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Killing Cancer With a Virus
just___giver writes "The U.S. National Cancer Institute has just decided to fund multiple human clinical studies to test the reovirus. This naturally occuring virus has a remarkable ability to infect and kill cancer cells, without affecting normal, healthy cells. Here is a before and after picture of a terminal patient with an actively growing neck tumour that had failed to respond to conventional treatments. This tumour was eliminated with only a single injection of the Reovirus. Researchers at Oncolytics Biotech have shown that the Reovirus can kill many types of cancer, including breast, prostate, pancreatic and brain tumours. Human clinical trial results indicate that there are no safety concerns and that the reovirus shrinks and even eliminates tumours injected with this virus. Numerous other third party studies show that the reovirus should be an important discovery in the treatment of 2/3 of all human cancers."
If this is a miracle, then why not approve it for people who will die without it. I mean, if I was in severe pain and going to die, I'd try it in a second.
Hope is better than nothing.
How do they know of any long-term effects this virus might have? I imagine it would take at least a few years to observe any feasable side-effects. Am I wrong?
Well, it could have cured cancer for all, but that would threaten the integrity of our "intellectual property" system!
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Damnit, I wanted to cure cancer. Oh, well, I guess I'll just move on to the next thing on my list, stopping aging.
Until it mutates into a deadly pathogen!
Back on-topic (sort of), this reminds me of that William Gibson novel where AIDS was cured when some male hooker had a virus that combatted the HIV virus.
They aren't going to be able to use headlines like this anymore on their stories:
Scientific study concludes that eating a lot of fast food and sitting in front of the TV makes you fat. Still no cure for cancer.
now to just find some standing water.. have a drink and get myself a good dose of..
*thud*
I just finished deleting all those viruses off a client's network, and *now* you tell me they can be used for good? ..oh wait
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
i find these as very very welcome news, especially so that i have personally seen the effects of conventional therapies; if you're lucky you'll have a tumor they can cut out, if not then too many of those chemotherapies are way too toxic, and quite a few radiotherapies too.
golden age for a couple of civilizations ...
I have long suspected that the best cures for the worst diseases would be "surgical strike" techniques instead of the all or nothing approach of radiation and chemotherapy type solutions.
I wouldn't be surprised to see nanotech get involved in the action at some point.
Anyone looking to invest in companies for the long term should pay attention to companies that do this type of work.
Pretty cool stuff I have to admit! Lets only hope software companies with take a page from medicine. nubbie
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
and you'll get burnt...
Your enemys enemy is not always your friend...
These things have been tried before and dont always work, take using the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, it came back to haunt us later...
Hah, here I was thinking I'd have to quit. Now, I'll just get a shot and knock the tumor right out.
This is my sig.
Hopefully this won't create any kind of virus-resistant cancer. As if normal cancer isn't bad enough, we sure as heck don't need a mutant super-cancer running around.
Let Windows run wild for a couple of weeks and the all life on the planet will be virus free.
Trolling is a art,
finally some interesting and exciting news.
Nothing like a warm cup of coffee and some pics of a young blonde with external cancer.
Will code a sig generator for food
Hope this clarifies things.
Some biotech companies have been known to lie about drug pipelines and even to trial patients in order to boost their stock prices.
Does the name Ethyol ring a bell?
This is my sig.
Does entire life have to revolve around linux?
Score: 1, Funny, my ass!
MS holds the patent for creating a system that is very accomodating to viruses. I'm sure after the Eolas suit, MS is looking to prove something in court and this could be it.
Is it just me or does htis sound like the Recolada virus that was created in Xenocide? (Is that a 'layman's' way to explain it?)
what comedian was it that had that in his act? chris rock maybe? he did it funnier than you.
I was reading the FAQ on this virus and it said that 70-100% of any given population has evidence that it has been exposed to this virus before. I may be wrong, but I had always been told that once you have been infected by a virus, you can't be infected again. If that's the case, does this viral "drug" only work on people who have never been exposed to the virus before?
I will say though.... This is truly amazing if it works as well as reported.
Such a lot of cynicism for a teenager.. you should be hanging out at the mall or groping some fugly chick in a dark theatre instead of giving yourself ulcers worrying about stupid shit that only happens in books and movies.
Using cancer-cell-specific viruses isn't too new (although the NCI funding is). My lab has been working with this company for a little over a year on their attenuated adenovirus for cancer-specific targeting.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
This seems to me to BE nanotech. It's just produced by nature instead of someone in a lab coat.
The really cool thing to do with this virus (assuming it really is harmless to normal human cells) would be to create an implant with a hospitible environment that 'feeds' it and keeps a minimum population of viable viruses in your body for an extended period of time to whack cancers as they start.
I have a freind with advanced prostate cancer. It's in his bone marrow. From the link, I doubt he would be a candidate since his prostate is already gone. However, I would like to know if this treatment (once it's approved) would benefit him. Since the cancer has already spread throughout his body, I doubt it.
I have recently had a relative and family friend die from cancer.
In the case of my friend he only found out nine months before his death that he even had cancer. They tried every treatment available, but it had spread too far.
Something like this would have been wonderful. Once they had found out that it was far too wide-spread for normal treatments Ronnie would have jumped at a chance for this.
Some may say that we should try it without knowing the long-term effects, I disagree. With terminally ill patients there is no hope. This provides a double solution -- not only should the virus kill the cancer, it provides the patient with a reason to keep on fighting.
I hope they get this to all the terminally ill patients that they can ASAP.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
After having both parent die slowly of cancer, I can imagine how many people will be beating down the FDA's door to push this treatment into mainstream use?
Even only using it on "terminally ill" patients (maybe there wouldn't be such a thing with this method? At least, not by todays standards), would the FDA still take years, if not a decade, to approve this?
Wait a minute. I got it. You could play with your magic nose goblins.
does Microsoft count as a cancer?
We all know that a patent will follow from this "discovery"... can you patent something that is naturally occurring, and that 70-100% of us have already been exposed to?
Ok, I am not a biologist, and have no scientific basis for this, but...
According to the FAQ:
4. Where does the reovirus come from?
Reovirus is found naturally in shallow pools of water, lakes or streams or in the sewage system.
So assuming that we could naturally ingest these Reoviri, would someone in a cleaner environment be at a higher risk for cancer (or more to the point, a higher risk from dieing before the Reovirus healed them)? It would be really interesting to find out that drinking bottled water and organtic foods is actually increasing the risk of death from cancer.
_______
2B1ASK1
Check out the link with the details on the trails conducted. Study groups of 18.... 24....
This investigational drug/virus has a long way to go before there is acceptance.
Sure, that's what it WANTS us to think. Friendly, helpful virus. Easy to get along with virus. "I'll help save 2/3 of all cancer victims" virus.
Then when we're licking reovirus lollipops and gulping down reovirus power shakes, that's when it reveals it's true agenda: World domination.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our new reovirus overlords. Who's with me?
...and what are their ticker symbols!
If they find a cure for cancer, they lose out on funding. That's the only way these places get paid. They'd no longer need funding for something that has a cure.
Maybe it's a conspiracy theory, but... the closer they come to their goal, the closer they are to being out of jobs.
So now... why would they want to find a cure?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
When you cure cancer you can release the cure under the GPL, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
When I saw the before and after pics and noticed female hair and then realised it was the hair on her head....
"In the family of reoviruses are enteroviruses such as rotavirus, the most common cause of diarrhea in children."
it doesn't run Linux, but it would give Linus the runs.
good idea but i can see this backfiring horribly...
Now we've exhausted the wonders list for our civilization to build! I guess we go conquering enemy cities then?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Anything that shows any improvement in the survival rates for pancreatic cancer would be fantastic. Currently pancreatic cancer is basically a death sentence, with a 5% survival rate at 5 years.
I know it's a cliche, and a total farkism, but every time I read about something like "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans" I can't help but think perhaps some of our scientists could find a little better use for their time.
-dameron
Here is an article concerning the possiblity of using scorpion venom to cure cancer.
Reading the article (which by the way puts one in the top 1% of /. readers), it seems this reovirus is quite common, and that non-cancerous cells kill it off quite readily. I wonder though if this reovirus has ever "wandered in" on cancer cells in a patient and led to remission in that patient.
You always here anecdotal stories about some people recovering in cases where others haven't, and it's usually attributed to God, positive thinking, a close family, and so forth.
Maybe it's been these little buggers all along.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Using viruses to attack diseases is a technique from the early 20th century. It was widely used in Russia, but fell out of favor when anitbiotics were discovered. It appears to be reviving.
If you try to mimic the idea of a computer developing "anti-bodies" to combat computer viruses, would it not then be possible for the computer to inadvertantly develop a defense for legitimate code?
.
. In other words, would your computer become "allergic" to certain programs?
.
.
Not a computer expert...just thinking out loud...
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.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Read carefully ...
"its proprietary formulation of the human reovirus".
Errr... if your insurance company don't pay for it just move to Canada/India/Africa/S. America where you can get the bootleg version at a reasonable price. Yes it is against IP laws and yes it is not an ideologistic position, but I had cancer I wouldn't care about IP or ideologies, just the best possible treatment.
-- Alchohol is a hard drug. Cannabis is a soft drug.
Don't you remember? GPL is the cancer, and Windows is the virus that cures it.
+1 happy citizen in all canadian cities.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Here is a before and after picture of a terminal patient with an actively growing neck tumour that had failed to respond to conventional treatments.
Both pictures look like a little red X on a white background here.
Then when we're licking reovirus lollipops and gulping down reovirus power shakes, that's when it reveals it's true agenda: World domination.
Have you been unfortuneate enough to see "The Stuff"?
Check all the other comments...it's been said.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
From Russia, with gloves:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020422/020422-4.html
Geez, you must be the hit of the coffee house.
There is always a disease that needs a cure and medical researchers have a fairly portable skill set.
