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The Cure for Cancer Might be: HIV
RGautier writes "Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells). The impact of genetic research on cancer research is in and of itself amazing. To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance! Research will continue, obviously, but they are already reporting success on living creatures." Just think: between HIV and carrots we'll be all set.
If you're gotten rid of 80% of the virus, you might not want to market it as "derived from HIV". Really.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
You assume it isn't already. Remember what White Bloodcells do? Along with anti-biotics and vacines? All this is doing is adding in another weapon to the arsenal.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Do we really want to turn our bodies into a battlefield for germ warfare?
Yes. You better believe it.
After seeing my mother die from cancer I would give anything to make sure no one else would ever have to go through what me and my sister did.
In short, hell yeah. Bring it on.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but don't we use viruses as vectors all the time? Like in vaccines?
COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?
Are you for real? You think somebody is going to invent a cure for cancer, and the FDA would dare ban it? If you thought the black market for viagra was bad, it would be nothing on this.
Working with HIV is actually a lot less dangerous than a lot of other infectious agents. HIV is fairly hard to contract, compared to airborne or contact-transmitted diseases. For example, it dies pretty quickly when exposed to plain old air. It's only HIV's incurability and eventual fatality that makes it so hazardous.
Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
That seems pretty unlikely, because AZT is pretty damn toxic. You wouldn't want to take it just as a precaution. It is true that health care workers who've been exposed (e.g. needle prick from an HIV patient) go on a short-term drug cocktail intended to weaken the virus enough for their immune systems to handle it before it gains a foothold.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Why not engineer different viruses to attack different cancers? This way we could deal with less variables (ie: lots of different cells being attacked while others being left unharmed) and still get good results.
I would much prefer being treated with a virus if I knew it had one function and did it well, rather than 100 different funtions that it may or may not do well.
Silly rabbit
Well, that may be true for the dozens of pharmaceutical companies that made polio-reducing drugs, but Lederle, the company which marketed the (oral) polio vaccine made KILLING by selling 3 or 4 doses to all 6 billion people on the planet!
Same thing for an HIV cure/vaccine. Dozens of companies would no longer have a source of income, but the ONE company that creates (and patents) the vaccine will guarentee to sell 50 billion units over the next 40 years (assuming, like most vaccines, that it takes a few doses and booster shots to achieve the desired effect).
Plus, as a medical student, I happen to know for a FACT that people in my school are working on HIV vaccines. "They" aren't preventing this type of research.
Joking aside I see this is research is being done at UCLA presumably with public funding or maybe charitable donations.
I was just wondering if anyone has an educated guess how many medical and drug breakthroughs are happening in publicly funded institutions, the NIH being another example, and how many are actually developed inside the big drug and healthcare companies using private funding.
I ask because in the face of the extraordinarily high cost of drugs in the U.S., HIV drugs in particular, the usual retort by Republicans is drug companies need those huge profits to do groundbreaking R&D on new breakthrough drugs. Drug companies have the highest profits and profit margins of ANY major industrial sector in the U.S. or at least they did before they started getting hammered when it turned out drugs they were pushing like Zoloft and Vioxx are potentially dangerous.
I'm also curious how much of the privately funded drug company research is funded by the public through tax breaks, grants etc.
To put it another way how much do drug companies profit on breakthroughs from publicly funded research.
Another question what is the current ratio between drug company spending on advertising versus R&D. The never ending saturation TV ads, designed to compel American consumers to demand drugs from their doctors they may or may not need, must be costing billions and all those advertising costs which do no one any actual good are being tacked on to the cost of drugs and making seniors in particular pay through the nose for saturation advertising campaigns instead of drugs or drug R&D.
My three step plan to drive down the cost of drugs and healthcare:
A. Outlaw drug advertising just like ads for cigarettes and hard liquor. Its totally inappropriate and disceptive to advertise drugs using slick ads, like soda pop or underarm deodorant. Confine them to advertising to doctors and then only in the form of factual dissertations on the pros and cons of the drug, audited by a 3rd party for accuracy.
B. Mandate that drugs and publicly funded health breakthroughs be provided to the public at cost or with a regulated profit margin.
C. Rather than outlawing U.S. agencies, like Medicare, from negotiating fair prices for wholesale drug purchases, make it law that those agencies MUST negotiate fair wholesale prices, like Canada and most other sane nations do.
@de_machina
People who have cancer serious enough to require this step are going to die, soon and painfully, from their cancer. In that position I know what my attitude would be: "Cure me or kill me. It's a win-win from my point of view." (paraphrasing House, M.D.)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Ha. I knew it. Part of the definition of "good exercise" is that it has to be boring.
I guess that heart beating and sweating and stuff for easily the recommended 15-30 minutes at a time isn't enough... it overloads the easily-overloaded "fun" receptors on the heart and other muscles and cancels out all of the other benefits. The fact that I'm feeling better is also an illusion brought on by excessive fun, which can of course cause hallucinations.
If you're not slamming you feet on hard concrete and hating every minute of it, unless you let go of your sanity and use the cognitive dissonance of "Why the hell am I doing this?" to convince yourself that, logically, you must be having fun, you're not really getting exercise.
Although, maybe I'm jumping the gun on this post. Having heard of neither Heard Disease nor excercise, maybe I'm accidentally reading into what you were saying. Maybe excercise really is the cure for Heard Disease, probably helps Caner too, which I hear is really vicious. (You haven't lived until you're under attack by a Heard of Caners, either. Damn, man, now that's sickness.)
Thanks for setting me straight, Dr. SoTuA.