreational" drugs in the US, the US is not the only country doing science.

Multiple studies show that certain cannabinoids prevent or inhibit the growth of certain types of tumors in mouse. This is not controversial.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthprofessional/page4

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthprofessional/page5

While the jury is still out and will be out for a long time, it is rather obvious that cannbinoids have certain effect on certain types of tumors. There's a lot more going on than wishful thinking by pot smokers and waaaay too many studies have been done to just dismiss their results as "not properly randomized". While it may be a bitch to do any study on "recreational" drugs in the US, the US is not the only country doing science.

Your data doesn't pan out, boss. Check this out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list Sort that chart by "Rank by rate of ownership" and you'll see a problem. The US has a relatively high murder rate (compared to 1st-world countries) by firearms, and the US is #1 in gun ownership. But the problem is that Switzerland, Finland, Serbia, and Cyprus are ranked 3, 4, 5 and 6 in gun ownership - and they have very low homicide rates by firearm. The problem that data presents to you argument is that it undeniably demonstrates that gun ownership does not directly affect the murder rate. If it did, you would expect a gradual and more-or-less parallel drop in the murder rate as the gun ownership rates drop as well. But that just isn't the case.

The other interesting point this data makes is the fact that the murder rate by firearms (rate per 100,000 population) is not very high in 1st-world countries. In the US, where the rate is relatively high, less that 3 people are killed each year per 100,000. Cancer, on the other hand, causes 178.7 deaths per 100,000 people in the US ( http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html ) each year. Accidents or inintentional injuries: 38.4 per 100,000 per year.

I'm not purporting to know what the cause of incidents like Newtown and Aurora is; that's beyond my abilities. But what I can say, based on hard data, is that gun ownership is not a direct cause of gun deaths, and gun deaths in the US are not high enough to warrant this kind of fanatical attention. You want to really cut down on senseless violence? Go after cancer and the other big terminal killers. Guns just aren't that big of a problem.

Six billion cell phone subscriptions
22,910 new brain tumor cases in USA in 2012 out of 300M people or 0.008% of the population.

So practically everybody on the planet old enough to use one has a cellphone, but practically nobody on the planet gets a brain tumor.

Radon (And its decay products) can most certainly get inside your body through your respiratory system. Exposure to radon is associated with lung cancer. A quick google search finds the following article: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/radon

While radon itself has a very short biological half life since it is an inert gas, it also have a rather short physical half life decaying into various heavy atoms (polonium, lead, bismuth, thallium and mercury). This turns into airborne dust that can get lodged in your lungs. Of the decay products pb-210 might be of most interest having a half life of 22 years.

Here.

Colorado is in the lowest sixth of US states for overall cancer rates. This despite being in the top third for skin melanoma. When you go in for a check-up, the docs don't ask you whether you've checked the radon levels in your house. But they will ask you if you wear sunblock, and UV-blocking sunglasses (UV has been linked to cataract development). Cause the UV levels that go with living at 5,000 feet are much more dangerous than the other radiation exposures.

"The percentage of cases attributed to obesity varied widely for different cancer types but was as high as 40 percent for some cancers, particularly endometrial cancer and esophageal adenocarcinoma."
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/obesity

"Dietary factors have been thought to account for about 30% of cancers in Western countries1, making diet second
only to tobacco as a preventable cause of cancer."
http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/public_health_nut6.pdf

"Those of us who will still fly will appreciate the extra room on the planes and the lower fares."

Care to elaborate on the lower fares? Fewer customers means lower fares?

"If all the cancer paranoia were true, we'd all have cancer by age 10!"

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood

From the article:
"High levels of ionizing radiation from accidents or from radiotherapy have been linked with increased risk of some childhood cancers."

I guess that since the TSA are intentionally irradiating children, and not doing so by accident or by providing radiotherapy, this might not apply.

even though Gardasil doesn't do anything useful

Citation needed.