Besides, the folks that cure this one won't NEED another job.
Compassionate use protocols for some drugs... for people who are terminally ill and have nothing to lose by trying risky, untested drugs.
They've been using this in HIV patients for years. The only reason I could see them being more hesitant to treat cancer patients in a like manner is this: there ARE treatments for cancer that are curative... most all the treatments for HIV simply buy time... they do not eliminate the disease. Chemo is extraordinarily unpleasant, but it does have a proven track record...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Phase I Clinical Trial Results indicate REOLYSIN(R) has good safety profile
Trial description:
A Phase I clinical trial of 18 terminal cancer patients with progressive (actively growing) cancers that had failed to respond to conventional treatments. The study examined the administration of escalating dosages of REOLYSIN(R) directly into a subcutaneous (underneath the skin) tumour. The primary objective of the study was to determine the safety (dose-limiting toxicity) and maximum tolerated dose of REOLYSIN(R). Oncolytics announced final results of the study March 21, 2002.
Results:
None of the patients receiving REOLYSIN(R) experienced any serious adverse events related to the virus, nor were there any dose-limiting toxicities detected in any patient.
The secondary outcome was tumour response. Eleven of 18 patients (61%) showed evidence of viral activity with tumour regression ranging from 32% to 100%. (Viral activity is defined as a transitory or lasting tumour regression of at least 30% measured in two dimensions against the tumour size prior to injection on the first day of treatment.) Clinically, tumour response is classified in one of four ways:
Progressive disease - tumour growth of greater than 25%
Stable disease - change ranges from growth of less than 25% to a reduction of less than 50%
Partial response - a reduction of greater than 50% but there is still detectable tumour
Complete response - no tumour can be detected
Patients are considered to be evaluable for clinical response only if they return for all follow-ups.
In 11 of 17 evaluable patients, the injected tumours were classified as stable disease on day 28 after the first, and in some cases the only injection of REOLYSIN(R). By day ninety-eight, at the conclusion of the trial, five of 10 evaluable patients still had tumour responses (four stable disease, one partial response). In addition, evidence of remote tumour response was also noted in several patients, suggesting a potential role in the treatment of metastases.
probably, but the "benefit" of filthiness would no doubt be offset by other diseases and parasites, some of which actually promote cancers...
Oncolytics' technologies are based on discoveries arising from research conducted at the University of Calgary. Dr. Matt Coffey, VP, Product Development for Oncolytics, was instrumental in these discoveries and continues to play a pivitol role in the product development process.
REOLYSIN(R), the company's proprietary formulation of the human reovirus, has been demonstrated to replicate specifically in tumour cells bearing an activated Ras pathway. Activating mutations of Ras and upstream elements of Ras may play a role in greater than two thirds of all human cancers. REOLYSIN(R) may represent a novel treatment for Ras activated tumour cells and some cellular proliferative disorders.
Reovirus, named for the Respiratory Enteric Orphan virus, is generally believed to inhabit the respiratory and bowel systems in humans. Reovirus is found naturally in sewage and the water supply. The majority of humans have shown evidence of reovirus exposure, but the disease is non-pathogenic, meaning there are typically no symptoms from infection. The link to its cancer-killing ability was established after it was discovered that the virus grew remarkably well in various cancer cell lines.
Tumours bearing an activated Ras pathway are deficient in their ability to activate the anti-viral response mediated by the host cellular protein, PKR. Since PKR is responsible for preventing reovirus replication, tumour cells lacking the activity of PKR are susceptible to reovirus infections. As normal cells do not possess Ras activations, these cells are able to stop reovirus infection through normal PKR activity. In a tumour cells with an activated Ras pathway, reovirus is able to freely replicate and eventually kill the host tumour cells. As cell death occurs, progeny viruses are then free to infect surrounding cancer cells. This cycle of infection, replication and cell death is believed to be repeated until there are no longer any tumour cells carrying an activated Ras pathway.
The activation of the Ras pathway can be mimicked in non-cancerous cells by treating these cells with the chemical 2-aminopurine (2-AP) which prevents the activation of PKR.
The Potential Cancer Product
Cancer is a group of related diseases characterized by the uncontrolled growth of cells and the spread of these cells to other sites in the body. These cancer cells accumulate and form tumours that can disrupt and harm normal tissue and organ function. In many instances, cells from these tumours can break away from the original tumour and travel through the body to form new tumours through a process referred to as metastasis.
Over 1.3 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2003 (American Cancer Society). In the U.S., cancer accounts for one quarter of all deaths, second only to cardiovascular disease. In the U.S., the relative lifetime risk of a male developing cancer is 1 in 2, while for women, the risk is 1 in 3.
The costs of this disease are staggering. In the U.S., the National Institute of Health estimates that the overall annual costs for cancer are $107 billion. Of this figure, $37 billion can be attributed to direct patient costs.
REOLYSIN(R) for the Treatment of Ras Mediated Tumours
Because the reovirus kills cancer kills with an activated Ras pathway, REOLYSIN(R) is a potential therapeutic for up to two thirds of all human cancers, including, but not limited to, malignant glioma, pancreatic, colon and some lung cancers.
Phase I Results
The Company completed a Phase I human trial in Canada in late 2001 to evaluate the dose limiting toxicity and maximum tolerated dose of REOLYSIN(R). A secondary endpoint was to document tumour regression.
None of the patients receiving REOLYSIN(R) experienced any serious adverse events related to the virus, nor were there any dose limiting toxicities detected in any patient. Tumour responses were measured at both the treated lesion as well as remote tumour sites. Evidence of viral activity was detected in
It will cure prostate, breast, et al, but will it cure the cancer of Government?
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
In case you were unaware, you cannot cure cancer. In fact, most people have cancer at some time in their life. Cancer is abnormal cell division, most often do to genetic mutations in cell cycle regulators. The immune system often recognizes cancererous cells and eliminates them. It is only when normal immune processes fail to stop the abnormal cell growth that a person gets what we call "cancer".
So, even if you can get rid of one population of cancerous cells, it doesn't preclude a person from getting a different cancer somewhere else at a later time. Thus, the treatment is just that, a treatment and not a cure.
Not dying?
My computer has developed an allergy to Windows.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
for terminal patients.... beacuse they *may* become addicted.
*boggles*
now we can get back to making viruses that destroy life.
for Linus Torvald in their local elections? I was so suprised that VA changed the voting rules to allow a write in, so I voted for Linus....
Biological lifeforms, both bacterial and viral are smart enough to eventually overcome most drugs we throw their way. That should keep the drug companies in business for a very long time.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Behaviorially, certainly. Many anti-virus programs, which act like anti-bodies to delete and prevent viruses from spreading, will stop virus-like behavior (like installing software).
It would be interesting to find out what diseases are the most common in what environments, statistically, and see if there's a connection between cancer an "social status" or something. I guess we should know about something like this nowadays.
I don't think so, because they have to inject the tumor directly with the reovirus.
The reovirus probably stays limited to the GI tract, and doesn't make it to the locations where cancer may be. The matter of relative concentrations of the reovirus should be kept in mind as well.
That, and the general health benefits of not driking sewage and river water would probably outweigh the faint chance of consuming enough reovirus to heal your cancer.
Darn, and they need a virus for that?
I can do that with just Adobe Photoshop!
Many places seem to refer to magic healing properties of waters from some springs or rivers. Probably most notably as sites of religious significance. Could it just be that these waters have very high levels of the reovirus? I mean that would explain why some places can 'heal' diseases and lose the relgious aspect which I've always believe has been a psychosymatic healing rather than a real benefit.
So they can find a virus which kills off cancer cells, but we still don't have a cure for cancer.
Oh wait...
Basically, they should be for cloning for stem cell research since this could help create the ability to grow replacement hearts and lungs for people, which would eliminate the need for actual 'cures' for those diseases of the heart and lung.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I read about a similar technique on one of the major news websites about two years ago. It's a molecule called Icon that attaches itself to cells in blood vessels that supply tumors. It basically acts like a virus, and even infects independent tumors through the blood stream.
:D
Apparently, they had done clinical tests in mice, and human toxicology tests were scheduled for spring of this year. I haven't heard any kind of news about it since then, though. Anyone know what happened with it?
On a completely off-topic note, I can't seem to be able to create an account... the "are you a script?" verification image isn't loading. *mutters* Maybe it's something I've screwed up...
Haven't we learned that introducing a foreign species to rid a different species is usually a Bad Idea? I work with fish ecologists, and I have never heard them say, "You know, Bob, that introduction of carp to the lake cleaned out that pesky perch problem. AND, the carp are so clean!"
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
...we also need a virus that only affects Windows...oh uh, forget it.
If it stops the cancer before the cancer kills, that's "cure" enough for me.
"Mother, should I run for President? Mother, should I trust the government?"
No tin hat on my head but did anyone do long-term research before we decided to alter our foods?
Our canadian government response to that question is "No, but we know that multinational companies would never do anything to hurt canadians."
Of course, we also live in a democracy where we know ahead of time who the next prime minister will be next year even BEFORE his party's leadership campaign.
Blatant astroturfing: this article is hyping a completely unproven treatment, and was written by an employee of the company. This is news? Every biotech company has a "promising" anti-cancer treatment in development.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
If I get cancer, I am running down to the local stream in my backyard, taking some samples and injecting it into myself... Ahhhh...
Doctors? who needs doctors! I've got sewage water!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Who would have thought that something whose sole purpose is to infect something, use it to breed copies of itself, and kill the infected host would be used for good?
-Magiluke
Earl Grey, Hot.
While your theory is interesting it would and could only apply to a small area of the body, and drinking untreated water would probably lead to other serious infections and disease.
:)
The reason why is if you read above you would have seen that the virus that can be found in 70%-100% of humans is "confined to the respiratory or gastrointestinal systems in the body" therefore while it may heal your lungs, your heart, or brain would still be at risk.
