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First Cancer Vaccine Produced

Posted by michael on from the cure-for-what-ails-you dept.

notestein writes "Scientists have produced a vaccine that is 100% effective against the virus that causes practically all forms of cervical cancer. In the US Pap smear tests have reduced the 13,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year to only 4,100 deaths. Still, worldwide, 258,000 women died from cervical cancer last year. The same article also mentions that a vaccine that is 75% effective in protecting women against herpes has been tested."

3 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news by MacAndrew · · Score: 5, Informative

    But few cancers are caused by viruses, and most cancers are invisible to your immune system, assuming it is working properly (e.g., not HIV, which does pave the way for Karposi's sarcoma). If the cancers themeselves were detectable, the immune system would destroy the tumor. The HPV vaccine primes the immune system to attack the traces of the virus (unless I'm mistaken).

    As an aside, one of the big mysteries about HIV has been why the immune system doesn't simple kill it. It can do so to a certain extent, but HIV has the sinister strategy of infecting the immune system iteself, hiding out in T-cell. Interesting and evil.

    1. Re:I don't mean to be sour -- this is great news by MacAndrew · · Score: 4, Informative

      I didn't think they'd conclusively figured out the cause of all cancers

      All cancers? No. You're right that the viral theory for cervical cancer is fairly new, and I think most of the viral research goes back 20 years or so. But so far only a few cancers are known (retro)viral in origin, and it is abundantly clear cancer also results regularly from radiation (from gamma rays to UV), various chemicals (carconigens), smoking, genetic predisposition, and so on. Even the usually benign HPV does not technically cause cervical cancer, it is risk factor for it. The chances that all or most cancers are viral are small; I think the current estimate is something like 1/6, and don't believe the HPV researchers would suggest this is the holy grail -- outside of women concerned about cervical cancer.

      So "cancer vaccine" sounds like more than it is. It is a vaccine aganst one kind of virus that in some women leads to cancer; someday hopefully soon we will have a vaccine against HIV; but these are far from a treatment for cancer or protection against cancer in general. This is a very significant finding if it pans out, but is also easily overstated. Don't stop donating to the Cancer Society it other words...

  2. Story Lead and Slashdot blurb both misleading by MarkedMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you read the story, you will see the following:
    "Although there are more than 30 types of HPV that can infect human beings, one of them -- type 16 -- is responsible for about half of all cervical cancers. The experimental vaccine, made by Merck Research Laboratories, protected only against that one, although future formulations are likely to also protect against the less common HPV types that can cause cervical cancer" So although it is very good news, it does not protect against "the" virus that causes cervical cancer, it protects against the variant of that virus that causes 50% of virus derived cervical cancer. No small feat and better things to come, but not what it says in the Article lead.