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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."

2 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.

  2. Hold your horses... by (trb001) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't a vaccine for cancer, it's a vaccine for the virus that leads to most cases of cervical cancer, HPV. Other cancers, heck even this type of cancer, are not helped by using this vaccine. It's only if you get it before you've contracted the virus, I'm guessing, that it's even effective. This is a long, long way from developing something that can remove/cure cancer 100% effectively.

    --trb