No, this is
they're seeing it in yOUR eyes frequently now. it makes them even more whoreabully afraud, as is evidenced buy their continued/escalated felonious behaviours/intentions.
the very nature of the universe is self repair/preservation.
how fortunate for us that the creators are not greed/fear/ego based.
Someone correct me if I get the bacteria or the cancer wrong but if I remember right 3rd world countries have a much lower rate of prostate cancer because they have more exposure to E Coli bacteria.
Obvioulsy big bad doses of E Coli in meat kill us so we don't want to run out and do that but you get the point.
Maybe a biologist could explain this better.
As others have pointed out here, the benefits of living in a clean environment most likely outweigh living in filth and contracting a few "beneficial" viruses.
However there is something to be said for not living in a totally pristine environment. If you lived in a bubble and had your environment completely sterilized then you would never get sick (at least not from outside agents). Thus your immune system would never get challenged and the amount and diversity of the various immunological bodies in your system would be reduced. If your bubble got compromised then you would probably get very ill very quickly.
There have been a few science fiction stories which have dealt with this. In one story that I read (I don't recall the author or the story name) there were a group of people who were on a space voyage and the doctor continually released very low-grade illnesses to challenge the crew's immune system. Just stuff like the viruses that cause sniffles or a slight sore throat, nothing that could result in a major illness. This way the crew's immune system would stay "exercised" and ready to deal with any serious illnesses, should they encounter one.
I feel that this is a good explanation for why people who live in pristinely clean environments seem to get some of the worse illnesses. Their immune systems are not challenged constantly by low-grade illnesses and so when one finally comes along it wallops them. Sure people who work closely with large groups of small children tend to get sick more often, but they seem to rarely get serious illnesses. This could be because of the same effect I have been describing.
Sapere aude!
it's not necessarily different by country... it even varies by state. My state, for instance, just passed malpractice caps on noneconomic damages... and even despite that, I'm in the process of losing my malpractice insurance (despite having NO claims against me). They are dropping me like a bad habit, and if I want to stayed insured, it's going to cost me double what it was before (that's if I can even get insured).
Most of these unlabeled uses of drugs/viruses/devices are done under compassionate use protocols of one type or another. There is also "emergency use," which can even be done before clinical trials... try this link for some more info.
Even so, you should read the fine print. Even for emergency use, you still have to consult your IRB (that's "institutional review board" for you non-medical folks... they can veto what you want to do), and at least one other physician before submitting the paperwork... and who knows how long before your approval comes back? I've not personally submitted one of these (I am not an oncologist), so I won't speculate on the time frame, though I'd hope they would bypass the usual beauracratic delays.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Movies become reality!
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
One of the major troubles with removing a tumour is that a small amount will remain, and the cancer will regrow. Early surgery had less of this trouble, because their hygiene wasn't so great, so during the surgery the patient was basically guaranteed to get an infection, and this would lead to fever. Since cancer cells are more sensitive to higher temperatures, the remaining few cancer cells would die of the fever, leaving the patient healthy.
So your comment is somewhat true, but not for the reason you thought.
Incidentally, I don't recommend getting a fever if you just had surgery for cancer.
Yay!! That means we can rid society of the cancer that is capitalism when this virus is ready!
said we would have flying cars and a cure for cancer this millenia. All told, I'll take this one over flying cars.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
now all we need is a little reverse engineering, and some start-up capital and we can sell our new cancer pill that kill viruses... try new aids begone, its tumorific
to other common ailments also? I wonder if AIDS, Crohn's and other diseases will react to a virus like this...?
This has me excited for future possiblities. These researchers are definitely going in the right direction here. I mean, Mother Nature is a very powerful and resourceful system, she's likely got the cure for a great many other ailments that are affecting society today.
Man, this is absolutely amazing! Who would have thought that a virus as common as the reovirus would be the cure for most cancers that exist?!
Kudos to the chaps over at Oncolytics Biotech! Great work!
How can you exactly copyright this virus if it occurs in nature ?
Lead Product REOLYSIN - A potential cancer therapeutic based on the naturally occurring reovirus. REO is an acronym for respiratory enteric orphan. Orphan due to the fact that there is no known disease caused by the reovirus. 70-100% of all adult populations have been infected with the reovirus without knowing it. The oncolytic properties of the reovirus were discovered in 1998 by Dr. Patrick Lee at the University of Calgary. Preclinical Glioblastoma: - glioma tumours U251N and U87lacZ implanted intracerebrally in mice - median survival of untreated mice, 42 and 48 days - 67% and 82% of treated animals still alive at conclusion of experiment at day 90 - complete tumour regression found in 20 of 23 of animals treated with live virus - also tested on established glioma cell lines and surgical specimens - widespread cell killing seen in 19 of 24 cell lines - all primary surgical glioma specimens (9 of 9) were infected and killed - human glioma tumour cells killed within 48 hour period (both cell lines and ex vivo glioma specimens) - dramatic survival benefits for nude mice following intracerebral inoculation - caused tumour regression in the presence of pre-existing anti-reovirus antibodies in immunocompetent Fischer rats - killed tumour remote from the site of administration in immunocompetent host - proceeding to clinical trial in patients with malignant gliomas Medulloblastoma: - majority of cell lines (7 of 11) were susceptible to reovirus oncolysis - in all MB cell lines tested, Ras activity was shown to correlate with susceptibility to reovirus infection - median survival of live virus-treated mice was 160 days, compared to 70 days control - these data suggest that reovirus may be a novel and potentially effective therapeutic against human medulloblastoma Breast: - widespread cell killing was seen in all five established breast cancer cell lines and in one surgical specimen - no cell killing observed in two cell lines established from normal breast tissue - in mammary fat pad of SCID/NOD mice, a single injection of reovirus caused a continuous regression of the tumour during a thirty-day observation period - independent tumours established in both flanks of the mice, a single injection of the reovirus into only one tumour resulted in complete regression of both the injected and non-injected tumours over thirty-two days Colon: - efficiently infected 5/5 human colon cancer cell lines (Caco-2, DLD-1, HCT-116, HT-29, and SW48) - did not infect normal colon cell line (CCD-18Co) - in mice model with tumour implanted in hind flank, both intratumoural and i.v. administration of reovirus resulted in significant regression Ovarian: - efficiently infected 4/4 human ovarian cancer cell lines (MDAH2774, PA-1, SKOV3, and SW626) - did not infect normal ovarian cell line (NOV-31) - in mice model with tumour implanted in hind flank, both intratumoural and i.v. administration of reovirus resulted in significant regression - significantly greater survival benefits for reovirus treated mice - reovirus infected ex vivo primary human ovarian surgical samples Non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas: - cell lines sensitive to reovirus: Raji, NC-37, UJ937 and CA46 - cell lines unaffected by reovirus: Daudi, ST486, Ramos, and A20 - ex vivo samples responded in similar ratio - reovirus caused significant regression of in vivo Raji tumour - reovirus may be effectivce against some types of human NHL Prostate: - prostate cell lines (PC-3, Ln-CaP, DU-145) were infected with reovirus - cells were harvested at 0, 24, 48, 72, 96 and 168h post infection - virus treatment caused significant disruption of cells as early as 24h - the observed cytopathic/apoptotic effects of reovirus were not evident in controls Pancreatic: - from Matt Coffey's thesis, pancreatic cell lines Capan-1, MIAPaCa-2, PANC-1, AsPC-1, and Hs766T were infectible while BxPC-3 was not (it is known to have wild type Ras) the others have mutations in codon 12 so are expected to be infectible Lewis lung: - in a Lewis lung carcinoma mouse model, they [Dr. Lee, et al] demonstrated that IV treatm
We made a video a few years back on how the reovirus accomplishes this feat, in connection with Dr. Patrick Lee, at the University of Calgary, where the work first started.
How Reovirus Kills Cancer Cells
Quicktime required.
J
Patents are unnatural and evil.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Wait a sec... If you could create virii to kill off cancer cells, couldn't you also breed them to kill off HIV infected cells?
offset by other diseases and parasites, some of which actually promote cancers
I don't recall anything in the cancer literature to suggest that. If we knew of any diseases or parasites that promote cancer, you can bet your life we'd be taking direct action against them.
Third world countries have a lower incidence of prostate cancer because they get killed by other stuff, like bullets and starvation... and they have insufficient medical infrastructure to diagnose cancers properly.
So assuming that we could naturally ingest these Reoviri, would someone in a cleaner environment be at a higher risk for cancer (or more to the point, a higher risk from dieing before the Reovirus healed them)? It would be really interesting to find out that drinking bottled water and organtic foods is actually increasing the risk of death from cancer.
That line of reasoning would certainly support George Carlin's assertion that he is healthy as an adult because as a child he "swam in raw sewage!!!"
This article was on CNN health describing a different way of treating cancer...by using conventional radiation therapy, but with cancer absorbing shells.... CNN Article
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
"I never get colds, I never get infections, I don't gett'em! You know why? Cause I got a good strong immune system!.... When I was young, we swam in the Hudson River, and at the time, it was filled with raw sewage. We swam in raw sewage.. you know, to COOL OFF!
:)
And at that time, the big fear was polio.. No one in my neighborhood ever got polio.. EVER! You know why?! BECAUSE WE SWAM IN RAW SEWAGE! The polio never had a prayer, we we're tempered in liquid shit!"
- George Carlin
Ahh yes.. once again science proves truth in comedy.
Seeing as how both my parents died of cancer, this is unbelievibly cool if it works out in the clinical trials.
Wow. Way to go guy!
THC (the active chemical in marijuana) was found to cure cancer (brain tumors, leukemia, lung and breast cancer) in 1974. Unfortunately the DEA shut down the research.
s .h tml)
(http://americanmarijuana.org/pot.shrinks.tumor
Not only can THC cure cancer, it is unbelievably non-toxic. There's no risk of causing more harm. Chemotherapy on the other hand, is extremely hard on the body.