I have one saying quite the opposite, actually.

the mortality rate for thyroid cancer has been virtually unchanged since 1980
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/thyro.html

The joinpoint trend in US cancer mortality with associated annual percentage change (%) for cancer of the thyroid between 1975-2008, All Races
Trend Period
-2.1% 1975-1988
0.7% 1988-2008

So unless you want to share your thyroid cancer cure with the rest of us... then the death rate will be similar.

From that link, the current treatment for thyroid cancer is 99.8% effective if caught in early stage (as is likely during screenings of the high risk population). It is considered "cured" already.

No consolation to the dozen or so people who will likely die from it, but that is not the cancer that is likely to kill the most people.

the mortality rate for thyroid cancer has been virtually unchanged since 1980
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/thyro.html

The joinpoint trend in US cancer mortality with associated annual percentage change (%) for cancer of the thyroid between 1975-2008, All Races
Trend Period
-2.1% 1975-1988
0.7% 1988-2008

So unless you want to share your thyroid cancer cure with the rest of us... then the death rate will be similar.

Because you didn't read through the implications of your quoted material.

So, note that that article obliquely references the study which is centered on the effects of acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is carcinogenic? Well, no shit.

It is one of the most important aldehydes, occurring widely in nature and being produced on a large scale industrially. Acetaldehyde occurs naturally in coffee, bread, and ripe fruit, and is produced by plants as part of their normal metabolism. It is also produced by oxidation of ethanol and is popularly believed to be a cause of hangovers from alcohol consumption through drinking spirits.[3] Pathways of exposure include air, water, land or groundwater as well as drink and smoke.[4]

But it's everywhere. Every time you walk beside the road and smell car exhaust, you're getting filled up with acetaldehyde.

But, thankfully, millennia of co-evolution has promoted the anti-tumor agents in cannabis to offset the carcinogenic elements generated by smoking it. At this point, after all the co-evolution, you get net zero cancer increase. It's a complete offset. Or you even get a cancer decrease.

Read up on the NIH/UCLA studies conducted by Donald Tashkin. Here are some references:

• also from Web MD ("Even very heavy, long-term marijuana users who had smoked more than 22,000 joints over a lifetime seemed to have no greater risk than infrequent marijuana users or nonusers.")
• from the National Cancer Institute
• A population-based case-control study of marijuana use and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
• Marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers: results of a population-based case-control study

Smoking anything is going to get you some carcinogens. In fact, smoking marijuana results in about 200 different carcinogens. And yet no cancer. It's a puzzle. Something else it at work here. Consider the idea: "anti-tumor."

And what happens if you vaporize , rather than burn? It reduces the carcinogens from 200 to 2.

Hey, you could parlay the anti-tumor property of cannabis by taking the cannabis in a non-burned form. Without the acetaldehyde and other carcinogens from smoking, you'd only get a strong anti-cancer effect.

You could use that to offset an exhaust-sucking urban life's inherent extreme, often acetaldehyde-driven carcinogenicity. Whoa, everyone can benefit from a medical marijuana prescription. I hadn't realized it before.

I realize this is cynical but...

According to the WHO ~7.6 million people die of cancer each year: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/ and according to the National Cancer Institute ~1.6 million of them are Americans: http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html

That's a huge revenue stream for the drug companies to just ignore because "hey, it's cured!" I just don't think the drug companies won't start looking for ways to kill this or put it out of reach of most people. They haven't exactly proven to be altruistic and wholly forthcoming thus far; they're just for-profit companies in the same old "corrupt American capitalist" system.

Have you noticed that EVERYTHING seems to cause cancer?

It is a wonder that not everyone has cancer, with so many things causing it. (*)

I really doubt all the different classes of sleep meds are carcinogenic.

