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Tumor Suppression Gene Discovered
An anonymous reader writes ScieceDaily is reporting that researchers at Ohio State University may have identified a new and unusual tumor suppression gene that could effect cancers of the lung, head, and neck. From the article: "The gene, known as TCF21, is silenced in tumor cells through a chemical change known as DNA methylation, a process that is potentially reversible. The findings might therefore lead to new strategies for the treatment and early detection of lung cancer, a disease that killed an estimated 163,510 Americans in 2005. The study could also lead to a better understanding of the molecular changes that occur in tumor cells during lung-cancer progression."
To my knowledge DNA methylation cannot be reversed and DNA methylase has not been found to exist yet. The only way DNA de-methylation at a particular CpG site in DNA can occur is by DNA replication(cell division), where replication of DNA gives an unmethylated CpG site.
According to the article, the gene only slows things down. In tests, tumor cells with the gene preasant are smaller, but they're still there. While it's very exciting and will undoubtably lead to new treatments, it's not a cure yet.
Someone save me from this sanity.
Don't forget health insurance.
Smoking is a quick way to pay more for your insurance and some companies are now dropping smokers from health plans.
Smoking also lengthens recovery times after surgery. Any surgeon you'd let slice you up would insist that you stop smoking for a certain period before and after the surgery.
The only reason smoking isn't going to go away is that States desperately need the tax revenues that cigarette sales bring in. Pretty much the only people who don't get rich off cigarette sales are the tobacco farmers.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They may not get rich, but tobacco is about the only crop worth anything at all, most of the time. My grandfather used to raise 3 or 4 acres back in the early 80s, and I remember him saying it was worth 20 or 30 times as much as corn or soy. Even with all the extra work (tobacco gets stripped by hand).
So, good that we have another member of the network pinned down, but this does not mean we are going to get a cure for lung cancer within 4-5 years because of this discovery.
I could also argue about the prognosis of smokers vs non-smokers, since not all cancers are the same. Stage IIIB, high grade is not the same as stage IIA, low grade, for example. However, this is a more delicate issue and it doesn't really matter that much. As a rule of thumb I'd say (this my estimate, of course) that if someone manages to reach 50-60 pack years (e.g. 30 years * 2 packs per day) and NOT get cancer he is extremely lucky (although he might have died from myocardial infarct or something else before getting cancer).
P.
Several others have already pointed out that roughly 90% of lung cancers are known to be caused by smoking. It is true that 10% are not, just as 50% car accidents are not caused by drunk driving. But that doesn't make drunk driving ok, sensible or sane.
Back in the day when I worked in radiotherapy physics I came to a simple conclusion: if you took all the money being spent on the kind of research I was doing and put it into an modestly effective anti-smoking campaign, you would extend more lives much longer. This was based on the rates of lung and other cancers that were known at the time to be caused by smoking.
For greater context: a single treatment that eliminated 90% of cases of a major cancer with negligable side-effects would be considered a medical break-through of staggering proportions. Most headline-making genetic causes affect a few percent of a specific type of cancer. Even the major tumour-suppressor genes found so far only get into the 10-50% range.
Nothing in the current pipeline of medical miracles comes close to the effect of stopping smoking on lung cancer. And that's ignoring all the other health effects of smoking, from pulmonary emphasema to oral and other cancers.
Smokers do not "deserve" to get cancer. But they are addicted to a substance that is known to cause cancer, and which will almost certainly damage their health and shorten their lives. If it were possible to elimiate that substance it would be equivalent to a huge medical breakthrough. It is not possible to eliminate tabbacco, but it is certainly possible to call it what it is: a deadly, addictive drug being sold to often-willing victims by evil people.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
You're missing the point. Obesity can be fairly easily dealt with, as far as such things go. Cancer, heart disease, emphysema are very difficult and expensive to deal with and generally not very reversable.
Smoking has a profound imapact on the economy, our taxes, and our health insurance rates. My uncle was a jungle fighter, a marine in the pacific in WW-2. He was given cigarettes in his rations and became profoundly addicted. By the time he died, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills--although most was paid by insurance (IE, taxes + you and I)--multiple attempts at repairing his arteries with stents, weeks in the hosital ICU, and years on the oxygen bottle for emphysema. He was 76, 5 years on the oxygen, 3 years of surgeries.
I've seen three people in my life go from being 300+ pounders to trim, fit people. With a change in diet to more fruits and vegetables, more exercise, less fat and sugar. Very reversible, and cheap.
Although I do hope the beer had something to do with it.