This helps back my (otherwise unfounded) theory that too many of these anti-bacterial cleaning supplies will doom the human race. Of course, I was looking at it from the point of view that if we raise children unexposed to filth they'll be far more susceptible once they are exposed. This study gives the possibility that there may be more naturally occuring aids that we are destroying through our ignorance.
Consider: if Alexander Fleming had been more conscientious about cleaning his petri dishes, he may never have found penicillin. (Reference - I'd heard it was an accident, but never knew it was on a dish in a sink waiting to be cleaned.) Reading this article, it also occurs to me that while no one can (probably) patent a naturally occuring virus, they probably can patent an effective growing/harvesting process.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
One of the best investor message boards for Oncolytics Biotech (ONC on the TSX, ONCY on Nasdaq) is located at: http://www.stockhouse.com Very high signal to noise ratio, excellent and knowledgeable posters - most of whom are invested.
I was just speaking to a Dr. friend to mention this treatment for his father, he was already on top of researching this.
Apparently there is a catch. It doesn't necessarily work on all cancer due to location. It has to be some where where Reovirus can be injected directly to it, such as the photos of the neck tumor. Another good potential candidate for treatment is for patients with Ovarian Cancer or even Prostate cancer.
Alternatively this may not work as well for cancer of the liver or other such internal organs.
Not from personal knowledge, but from a reliable source nonetheless. Anyway you look at it though, this is a definate step in the right direction. With the proper delivery method it could indeed assist with the internal organs as well. Way to go guys!
harryk
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
Thus the attraction of Christianity
IAACMB
Cancer is a growth industry - no need for conspiracy theories etc.
Everyone dies of something eventually (although sometimes you can put it off) - as medical research knocks off disease after disease, stem cells to strengthen the heart and prevent heart attacks, rejuvenated immune systems, etc, eventually everyone will get cancer just from not having died of something else first, it's just a question of time (in an ideal world, a very LONG time, but still). So bring on the cures, the more the better, we're gonna need 'em.
Only on Slashdot... you have to apologize for having good spelling. :(
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Last one in the raw sewage is a rotten egg! I love it!
That is an excellent point. They'd probably love having a quality of life such that something like prostate cancer was even a concern at all.
Just thought I'd add that the method by which it was created ALSO had the teensy little benefit of allowing them FTL travel, with no ship even! ;-) Oh and creating another Peter and Valentine.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Foreign cities now working on obsolete wonders.
The Umbrella Corporation.
1.You develop an immunity versus the virus?
2.The virus evolves and start eating healthy cells instead?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Moving to another country won't help.
Too bad we can't convince the mosquitoes to carry reovirus and spread that around rather than West Nile. Or maybe they do. That would suck if you had cancer, a mosquito got you that carried the reovirus, and you were miraculously cured, only to find out later you have West Nile.
Of course, I would much rather take my chances with the relatively tame West Nile than any form of cancer.
If a company or person invested billions of dollars of research developing or discovering this virus(Didn't happen in this case), why shouldn't these people deserve a patent?
The purpose of a patent is so these people can get their R&D money back exclusivly for a period of time. Most people who get patents don't sit on them, they sell them. I can assure you there would be no problem getting a hold of the cure.
I don't see any problem with people having to shell out 1,000 or 10,000 for a cure for cancer for a while until these people who developed it get their invested money back. There are real people behind the development of these things, they have families and mouths to feed too.
you want to stop aging? you want to live forever?
i guess you never saw zardoz
those people would be very happy to die but the artificial intelligence regenerates them if they kill themselves but ages them few years for 'misbehaving'.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Nature always has a way of dealing with things. I am amazed every day.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
This helps back my (otherwise unfounded) theory that too many of these anti-bacterial cleaning supplies will doom the human race. Of course, I was looking at it from the point of view that if we raise children unexposed to filth they'll be far more susceptible once they are exposed. This study gives the possibility that there may be more naturally occuring aids that we are destroying through our ignorance.
It's not entirely unfounded. Polio was called 'the middle-class disease' because it mostly hit middle-class children. Why? Because their environment was very clean compared to that of lower-income children. Those lower-income children had developed normal immune systems and resistance to viri right from the start, while moddle-class kids never had a chance.
(BTW, My mom contracted Polio when she was about 2 years old. Our family is pretty familiar with the subject.)
_______
2B1ASK1
I'm going to act all paranoid and spout off that the cancer industry will make sure that this revolutionary treatment never, ever gets to market. This is going to be the only time that we ever hear about it. Ten years from now we'll be seeing headlines "Still no cure for cancer" while scratching our heads saying, "Wasn't there some virus thing ten years ago? What happened with that?" And the industry will respond, as usual, with a curt "There was no virus thing. You are in error. Cancer is incurable. Keep the money coming. Thank you for your cooperation."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
...it's time to thaw out John Wayne?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
"So the big bad nuclear power plants so reviled by hippies may cure AIDS. Oh the irony."
because... um... all the hippies have aids?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
By 2010 all functions of human DNA in a cell are known. Simultaneously people are able to modify existing DNA according to strict plans.
By 2015 people are able to compile arbitrary DNA strings and inject them into viruses to spread them. An assembler-like language is designed to help creating DNA strings.
By 2020 first DNA-based high level language is created. Still only highly trained crew is allowed to use DNA assembly devices.
By 2030 DNA building high level languages are widely known. Remedies for most problems are found. First commercial applications for modified DNA virus carriers appear (cosmetics, "organism boosters", plastic "surgery").
Sometime around this period a serious accident happens. Either terrorists, a mad scientist or some other reason causes some bad epidemy. The threat is reverse-engineered and defeated by the same weapon: a counter-virus that works like a vaccine. It results in special law limitations on using viruses for "mundane purposes", ending the "DNA Craze"
By 2060 the fear fades, DNA engineering takes up again. Special police forces are created to fight and prevent possible violations, but engineered DNA returns to "mundane world". Illegal drugs based on it are created and fought.
By 2090 special "civillian grade" DNA assembly units are released, with special limitations on what can be created. Housewifes can design their own flawours of meat, gardeners design new amazing flowers, construction companies "grow" houses like trees, hackers obviously try to circumvent the limitations and the police tries to trace down all such attempts.
By 2100 first children set "Design your pet" is released. Pokemons walk the streets.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Mother diagonsed with a rare form of Breast Cancer, and caught in stage 4 despite regular check ups and mamagrams.
Very ill due to chemo treatments. Made an effort to see my marching competitions, but couldn't be around large crowds.
Had to drop out of several activities because she was in and out of the hospital including an audition for a music scholarship to college.
Day of prom, rushed to the hospital, discovered the tumor has spread to her brain. Spent my senior prom in an emergancy waiting room.
Made it through graduation, but couldn't walk without a walker and after my graduation party went into the hospital that night. Found the cancer in her spine, didn't respond to any more treatments and watched my mother waste away for the next month at home until she died exactly 1 month after my high school graduation.
Some how I managed to regain enough will to enter college just over six weeks later.
I hope this isn't some marketing/investment blitz and that this might be a giant leap forward in cancer treatment. Sometimes I wonder if these companies want to find a cure. I mean, research is profitable business. Just look at the March of Dimes. Their orginial goal was to help find a cure for Polio and after one was discovered, they had to find a new mission.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Ah yes,socialized medicine is great, as long as you do not have to pay the price of research.
That's the kind of misinformation we often hear from the IP/investment-led corporate bullshit classes, but hopefully most technical people can see through it.
As an ex-researcher, let me tell you about research. Researchers do not develop ideas in a vacuum, and their pay packets do not magically transform into inventions. And the stuff from which ideas are made is not created by dumping invester's money into labs.
Ideas come when good researchers interact with other clever people working in that area across the world. In part it's interactive, but of vastly more significance is the continuous process of staying on top of the massive torrent of world literature, which is a treasure chest of untapped riches. It's a sea of ideas out there, with everyone's contributions pushing the wavefront of knowledge along just a little bit further. Sometimes just a quaint turn of phrase or even a linguistic mistake spurs a line of thought. How many dollars have been invested in one's lab figures far far down the lists of important contributions.
It's typical company bullshit to try to take all the credit for research done in a company's labs by one's paid employees. It just shows how most company people are totally clueless on how the scientific creative process works.