*

Too much sun
http://www.webmd.com/healthy-beauty/guide/sun-exposure-skin-cancer

Not enough sun
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2004179538_vitamind13m.html

Being overweight
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/obesity

Being underweight
http://foodforbreastcancer.com/news/underweight-women-have-higher-risks-of-breast-cancer-recurrence-and-metastasis

Too little exercise
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-nutrition/leslie-beck/prolonged-bouts-of-sitting-increase-cancer-risk/article2229466/?service=mobile

Too much exercise
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2006/12/too-much-exercise-causes-cancer.html

Too little vegetables
http://www.cancer.org/Healthy/EatHealthyGetActive/EatHealthy/fruits-and-vegetables-do-you-get-enough

Too many vegetables
http://www.keytobeing.com/2009/pesticides-in-fruits-veggies-linked-to-cancer-parkinsons-more

Even chemo"therapy"
http://www.cancer-free-for-life.com/articles/chemotherapy.php

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10926722, http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/magnetic-fields.

Of course their is always obfuscation with other cancer causing toxins, not our pollution their pollution.

The real decision here is twelve years plus of schooling, eight hours a day, for about 220 days per year, plus all other loads, inlcuding being out in the sun (I never get how some people reckon an existing natural load, eliminates new lesser radiation sources, isn't marketing wonderful, somehow cumulative effects cease to exist).

Want to add more loads other than those under which people evolved a resistance too, let's start getting rid of existing artificial loads before adding more on.

Institutions are indeed havens for all sorts of extremist viewpoints—also, you may be amused to know that lung cancer kills twice as many women than breast cancer. (Well, four times as many people total. I just divided by two; I'm not excited enough to dig up the real numbers. Source here.) Universities in general have a history of giving safe harbour to minority causes, and it's an inevitable result of their growth dynamics that said minority causes tend to take over a little. It's not good, but most of the time it's a little more subtle than your aforementioned professor. Think of it like a pendulum slowing down.

I think of MLP: FiM as a kind of planned, narrow target audience thing. It's never outright sexist—also, consider the characters Hoity Toity and Fancypants, both successful, intelligent and rich men (although it's true there's certainly a shortage of sympathisable males.) The goal of the show isn't to address all possible social issues or even a mature, thorough social context, but simply to focus just on telling girls that they can fulfil any role in society if they want to, just like the boys. Certainly the existence of such a show is sad, but when you compare it to older MLP media (especially the G3 direct-to-video releases) it becomes apparent very quickly that it serves a function that I think most people would generally agree with. In an ideal world, we'd just cut the crap and everything would be Star Trek, but not everyone's ready to be fed that; it feels too remote and difficult to relate to. A raw counterbalance is more effective.

Here's a similar data point that might amuse: Transformers Animated. The main character is a little girl, only a couple of background characters are female, and yet it has a huge success rate with young women. (I'm still trying to work through the exact detailed consequences on that one.)

Only stages I and II are based on the size of the tumor. Stages III and IV are based solely on the spread to lymph nodes and other parts of the body.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/melanoma/Patient/page2

Look at the work of Dr. Jin Xie, who appears to have won an award for EXACTLY this work in 2010. http://nano.cancer.gov/action/programs/pathway.asp

Project Summary: This project is based on a novel nanoplatform that is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle core, an amine-rich intermediate layer, and an outside coating layer made of human serum albumin. In this project, the iron oxide nanoplatform is loaded with a cocktail of therapeutic agents (paclitaxel, salinomycin, and tariquidar or siRNA that targets MDR-1 gene) and is used to treat breast cancer.

That's a good example. There are lots of people are in the field now. I referenced Halas because she was publishing on these therapeutic uses of nanoparticles 10 years ago.

Nanoplatform Based, Combinational Therapy against Breast Cancer Stem Cells University of Georgia Principal Investigator: Jin Xie, Ph.D. Project Summary: This project is based on a novel nanoplatform that is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle core, an amine-rich intermediate layer, and an outside coating layer made of human serum albumin. In this project, the iron oxide nanoplatform is loaded with a cocktail of therapeutic agents (paclitaxel, salinomycin, and tariquidar or siRNA that targets MDR-1 gene) and is used to treat breast cancer.

Note that Dr. Xie was working at the same Stanford lab as the girl. Anyone want to place any bets on which one of them was responsible for this project? Of course, bad reporting isn't surprising; we can't expect a reporter to take the time to google "magnetic nanoparticle cancer treatment imaging stanford" and spend a few minutes looking through the results, or some similar feat of heroic investigative super-journalism. No, the interesting thing to me is how when anyone tries to point out that the story is stupid and inaccurate, people invariably freak out and accuse you of being jealous etc. It seems that a great many people can't distinguish between criticizing the child vs. criticizing the work of the reporter who wrote the story about the child.