No matter how brilliant the person that records a new scientific discovery is, and no matter how much his company is paying him nor how many trillions they have spent on his lab, that idea arose only in very small part from his own work. 99% or more is a direct result of his standing on the shoulders of a world full of very bright people, and it's largely immaterial who delivers the final brushstroke.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Special Report Last Updated on 04/29/2003 Finally -- The Cancer Drug to Get Extremely Excited About By James M. DiGeorgia, Publisher 21st Century Alert 21st Century Investor Publishing, Inc. 1900 Glades Rd, Suite 441 Boca Raton, Florida 33431 Four months ago we first featured a special report on Oncolytics Biotech, Inc., the unknown Canadian company with the literally incredible cure for cancer. That`s right, we said cure for cancer. As you discovered in the report, Oncolytics`s reovirus compound, called Reolysin, invades and destroys cancer cells rapidly, in astonishingly large numbers, and without side effects. Many of the tumors treated with Reolysin simply disappear. The more deadly the cancer, the more Reolysin likes it. It`s simple and cheap to produce, too. Now the company is finding additional applications for Reolysin, like decontaminating the stem-cell preparations which are commonly used after chemotherapy. Oncolytics is looking at a $30 billion dollar market. It sounds like a pipe dream, but it isn`t. So far, all the animal and human clinical results from this unbelievable drug have far exceeded expectations. There`s only one problem: The stock market doesn`t seem to know Oncolytics exists. The stock was trading at $1.23 in December when we sent you the Special Report. It was trading this morning at $1.08. Considering the stock market of the last few years, and the attendant low volumes, and the fact that biotech isn`t back in favor yet, Oncolytics`s stock chart looks pretty much like that of other similar biotechs. Still, we called the company to see whether there was something we should know. We came away with no doubts: When the market wakes up to this stock, look out. The company has made several interesting announcements since then; we`re enclosing an updated copy of the report for you. The bottom line: Oncolytics was a buy in December at $1.23, and it`s a buy now. Get Very Excited About This Cancer Drug! It`s incredibly effective. It`s safe at the highest doses. It kills the deadliest cancers known. It even destroys remote tumors far from the original cancer site. And it`s inexpensive to make. This drug is going to make billions of dollars when it hits the market. It`s trading under $1.10 a share. These days we`re thunderously skeptical whenever we see the words " cure" and " cancer" in the same sentence. After two generations of research and dozens -- if not hundreds -- of different approaches to knocking out this scourge, the mortality rates from cancer are pretty much what they were in 1970. It`s always the same story with a " breakthrough" cancer drug. First everybody runs around screaming with delight and the stock skyrockets. Then without exception, the " cures" all seem to mysteriously fizzle out. Either they turn out to have vicious side effects, or they work on only one type of tumor, or they work perfectly on mice but not on humans, or most often, they work for a while . . . but the patient dies anyway. And the stock tanks. Now, thanks to a Canadian biotech company you`ve never heard of, we may get the magic bullet we`ve been promised for decades: a cancer drug that reduces the majority of cancer tumors quickly, completely, and without side effects! It`s almost ridiculously simple, too: This treatment is based on a harmless, common human virus. It kills cancer cells quickly, with incredible accuracy and in staggering numbers. It works on the most resistant and deadly cancers, it shrinks remote tumors far from the original site, it has no serious side effects at even the highest dosages, it`s inexpensive to produce -- and it`s in successful clinical testing on humans right now. To the best of our knowledge of cancer treatments -- and we`ve researched quite a few -- no other compound we`ve heard of has this combination of effectiveness, thoroughness, rapidity and safety. It`s trading at $1.03 a share. Easily a billion-dollar drug Welcome to a practically unknown little company with a laughably low stock price and bargain-basement market capitalization: Oncolytics Biotech, Inc. (Nasdaq: ONCY). I
This article, the summary, and I don't think anyone who has posted a comment has seemed to realize that this is an engineered virus. Oncolytics Biotech has been making these alongside several other companies. Adenovirus is also used.
By changing either surrounding the virus in carefully chosen antibodies or, by changing it's genetic structure accordingly, they are able to make it only infect cancerous cells.
You can't just stick someone full of reovirus or adenovirus. They will die with the amounts given.
This is not natural, the article has mislead you.
There is a write up in the October 2003 issue of SciAm, here is the online version.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
And this is why I'll never stop using this keyboard...
Additionally, I remember reading that they thought that lack of exposure to pathogens actually increases your chances of being highly allergic to things as well. Allergies are basically when your immune system falsely identifies some harmless substance as a pathogen and attacks it; the collateral damage done in fighting the "pathogen" then reinforces the classification of that substance as a "pathogen" (because, hey, there was a strong correlation between the "pathogen" and the damage done).
The thought is that your immune system "knows" that it's supposed to be attacking something; if it doesn't get anything in the first couple of years, it turns up its sensitivity until it finds something to attack.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
I cant believe how craptastic my schools servers performed
DISCOVERY LINK
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
To: Humans
From: Firm of God & Associates
Date: 11/04/2003
Re: Notice of DMCA Claim of Infringement
Dear Mankind:
God is the owner of copyrights of DNA and other materials relating to DNA for all organisms on the planet.
It has recently come to our attention that you appear to be reproducing and placing on public display property copyrighted by God without God's consent.
The purpose of this letter is to advise you of our right to seek your agreement to the following: (1) to remove and destroy any property relating to science (2) immediately cease further research in the area of biology.
Please confirm, in writing, that you have complied with the above requests.
So, this is all a stock scam from spammerville?
Not just answers, the correct questions.
2 thinks to consider:
- Your degestive track is quite a hostile environment, it is supposed to be diffcult for things to survive there... so it's possible that eating or drinking it might never be absorbed into the blood.
- Your immune system attacks things it recognizes as foriegn to the body, so even if it did make it into the blood your whiteblood cells would proably eat it before it could find a cancerous cell to attack.
The reason this therapy might work is because they inject the virus into a tumour (which is a clustered bunch of cancerous cells), so it has the oppertunity to attack the cancerous cells before the immune system wipes it out.
[lights up a cigarette]
It's about time!
I can hear Phillip Morris (Or whatever their name is now) cheering.
A little anger is needed sometimes.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
For statistical purposes, most medical studies are done in groups of about 20 or so- and there can be any number of these groups. The total might not be over 100, but if they don't say how many groups we are left in the dark on that....
"It'll be like stealing candy from a baby... why, that look like a lark!" - Mr. Burns.
Someone really had to say it.
Right? I mean really.... right?
Note: MUCH MUCH easier to read by going to http://www.stockhouse.ca/bullboards/viewmessage.as p?no=6332822&tableid=1
Special Report Last Updated on 04/29/2003 Finally -- The Cancer Drug to Get Extremely Excited About By James M. DiGeorgia, Publisher 21st Century Alert 21st Century Investor Publishing, Inc. 1900 Glades Rd, Suite 441 Boca Raton, Florida 33431 Four months ago we first featured a special report on Oncolytics Biotech, Inc., the unknown Canadian company with the literally incredible cure for cancer. That's right, we said cure for cancer. As you discovered in the report, Oncolytics's reovirus compound, called Reolysin, invades and destroys cancer cells rapidly, in astonishingly large numbers, and without side effects. Many of the tumors treated with Reolysin simply disappear. The more deadly the cancer, the more Reolysin likes it. It's simple and cheap to produce, too. Now the company is finding additional applications for Reolysin, like decontaminating the stem-cell preparations which are commonly used after chemotherapy. Oncolytics is looking at a $30 billion dollar market. It sounds like a pipe dream, but it isn't. So far, all the animal and human clinical results from this unbelievable drug have far exceeded expectations. There's only one problem: The stock market doesn't seem to know Oncolytics exists. The stock was trading at $1.23 in December when we sent you the Special Report. It was trading this morning at $1.08. Considering the stock market of the last few years, and the attendant low volumes, and the fact that biotech isn't back in favor yet, Oncolytics's stock chart looks pretty much like that of other similar biotechs. Still, we called the company to see whether there was something we should know. We came away with no doubts: When the market wakes up to this stock, look out. The company has made several interesting announcements since then; we're enclosing an updated copy of the report for you. The bottom line: Oncolytics was a buy in December at $1.23, and it's a buy now. Get Very Excited About This Cancer Drug! It's incredibly effective. It's safe at the highest doses. It kills the deadliest cancers known. It even destroys remote tumors far from the original cancer site. And it's inexpensive to make. This drug is going to make billions of dollars when it hits the market. It's trading under $1.10 a share. These days we're thunderously skeptical whenever we see the words "cure" and "cancer" in the same sentence. After two generations of research and dozens -- if not hundreds -- of different approaches to knocking out this scourge, the mortality rates from cancer are pretty much what they were in 1970. It's always the same story with a "breakthrough" cancer drug. First everybody runs around screaming with delight and the stock skyrockets. Then without exception, the "cures" all seem to mysteriously fizzle out. Either they turn out to have vicious side effects, or they work on only one type of tumor, or they work perfectly on mice but not on humans, or most often, they work for a while . . . but the patient dies anyway. And the stock tanks. Now, thanks to a Canadian biotech company you've never heard of, we may get the magic bullet we've been promised for decades: a cancer drug that reduces the majority of cancer tumors quickly, completely, and without side effects! It's almost ridiculously simple, too: This treatment is based on a harmless, common human virus. It kills cancer cells quickly, with incredible accuracy and in staggering numbers. It works on the most resistant and deadly cancers, it shrinks remote tumors far from the original site, it has no serious side effects at even the highest dosages, it's inexpensive to produce -- and it's in successful clinical testing on humans right now. To the best of our knowledge of cancer treatments -- and we've researched quite a few -- no other compound we've heard of has this combination of effectiveness, thoroughness, rapidity and safety. It's trading at $1.03 a share. Easily a billion-dollar drug Welcome
I dunno... maybe for statistical purposes small groups are necessary, but I worked with an Investigational Drug team at a major university and they very often used study size greater than 40 and they were one of *many* studies being funded simultaneously.
It has trials currently underway that have showed positive results.
99% or more is a direct result of his standing on the shoulders of a world full of very bright people...
All of whom would be flipping burgers if people weren't paid to do research.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Of course, there is also the litigation side of things. People will sue for anything and usually win huge settlements for trivial things. In general, people are assholes. I used to work at a major (largest?) nationwide pizza chain. We had a lunch buffet and perfectly good food would be pulled off the buffet to be replaced with fresh food. This pulled food was placed into plastic bins in the cooler and a local charity organization would pick up all of these left over pizzas for homeless shelters, etc. One day, we stopped doing it; the manager explained to me that a bum got sick in some other state and is suing....guess what...company policy changed and all that buffet food is in the dumpster now and is no longer feeding the homeless. This is why malpractice insurance is so high. It's the one asshole that gets an award from a jury of idiots comprised of the lower 1% of the population (i.e. people that had nothing better to do at their trailer park that day) because everyone that does have important things to do gets out of jury duty. So, to make some sense of my ramblings above, some terminally ill person will die in spite of receiving the new treatment on a clinical study and the remaining family members will sue....and WIN a huge fat ass settlement. Then the price of the drug will shoot through the roof (as ALL costs such as these are passed along to the consumer) provided it even gets FDA approval and isn't lobbied out of existence in the first place.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
is that my dad died 3 years ago from terminal cancer.. it was in his lungs and kidney..
he developed all sorta of crap and ultimately died of complications..
well, at least there will be more people who wont have to deal with what I've had to go through.
and maybe my mom wouldnt have had to have that surgery either, but of course, she wouldnt have stopped smoking if she hadnt... and if my dad hadnt died, I wouldnt be using a computer right now (he was afraid of them) so things happen for a reason I guess.
It's amazing that a virus, something that often plagues us, kills off another problem that plagues us.
another classic case of fighting fire with fire.
The lab at which I'm doing my Honours research project just made the front page on October's issue of Cancer Cell for doing work similar to this, only using vesicular stomatitis virus. The group on the lab bench across from me is working on oncolytic adenovirus.
It's shameful that the companies who make the most press releases get the most attention.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
George Carlin, the socrates of our time.
Patrick Lee, the scientist behind all of this, has been researching the reovirus for over twenty years. We (that's the University of Calgary, my alma mater) just lost him to Dalhousie University, and they haven't stopped bragging since.
When the first word of this treatment hit the papers five years ago in 1998, his colleagues at other universities (read: his competitors) were quoted saying (I'm paraphrasing) that if Patrick Lee has published, you know the science has to be solid. The peer-reviewed journals agree: he's been published in Cell, Nature, Science and Nature Cell Biology, among others.
This is the real deal. I've put my money where my mouth is, too: several thousand dollars of my own money is banking on this.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em
cause now there's a cure
This is a sig, there are many like it, but this is mine.
I had cancer 24 years ago. The treatment of cancer was still farely young back then. When I was 2 years of age with cancer and because I had a very low chance of surviving, I underwent several test drugs from the University of Washington. I underwent both kemo and radiation along with these drugs and I am quite happy they did this. I am stunted 5'6" as a result of the treatments where as my brothers and sisters are all 6' but quite frankly I don't mind because I am alive. This news of the Reovirus is quite amazing to me.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
... but.. but.. without the profit motive and advertising dollars, how could they possibly innovate?
It's stuff like this that makes me want to see legislation that forces US drug companies to cap their prices at the average of X industrialized countries (say canada + EU + scandinavia).
Agreed that the report sounds kinda like hype, but the stated facts are correct (meanwhile the company has been granted some more patents, has more cash, about $20 million and the NCI collaboration). But... The posted report cost $295(!) at the time. That's how 21st Century makes money in the first place. These guys are definately no spammers - you only get what you pay for! And a lot of people made/will make a LOT of money by reacting on that report! Regards, KingKikapu
Don't post pictures like that at lunchtime. We see NSFW warnings how about NSFL?
but nice try at turning a complicated issue into a cheap political shot at the intelligence of "US citizens (and Republicans)."
Malpractice lawsuits have nothing to do with the increase in premiums? Please... losses directly affect premiums in virtually any insurance arena, though not always in the short term. Notably, my state has seen its total number of malpractice insurers drop from 15-20 to only 3 in the last ten years.
Also, state law where I practice limits the amount of assets an insurance company can place in the stock market. They are required by law to keep certain amounts liquid and available to settle claims, while much of the remainder of their assets goes into the much-less-volatile bond market. This state also prevents insurers from recouping investment losses via premium hikes, thus discouraging any sort of wild futures trading, or risky investment nonsense. Many insurers used to resell policies, much like banks resell loans... but the worldwide reinsurance market has also taken a beating in the last five years, preventing insurers from reshuffling some of their exposure.
It's a complicated problem... but that doesn't mean malpractice caps are not useful. Unless, of course, you are a med-mal attorney, in which case your self-interest is obvious. My personal preference would have been to institute some form of loser-pays, or a malpractice review board made up of laymen, attorneys, and physicians of various specialties to vet lawsuits for merit BEFORE they go to trial.
Blaming it soley on evil corporations losing money in the stock market makes you sound like a ABA lobbiest.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Since it's a naturally occuring virus and was not created, they can't patent the virus itself, I assume. They can patent the method of using the virus for treatment of cancer which is understandable. I, however, would like to patent this virus for "flavor enhancement." If you injest my new flavor ingredients made up of this virus and just happen to have cancer and it cures you, I'm not really violating the patent. Am I?
You said "copied your idea", not "stole your idea". Well done!
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
This reminds me of Welchia...
Well, I guess this means I'll get 2 more happy people in my cities now...
Gee, reovirus will CURE CANCER! And Longhorn will CHANGE YOUR EXPERIENCE on the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!!!
As Doktor Memory said, the post contains no links to substantive biology articles, no discussion of the long and checkered history of attacks on the Ras pathway, and little information about what is actually going on. If you want real information go look at the PubMed on 'reovirus ras'.
It'll be great if reovirus increases survival rates in Ras cancers, but it will not be a magic bullet and it could easily fail final clinical trials for one reason or another. It just ain't over 'til it's over in the pharmaceutical industry.
The only thing the reovirus provides is a vector -- a way to deliver genetic information to the relevent cells. While I haven't looked too deep into the linked articles, I am pretty sure that the actual anti-cancer properties are coded for in a gene that has been spliced into the reovirus.
They are using reovirus because getting infected with it doesn't cause symptoms, and it's probably easy to genetically modify to deliver the engineered gene. Similar techniques have been used with gene therapy for cystic fibrosis by delivering the CFTR gene (missing in CF patients) with respiratory syncitial virus, which does cause symptoms (Hmm, maybe we ought to be using reovirus instead...).
The naturally occurring reovirus, while it doesn't produce symptoms, certainly won't do anything for cancer, since it doesn't contain the anti-cancer gene that the Oncolytics people have grafted in. According to the FAQ, >70% of people have been infected with reovirus before, so following this line of logic why does anyone get cancer?
bottled water, tap water, it's all filtered and sterilized (supposed to be anyway).
You'd have to find a lake or stream that is definitely infected, then drink the water untreated. Even then, you might not get the infection as your stomach acid might kill the virii.
If you had cured cancer, wouldn't you feel inclined to hype it?
Nice catch!
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I read last week in printed edition an article exactly about this subject, there are an on-line version too:
I D=1&articleID=00023290-03BC-1F5D-905980A84189E EDF
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&col
We'll have a practical cure for cancer.
With cancer being the #2 leading cause of death, legions of researchers and doctors will be unemployed. Hords of corporate cancer drug producers will be out of business.
Stocks will plumet, markets will fail.
The population will boom, and we won't be able to feed them all!
See, and you thought patenting bugs found in almost any dirty pool of water didn't make any sense.
This is just observation, being that I am not a PhD geneticist, but isn't there a possibility that use of an adenovirus to splice DNA, even if it is very carefully targeted, could result in mutated versions of the virus appearing in the patient and thus being eventually released into the wild? Suppose, for example that a terminally ill cancer patient is treated using a custom designed adenovirus, but that during the treatment several potentially dangerous mutations of the virus emerge which may result in unknown and possibly serious infections for the rest of the population. The risk of this scenario occurring will probably increase as the number of people treated with these designer viruses cures increases. I have never heard anyone give a satisfactory explanation of the risks involved to the rest of us when we start releasing genetically engineered viruses into the wild. How can we be sure that "cure" does not return to haunt us in a form that proves to be worse than the disease?
You're a fucking polesmoker who doesn't know RNA from DNA, so kindly phuck off.
Slashdotters have 33% fewer cases of prostate cancer.
On the Oncolytics web site, they only list Phase I and Phase II trials. That's just to evaluate safety and dosing. In Phase III, they finally get around to testing for effectiveness, and they haven't done that yet.
I've seen lots of drugs that did this well in Phase II trials but flunked Phase III. I remember seeing Fortune magazine with the headline on the cover, "Cure for Cancer!" 20 years ago. Unfortunately not. (They got over-enthusiastic about cancer vaccines.)
Phase III is a randomized controlled trial. They randomly assign half the patients to the drug, and half the patients to a placebo. If it really works, you should see the difference. A lot of times it doesn't work and you know the drug is useless. Until the RCT you don't know anything for sure.
Another distinction you have to make is the end point. It's one thing to shrink a tumor, but the main thing most cancer patients are interested in is whether they're going to die. There are a lot of drugs that shrink tumors, but have no effect on how long they live.
Here's a discussion, "Levels of Clinical Evidence in the Primary Literature" which describes the different levels of evidence. Or look at BMJ Or if you want to search Google look for "Evidence-based medicine."
I hope this will encourage investors to throw lots of money at basic research and give us a better understanding of why cells become cancerous. It makes the New England Journal of Medicine more fun to read. Who knows? Maybe they'll come up with something useful some day. But not today.
You are dying of cancer and you care about the side effects the cure might have?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Wired Magazine had an article that talked about how Russian "designed" viruses are making their way into western medicine to help fight off strains of anti-bacterial resistant bugs. They are very adaptive as opposed to our common medicine that just kills everything, even good bacteria.
------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
I just have to say well done.
Penicillin was originally derived from the Penicillium mold... the streptomycins were similarly developed from other microbes (which species escapes me at the moment). Such naturally-occuring antibiotics are produced by bacteria to inhibit the growth of other nearby bacteria, thereby opening up living space for the original bug.
It's pretty nifty... there is a certain elegance in taking advantage of such natural inter-microbe competition for our own benefit.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
What I want to know is how they discovered this cure. Did they just start injecting random viruses into peoples neck tumors?
To get bad doctors out of the buisness. But, no, can't have that can we. Nice angle, that whole "no blame", since then they'd just lie about it, system you guy's got.
Ok, let's do "fix the problem". And it ain't malpractice claims, or med-mal attorneys, it's remarkably bad medicine being driven by lazy doctors taking their leads from the pharma pushers, and the "business riches" rather than the "practice".
Do no harm? Medicine, as presently industrialized, does tremendous harm each and every day.