Project Summary: This project is based on a novel nanoplatform that is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle core, an amine-rich intermediate layer, and an outside coating layer made of human serum albumin. In this project, the iron oxide nanoplatform is loaded with a cocktail of therapeutic agents (paclitaxel, salinomycin, and tariquidar or siRNA that targets MDR-1 gene) and is used to treat breast cancer.

And then this happens to be a smart student that gets a promising idea to work on which actually works out surprisingly well.

The question is, did that step ever happen? Or was her project based entirely on the ideas of a PhD researcher? It appears that all the ideas described in this article actually came from a Dr. Jin Xie, who was working at the same Stanford lab at the same time as this girl. Check out http://nano.cancer.gov/action/programs/pathway.asp .

Nanoplatform Based, Combinational Therapy against Breast Cancer Stem Cells University of Georgia Principal Investigator: Jin Xie, Ph.D. Project Summary: This project is based on a novel nanoplatform that is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle core, an amine-rich intermediate layer, and an outside coating layer made of human serum albumin. In this project, the iron oxide nanoplatform is loaded with a cocktail of therapeutic agents (paclitaxel, salinomycin, and tariquidar or siRNA that targets MDR-1 gene) and is used to treat breast cancer.

Now check out http://nano.cancer.gov/about/meet/pathway_independence.asp#jxie

Jin Xie, Ph.D., focused his early research on the synthesis and surface modification of magnetic nanoparticles. As a postdoctoral researcher, he joined the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), where he worked with Dr. Xiaoyuan Chen on developing inorganic nanoparticle-based probes for multimodal imaging.

Note that Dr. Chen is the guy whose lab this girl was working in. It appears that Dr. Jin Xie already won an award from the NIH in 2010 for the same idea that this girl won an award for in 2011.

Nanoplatform Based, Combinational Therapy against Breast Cancer Stem Cells University of Georgia Principal Investigator: Jin Xie, Ph.D. Project Summary: This project is based on a novel nanoplatform that is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle core, an amine-rich intermediate layer, and an outside coating layer made of human serum albumin. In this project, the iron oxide nanoplatform is loaded with a cocktail of therapeutic agents (paclitaxel, salinomycin, and tariquidar or siRNA that targets MDR-1 gene) and is used to treat breast cancer.

Now check out http://nano.cancer.gov/about/meet/pathway_independence.asp#jxie

Jin Xie, Ph.D., focused his early research on the synthesis and surface modification of magnetic nanoparticles. As a postdoctoral researcher, he joined the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), where he worked with Dr. Xiaoyuan Chen on developing inorganic nanoparticle-based probes for multimodal imaging.

Note that Dr. Chen is the guy whose lab this girl was working in. It appears that Dr. Jin Xie already won an award from the NIH in 2010 for the same idea that this girl won an award for in 2011.

"There were 61 protocols on www.clinicaltrials.gov, with only 5 publications."

And I have already pointed out why those studies take years to complete, and why some of those were either withdrawn or terminated early for lack of enrollment. You can hardly count those. Seriously. You are blaming him for the circumstances he is working under. I repeat: compare the studies he is involved in with others on the same site. Apparently you didn't bother.

"Incidentally, peer-review does not examine the possibility of fraud, it only examines the quality of the paper and method listed. He could have completely made it up, (people have) and it could still pass peer-review. "

Now you're just being an ass. YOU brought up the subject of no peer-reviewed papers, and now that you have been shown to be wrong, you say it doesn't matter. R-i-g-h-t. Sure.

At least tell me this: did you even notice that your earlier source, and this one, give two completely different reasons for the termination of that trial? I did. Somebody is lying. I followed that up. And as it turns out, the story is pretty interesting. And according to the evidence, the liar isn't Burzynski.

"Further, the writer mentions he has never, in 36 years of clinical science, seen a clinical trial that requires payment."

Really? How surprising. Tell me this as well: in his 36 years, has he also seen many doctors who are supporting their research on their own budget? Rather than grants from government or some Big Pharma company with a billion-dollar budget? Even one? Since when is it a crime to try to pay your bills?

Seriously, you need to look at real evidence. That study you linked to earlier? The one involving NCI, and Mayo, and Sloan-Kettering? I have linked to some actual documentation below. Not just some detractor's blog. I honestly don't know what it costs to synthesize the chemicals that Burzynski uses, but he mentions costs of over 2 million dollars related to that study (they were getting the medicines from him). Where the hell is that money supposed to come from? According to the documents, NCI hadn't paid Burzynski for the supplies, as it had agreed to.

I'm not defending the numbers. I don't know where they come from. But they are in a letter that was evidence in a court case, and openly published. That's more than I can say for the NCI and what it has seen fit to make public.

And just as an aside, HERE is that page I mentioned earlier, that lists the 11 current government-approved Phase II clinical trials that Burzynski has going on. On his own budget, not some big grant.

Anyway, how about some facts about that study you cited earlier, supported by actual documentation? Turns out things aren't exactly as NCI and Mayo or Sloan-Kettering claim. While Burzynski has had to cancel trials for lack of enrollment, their trial sure as hell wasn't terminated for "lack of enrollment", even though that's what they claim. That is a complete fabrication and your own source above verifies that. Didn't that bother you?

Further, when NCI altered the protocol and Burzynski feared for the health of the participants, he volunteered to treat the patients for free until the NCI could get its shit together. NCI refused.

By the way:

That was definitely not my only source, just the summary of it. I'm curious where you found that "the U.S. government itself claimed that those treatments were likely effective against cancer." The patent application (here) for the synthesis of what he calls A-10 only says he claims (or claims to have shown) that it is effective against cancer. And per the National Cancer Institute here:"No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. " and "Nonrandomized clinical trials are ongoing at Dr. Burzynski’s clinic to study the effect of antineoplastons on cancer. (See Question 6.)" Full list of answers to questions here, including a list of the fairly nasty side effects (and, BTW, if you are going to indirectly cite a source you really should have seen these things for yourself.) In other words, no proper studies have ever been performed (there where several, such as at the Mayo Clinic, one of the most respected cancer treatment centers in America: it was canceled due to ethical concerns because the treatment showed poor results after two years. Zero regressions, several deaths, and severe side effects. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has a good summary here).

On the other hand, the only sources I could find praising antineoplastons where sites like this (here specifically). That was the second site for "antineoplastons" on Google too. And in any cases which they say it has been shown to work, no source is referenced. The only outside link on the blurb was to the Burzynski clinic itself. No scientific cancer institute, and especially not the National Cancer Institute, has said antineoplastons work.

"Ongoing studies" is completely meaningless. I could register a "study" on the effects of gasoline on fire. That wouldn't give my work any scientific credibility, except among ignorant hope-seeking patients.

I did my research, TYVM. I'm wondering how well you did yours. This only took me about 5 minutes.

That was definitely not my only source, just the summary of it. I'm curious where you found that "the U.S. government itself claimed that those treatments were likely effective against cancer." The patent application (here) for the synthesis of what he calls A-10 only says he claims (or claims to have shown) that it is effective against cancer. And per the National Cancer Institute here:"No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. " and "Nonrandomized clinical trials are ongoing at Dr. Burzynski’s clinic to study the effect of antineoplastons on cancer. (See Question 6.)" Full list of answers to questions here, including a list of the fairly nasty side effects (and, BTW, if you are going to indirectly cite a source you really should have seen these things for yourself.) In other words, no proper studies have ever been performed (there where several, such as at the Mayo Clinic, one of the most respected cancer treatment centers in America: it was canceled due to ethical concerns because the treatment showed poor results after two years. Zero regressions, several deaths, and severe side effects. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has a good summary here).