How 'bout three strikes and you're out. Strike two lays claim to 20% of the doctor's present value as first payor, strike three up to 40%. If ANYBODY in the industry lies, or fails to report a malpractice situation, be it on your doctor employer or not, and you're out first strike.
Next, remove doctors from the Godhood. Make them more like teachers. I'd go so far as to make them optional. Let people use a doctor or complete short adult education classes on whatever ails 'em. Liberate access to drugs, allowing self-prescription whenever remotely feasable. Yes, require a test, require a protocol, but there is NO reason I have to be teathered to a $65 per visit doctor, every 6 weeks, for blood pressure and other simple protocols.
A bit OT, but how exactly does cancer kill anyway? What's it do? Are tumers toxic?
A study I read on msn.com said that colon cancer is not a concern in 3rd world countries, while in the united states it is one of the biggest killers. Maybe it's because we have the technology to detect colon cancer, while people of 3rd world countries would just die of "natural causes" if it was colon cancer. However, the study suggested that in 3rd world countries, diarrhea is a regular thing and that could cause intestinal cleansing that keeps colon cancer from happening, while in the United States, diarrhea is rare. Another argument is that germs in diarrhea interact with the linings and make them more resistant to sickness. Your question was quite appropriate.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
I think if you look, they patented a component extracted from a family of molds. If somebody had come up with, say, a yeast, from which Penicilln could be extracted, another patent would likely have issued and there would be 2 brands of material on the market.
You could always eat the mold. But, I would probably refrain from injecting yourself with dirty pond water.
Yeah, I came across an article that specifically touched on this.
While researchers in Germany (I think they were German) were looking for the causes of allergies and other symptoms of a malfunctioning immune system they came across something interesting. 1) alergies are more or less a 1st world disease, very rare in the in the 3rd world. 2), they compared the living quarters of Germans in the city and Germans in the country, and found my more "nastiness" in general in the country houses (along with a much lower incidence of allergies). By nastiness, there was much more exposure to bugs and things that we naturally think of as undesireable from farm animal excrement, etc.
They theorized that, much like just about anything else about our bodies, the immune system needs some "training", especially when we're young. If you live in the city or other more or less anti-setptic enviroments, you're left with a less-exercised immune system, and more immune system illnesses (allergies, etc.).
I used to think the overuse of antibiotics was simply going to lead to our demise because we were creating better bugs, now in appears that we're also making it more likely that we'll drop dead, from say, eating a peanut (from an underutilized, underdeveloped and confused immune system).
Interesting stuff.
Many more young people than you might think have cancer, and it's typically not due to HIV. I've had the unfortunate experience of visiting my 20-something brother in the cancer ward (he got better, thankfully) and there was a surprisingly large fraction of people there who had cancer and were 30 or younger. At a page at the CDC, I found in the Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults, 1999, table 5 (don't download--8 MB!) that the percent of cancer among adults age 18-44 is a whopping 1.9%, far more than at that age who have HIV. For comparison, the other age brackets: 45-64 7.9%, 65-74 17.4%, 75+ 22%. That's for cancer of some kind, but some kinds of cancer strike primarily at specific age groups. My brother's Hodgkin's disease, a lymphoma, typically strikes men in their mid to late twenties. Leukemia also frequently strikes the young, for example the incidence of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) is 10 times greater for the 1-4 years old bracket than the for those in their early 20's. The point being cancer's not just for the very old, or rather that some cancers aren't.
Since I can't find the answer anywhere on here yet (and there's just so much to search through) I'll connect it to your post (why not leech of a +5?).
...damn, that f*cking sucks!
If this is a common virus that many of us have had in the past without really seeing the effects of it other than mild cold-like symptoms, why CAN'T it be tested more vigorously? My sister was just diagnosed a couple of days ago with a Tumor that runs down the full length of her chest and we don't yet know if it's benign (that info comes in a couple of days) but if this can help her and it's (otherwise) a relatively weak virus, wherein lies the harm?
Is it just malpractice, burocratic Red Tape, etc.? If so
Anyway, if anyone can give me a good answer, I'll be very appreciative.
My prayers are with you bro! Good with luck and G-d willing you'll get through it.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
This argument is gibberish and I'm so tired of the BS about short lifespans in previous centuries. The average life expectancy in the 19th century was so low because so many children died in their infancy. Upon reaching adulthood, the average lifespan was comparable to that of a modern person's.
...The virus has a natural attraction to people with a positive mental attitude, now THAT would be a twist..
...OK, just me then
Also, as serious as this subject is, any red dwarf fans out there that are reminded of Lister's 'luck' and 'sexual magnatism' virii?
Reovirus is known to cause cancer in lab rats :P
I'm enjoying the discussion but I'm conflicted about whether slashdotting a promising biotech company's products it really a wise thing to do. What think you?
If I'm reading this correctly, someone has discovered a cure for cancer. Even if the trials only worked with one type of cancer, I'd still be floored. You'd think this would be front-page news in every newspaper in the US. Even if it didn't get the headline.
Nope, not in my local papers. The front page is election coverage. Coverage for an election that isn't even really going to heat up until summer 2004.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
It turns out that doesnt really matter for the above argument.
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're terminally ill with cancer, and you can't get on the list - couldn't you theoretically infect yourself? This virus occurs naturlaly, and most people have had it at some piont in their lives. It lives (apparently) in dank conditions, like shallow pools of water, sewers, and the like. It can be gotten via the respatory system, which means it's likely an aeresol, correct? So, just go bogging somewhere.
As far as the virus itself is concerned, I find it interesting that the virus exists in situations of unclean water. Think about that - water cleanses things, when it's good, clean water. Water is an antitoxidant. Cancer is caused (largely) by toxidants and other such malodies, such as unhealthy living conditions.
I wonder if we would have such a cancer problem in the modern world if we were to stop filtering our water and zapping it with toxins such as chlorine. Maybe all those squirmies are supposed to be there. Seems hard to believe something so specific and logically abstracted could be coincidence.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
N/T
But, how did you find out?
How old are you?
Ever since I turned 30, (VERY recently), I've been much more concerned with what I got...
Alright! Light'em if you got'em! :P Nah, better stop smoking anyway... /me goes to light a cigarette...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
This sounds great and all but grand claims are always being made before the next big-thing slowly fades out of the spotlight when it doesn't live up to its promises.
Both my mother and grandmother died of cancer when I was a child and there were all these promising breakthoughs back then even. 10+ years later the same number of people die from cancer. Forgive me for being negative but until I see this in the field for a few years I won't be satisfied.
If on the other hand it does work, would this virus come in the form of a yearly shot to prevent cancer or only after being diagnosed with cancer? I realize cancer is not a bacteria or other evolving lifeform but does it have any means of adapting to the point where this virus treatment could become meaningless by the time I hit 50s-60s-70s?
I lost my mother and grandmother to cancer and hope that those that care about you are not faced with what I went through. Good luck to you and thank you for contributing your viewpoints on this forum!
But if I told you I had something that would not just cure but outright prevent cancer and specifically the most lethal cancer, the type that causes 30% of all cancer deaths, wouldn't you be interested?
It's not sexy, it's not high-tech, it's not at the cell level, but I have a vaccine for the most lethal cancer. It's called tobacco prevention. It's proven effective and cost effective.
Tobacco product causes 30% of all cancer deaths in America.
The most effective way of fighting those deaths is not at the cellular level, when the cancer has already started. The most effective way is prevention, reducing tobacco consumption as rapidly and effectively as possible.
This is not sexy, doesn't involve high tech -- and there's nothing high tech cancer cures have ever delivered that even comes close.
Put yourself in an oncologist's shoes and think about it.
Better yet, think about all the people you know, and chances are you knew someone who died from tobacco product. You should. This product kills 1 out of 5 Americans.
You want to fight cancer? Stop it before it starts. Learn about tobacco .
Learn about the scope and scale of the problem, the big picture
Learn about what tobacco product does to the customer, to those nearest the customer, to all of us:
Learn how tobacco product is engineered, marketed, and spread across the globe:
And, if you decide you do want to do something about this, learn what and who you will be fighting, and how to fight effectively.
It's not sexy, it's not high tech, but it's nothing less than a vaccine for cancer, and it works.
- I can tell you just how damn hard it is to get into the program.
I was receiving an experimental vaccine that was made from crab blood and dead cells. I flew out every month to Duke University to recieve a single, 5 minute injection. Every week upon return I experienced severe naseau, extreme tiredness (I once fell asleep in class and started snoring). I even experienced a sensation of someone placing a pair of vice grips around a tooth and shattering it. Now, I've never had that done but god DAMN it felt like that.
Thats all unforseen circumstances- how would an injection to fight cancer cause tooth pain (to the point that, while on a flight back home I nearly went berserk by running up and down the aisle- can you imagine what that wouldve triggered in todays climate???)
I can honestly and truthfully say that seeing those two photos of before and after shots brought a tear to my eye. No one should ever have to suffer the indignity of cancer; no one should have to go thru the societal rejection of being scarred for life with the surgical results that take out tissue and muscle from your body.
Most of all, no one should have to die from it.
Bash big pharma all you want, but they DO make drugs that fight off cancers. It costs a hell of alot of money- but thats all pennies when you compare government funding to the budget of a hollywood movie such as Waterworld.
I'm not religious, but I pray that that treatment makes it mainstream as soon as possible. God to have another weapon to save lives.
(and yes, I was 17 when I was diagnosed and 20 when they thought I had relapsed... so I am speaking from experience)
This discovery passes the "Duh!" test, where you say "Duh! of Course it will work, it is unlikely NOT to not work in fact, just due to X, Y, and Z"
If this is real, these guys deserve every dime they can get.
Perhaps the US Gvmnt should buy them (IF it is real) and give it to humanity, as a gesture.
Nah.
Great...notice this naturally occuring virus is registered. They spared no time registering an organism...can you even do that? wait... is this Biotech company a microsoft subsidiary?