On the other hand, the only sources I could find praising antineoplastons where sites like this (here specifically). That was the second site for "antineoplastons" on Google too. And in any cases which they say it has been shown to work, no source is referenced. The only outside link on the blurb was to the Burzynski clinic itself. No scientific cancer institute, and especially not the National Cancer Institute, has said antineoplastons work.

"Ongoing studies" is completely meaningless. I could register a "study" on the effects of gasoline on fire. That wouldn't give my work any scientific credibility, except among ignorant hope-seeking patients.

I did my research, TYVM. I'm wondering how well you did yours. This only took me about 5 minutes.

This is part of the motivation for developing computational models of cancer. Code up the biological assumptions, calibrate to mouse data, validate to the mouse. If it works, then the biology and calibration protocols are probably fine. Re-calibrate to humans (with changes to geometry, tissue properties, cell parameters, etc.), run the models on clinical data (pathology, imaging, proteomics, etc.), and see how it does.

Now, actually doing this is the subject of tricky ongoing work by many many teams of people (see the work in the NCI Physical Sciences Oncology Network), but it's being driven by just the types of problems stated in this thread.

We've been testing various aspects of this on breast cancer and lymphoma, and the results are encouraging, ranging from explaining "tissue artifacts" in pathology (due to fast timescale biophysics) to predicting correlations between mammography and pathology (due in part to necrotic core biomechanics + oxygen diffusion limitations), to predicting DCIS excision volumes. (See stuff here and a few movies.)

It is hardly 4 months since a panel of 31 scientist came to the conclusion that cell phone radiation increases the risk for cancer:
http://www.cbloomnews.com/TopNews.aspx?Article_id=85332&Cat=5
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/229054/cell_phones_may_cause_cancer_says_the_who_what_to_do.html

What news are you reading to say "no one respectable has said that for decades"???

They put RF in the same risk category as coffee. They didn't do any of their own research, just reviewed existing research.
You can review the same existing research here and come to your own conclusions, just like they did:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones

Yes, fiber optics are usually used to deliver the light.

Here's a bit on it from the Cancer Institute:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/photodynamic

"Not true. Most are pathogenic infectious diseases and accidental injuries. Most in the west are chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer. These both have links in genetics, and yes, even diet (in the case of heart disease)."

As Dr. Fuhrman says is the meticulously researched book "Eat to Live", which links to studies to back up what I wrote:
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
everyone has weak links "genetically". But, in most cases, how you eat and live your life determines whether those weak links are ever stressed and become a problem. Heart disease is a direct result of inflammation and fatty build up, which is directly related primarily to what we eat. Cancer is the failure of the body to police itself as the body is continually getting cancerous cells which it destroys if it is healthy, but it won't be able to do that if you eat junk that promotes cancer while crippling your immune system (and also lack vitamin D).

If you study this, you will see I am more or less right, and that 75% or more of things like infections, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are directly linked to poor nutrition. It is similar to organic gardening -- if your plants are stressed out from lack of nutrients (including micronutrients) in the soil, they are going to be more sickly and susceptible to disease.

So, you're just repeating "conventional wisdom" which is, in this case, wrong and deadly, sorry. I provided plenty of links to back up my statements, you are doing not much but repeating old and deadly misinformation. But if you want to see how heart disease is a symptom of vegetable deficiency disease, you could look at this:
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html

Please, for your own sake, try to look into all this and move beyond the knee jerk reaction. People are making trillions of dollars a year off of ignorance and misinformation like you are reiterating. Another video:
"Nutrient Density is the Key to Good health "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGgeGHU1Bs

And:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

Anyway, so my post got modded "Troll". Not suprising as I put my point more strongly than usual. It's still overall right. But it shows a bit of what the real disease is... People do not want to hear the truth, and dismiss it as too outlandish. I used to do the same, and thought it strange to think there was any connection between what I at and how I felt.

Just to show how much you might want to learn on this, from a relatively conservative body (the evidence is stronger than they say, but even they admit to evidence):
"Vitamin D and Cancer Prevention: Strengths and Limits of the Evidence"
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/vitamin-D

See also:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml

But you just dismissed that without looking into it. The fact is, for every melanoma (skin cancer) dermatologists have prevented by telling people to stay out of the sun, they may have caused thirty others from vitamin D deficiency.