Eastern Europe has been using a similar approach to treating bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics for almost 80 years. Wired magazine ran an article about bacteriophages in their October 2003 issue.
A bacteriophage basically a virus that attaches itself to a bacteria cell and injects it's own DNA into the cell. The DNA replicates and eventually the bacteria cell bursts releasing more phages that will attach to other bacteria cells. The phage virus is not harmful to humans and can be found in water from your local stream.
If a reovirus can be used in a similar way, then maybe cancer patients will finally have some hope.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
I'm a student at the tragically underrated University of Calgary, which has come up a few times in this discussion. In the past few years, I've followed this story quite closely - I write news for the school's undergrad paper, The Gauntlet and I covered two relevant pieces:
Story 1, June 2001
Story 2, July 2001
The first link is to the original story, which attributed the find to Dr. Peter Forsyth. Later on, Dr. Patrick Lee (who has been mentioned multiple times in this discussion) poached the research and headed for greener pastures at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
The interesting fact is that Forsyth's research found inexplicable gray spots in the residue of the destroyed tumour. At the time, I found it quite unsettling that this fact was completely ignored by the mainstream media in spite of the fact that he spent a significant portion of the press conference discussing the potential hazards that the spots could indicate, including encephalitis.
It looks like the clinical trials at Oncolytics (Forsyth and Lee were directly involved) are optimistic, showing no side-effects, but I urge everyone to temper their excitement for the time being. The allure of jumping to the conclusion that REO virus treatment is a miracle cure is significant, but the consequences of doing so could be disastrous.
This may seem like bitter cynicism, but take a hint from someone who has been on the front lines of this very discovery: the story reported by the mainstream media is never the whole story.
Patrick Boyle
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
where's my tumor. :p
(very J.K.)
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Back then, the average life expectancy was so low because of infant mortality. People who got to puberty didn't, on average, die much younger than people do nowadays.
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
I'll second this all the way.
The golden ideal of research, which is people throwing out amazing new discoveries that help humanity by huge amounts just plain isn't reality in corporate research.
I could see nationalizing research being an interesting and viable social experiment, though it wouldn't be a great idea for most other fields. Research to advance humanity isn't necessarily in the short-term interest of a typical corporation. It decidedly *is* in the interest of the people of a nation as a whole.
May we never see th
http://www.americansovereign.com/newsarchive/commo ncold.htm
I don't know if anything's changed since the late 90s, but at the time, this treatment turned cancer into a chronic ailment rather than a terminal disease.
* - This study performed buy Cheech, Chong, Marley, et al., for The High Times Institute.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
So it seems that Valve was right - shallow pools of water in dirty (let's say alien) environments can heal you!
Let's hope that they weren't also right in predicting what happens when you bring the anti-mass spectrometer up to 105%...
Cancer is not an indignity. I had it and got through the treatment. Not once did I feel ashamed for having it. I actually enjoyed the bald head so much I shave my head everyday now.
:) I have even learnt how to control my vomiting now to the point where I can nearly vomit on command :)
The treatment was hard and no one should have to go through that, but it wasn't something that I felt ashamed of.
Throwing up in front of total strangers can be a littl uncomfortable, but you get used to it
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Thank you. This has to be one of the most intelligent posts I've seen in a while. Everything else is mostly, fact this, funny that. You provided a true insight that questions the facts and attempts to make new conclusions that can be tested. If only more people thought like this. Thank you again. Like I've said before, question everything.
Question everything.
Exactly. Even 1000 years ago, if you survived childhood you would have pretty much the same chance of living to 75+ as any 20-year-old today. More even, since there were less carcinogens in the atmosphere, food etc, which can mess you up in old age.
So why does everyone _still_ use "average life expectancy" as if it actually means something. We all know how averages are created, kiddies, remember a baby dying at age = 1day is going to have a much bigger effect on the "average" than some old guy living one more year because he didn't get pneumonia.
sustainable living
I guess all the spam I've been getting over years trying to sell me cancer curing pills must have been telling the truth. My mistake...
Uhm, "alchohol" is supposed to have only one 'h'. When you sober up, I'll let you figure out where it goes.
I always knew Douglas Adams was right about telephone sanitizers.
If a company doesn't pay to keep top scientists on its staff then it has no business being in the business, so to speak. But keeping a scientist on your payrole is a completely different thing to being the instigator of new ideas. In general, you cannot do the latter at all. At best you can provide the right environment and hope that ideas will flourish.
It's a bit like providing a greenhouse and highly nourishing environment for a plant. Yes, you can help it grow, but if you then claim that you are the creator of life then ego is the least of your problems.
All of whom would be flipping burgers if people weren't paid to do research.
That's a dumb statement because the huge majority of active researchers are in academia.
It varies a lot with the industry and depends very much on the definition of research versus developmment, but even with part-time industrial research factored in, academia still leads by a mile. Pure research is surprisingly rare in industry, and the applied technology work done in most industrial dev labs generates new concepts more as an exception than as a rule. It probably stems from the bean counters not understanding intangibles.
If someone was in a motherload of pain, and was going to die soon anyways, I see no harm in experimenting on that person when they have zero hope of recovering otherwise. Even if it is fatal, it's not like the patient would have lived long anyway so we might as well use them to further medical science.
A note for those ethical pro-lifers who will undoubtedly flame me, consider this: what if, down the road, you became terminally ill? And they didn't have the cure they would have acquired from experimenting on death-bed patients. I'll bet you'd wished they worked on those people if it meant you and countless millions of others would be saved. Would you rather millions of people live on just because we weren't scared of the risk of making two or three death-bead patients slightly more uncomfortable in their last days when there is still a chance of this new treatment working?
That's a dumb statement because the huge majority of active researchers are in academia.
Are you under the impression that universities fund research solely out of a selfless desire to help the world gain knowledge? Get real. Large schools are nothing but research factories; any learning that goes on in them is purely incidental.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Actually, it is the charming nuclear families of the 'burbs that revile power plants most of all. Not to say that the lefties don't protest a fission-splitter going up, but if you have ever seen one of these rallies, it is the "Not in My Backyard" crowd that is predominate. There are plenty of mulleted firemen in that group, let me tell you.....
========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
You are citing a "consumer advocacy" site that just happens to be affiliated with a personal-injury/med-mal law firm? Did you even read the links at the bottom of the page?
I call BS on your BS, sir.
Here's a study from the Govt.
and a presentation from the American College of Surgeons
Personally, I'm just a physician who would like to be left alone so I can take care of my patients. I'm not a politico or lobbyiest, and I'd rather not have to deal with this nasty political fight. Unfortunately, it's become a matter of survival for some of us. Most doctors don't give a damn about politics... we're too busy; I don't know any physician who hasn't been dragged kicking and screaming into this mess.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I don't think anyone knows exactly why, but vegetarians in America have a 50% lower rate of cancer than the general population. I don't remember the exact number for heart attacks, but as long as a vegetarian doesn't o.d. on cheese, heart attacks should be close to 0%.
The heart attack one is fairly obvious - no bad saturated fats and lots of the good kind of fats means no clogged arteries.
As for cancer, there are a few guesses. One is that the vitamins and things in fruits prevent cancer. Another you could say is that most vegetarians eat more organic foods than the general population, meaning less exposure to pesticides and things the human body isn't used to.
Personally I think the reason for the cancer decrease is all the CRAP that you get in meat and dairy milk. Milk and meat are both filled with hormones that are known to effect the human body. My mom knew a boy who started showing female characteristics (ie: boobs), and they figured out it was because of the hormones in milk or chicken (i forget which).
Along the same line, veggies may eat less "processed" food. Most of that pre-made stuff has all kinds of chemical preservatives in them that the human body was never exposed to in such large quanitites. It seems somewhat obvious that ingestion of these chemicals would have some effect - it's a little surprising how little of an effect they have.
But in regards to this reovirus existing in unclean environments, organic foods are not at all related to the cleanliness of the foods. organic and inorganic foods still grow in dirt, and still got rinsed off before being eaten.
As for bottled water versus drinking from a dirty puddle, I suspect the increase in life span from avoiding all sorts of diseases outdoes the increase in cancer. More likely if the reovirus does prevent cancer when ingested naturally, they'll start washing off produce and then spraying it with reovirus before selling it.
That makes sense, yet it's also the opposite of some recommendations regarding specific types of allergy. For example, I'm allergic to peanuts, and my wife has been cautioned to *avoid* peanuts during her pregnancy and breastfeeding of our first child. They said that exposure to the proteins in peanuts that young can cause the allergy to develop in the baby.
...best...post...ever.
Not quite on topic, but there is some speculation that asthma may be in some part due to lack of exposure to relatively benign bacteria during infancy. The idea is that asthma results from the immune system overreacting due to improper early development. Dirt is good for you?
In terms of an investment this could be the next (ugh) Microsoft. There are 1.4 million new cancers each year in the US. The reovirus could be used to treat about 0.9 million of these. If it works as well as initial indications suggest, it will take a very large market share. Conservatively allowing 50% market penetration that is 0.45 million doses. Some have suggested a price per treatment of $10,000. This would give gross revenues of $4.5 billion. Oncolytics currently have issued about 25 million shares. That puts gross revenues at $180 per share. And that is just from the US market!
Of course there are no guarantees and many hurdles to clear yet. There is a huge potential reward here, the risk is still considerable but is diminishing as trials progress.
Is it worth investing a few bucks at $4.20? Do your research and make your decision.
Hope *is* better than nothing.
But what about *false* hope, like iridology, homeopathy or any other snake oil for that matter? What I am personally afraid of are people wasting their time, money and energy on placebo or worse -- stopping seeking other, *working* methods of treatment. What do you think? Does the obviously true statement that "hope is better than nothing" justify homeopathy? After all, homeopaths are *selling the hope* -- no more, no less.