On the history of medicine, I cited the Flexner Report which was a big place US medicine took a wrong turn a century ago. Sure, the guy who suggested doctors should wash their hands was essentially beaten to death for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

And the guy who wanted to run anti-smoking ads in 1927 was fired for it, and then per

> First off, in a normal location there isn't any "usual level" of Iodine-131 because it is something that has a short half life.

Actual results were like this. Change dates for others.
http://www.clor.waw.pl/Raporty_ASS500/CLOR_wyniki_24_04_2011(a).pdf

There is the usual level of other radioactive substances that have I-131 in their own fission chain, and particles excited by cosmic radiation. So there's always a minimum amount of it in the air.

The usual meanurements were around 20 microbecquerels per m^3 per day in some areas, below error level in others. That is, with count above error level, it's 1 I-131 particle in 500 000 m^3 undergoing fission in a day; with 8-day halflife, that would be roughly 32 particles per 1 000 000 m^3 of air. THIS is the usual level.

In case of I-131 dose rate is far above dangerous content - direct ingestion has marginal effect. Instead, combination of light rain (to settle the iodine on grass but not flush it down the rivers/sewers) + grazing cows + high milk consumption is the primary cause of thyroid cancer. Air->rain->cows->milk->humans->thyroid absorption, this is the primary route that causes most harm. Other vectors are at least two orders of magnitude less significant. So there is no significant dose-rate due to I-131 present in the environment, there is only direct dose absorbed with milk.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/causes/i131

Now the alarmist message (sorry, won't give you sources) found the CLOR report with counts of above 5000 microbecquerels per m^3 per day at various locations of the country. The levels have soared! To... roughly 8 particles per 1 000 m^3 of air. Dire news indeed!

Yes you can. A quick google pulls up plenty links. Try http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS

You've got a point. On the other hand, I'm constantly shocked at things like how US Cancer Research gets ~$4.81bn yearly , while I.E. the cosmetics industry, just on cosmetic products, just in the US, chew ~$41bn yearly.

Seconded. A quick google search found this page on the National Cancer Institute funding. If I'm reading that right, that's over 4 billion we spent through the NCI in 2008. We are in fact spending a lot of money on cancer to drive the preliminary research that isn't profitable. And why not, the government wastes a lot more money on far less noble goals than "curing cancer."

They actually don't have any idea what causes most brain cancers. "People receiving radiotherapy (high-dose ionizing radiation) to the head during childhood are at increased risk for developing brain tumors, as are people with certain rare genetic disorders such as neurofibromatosis and Li-Fraumeni syndrome." (From the American Cancer Society) So, awareness about head radiation and genetics aren't really going to be huge gotchas that effect brain tumors. The things you mention effect cancer in people, but not brain tumors.

And, to be clear, we are talking about brain tumors that develop in the brain first, not malignant cancers that developed somewhere else and traveled to the brain, which is actually how both my grandmother (kidney, originally) and one of my mentors (lung, originally) both died. It's a horrible way to die. It undoes you.

But there's not only no evidence that cell phones cause cancer, there's no evidence that brain cancer rates are rising. And no one is doing anything to make those rates fall because they don't know what causes it to begin with. It's a totally fictitious concern.

It really seems silly when, in America at least, age-adjusted rates of brain cancer have fallen or held steady since the 1990s. From the National Cancer Institute:

From 1990 to 2002, the overall age-adjusted incidence rates for brain cancer decreased slightly; from 7.0 cases to 6.4 cases for every 100,000 persons in the United States. The mortality rate from 1990 to 2002 also decreased slightly; from 4.9 deaths to 4.4 for every 100,000 persons in the United States. The incidence and mortality rates for cancers that originate in the brain and central nervous system have remained relatively unchanged in the last decade.

It would seem to me that falling cancer rates are no reason for assuming that widespread cellphone use has been a health concern.