Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Find Potential Cure for Cancer
MECC writes "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University may have found a way to kill cancer cells without radiation or toxic chemicals. The group is taking the step of patenting the idea, as this new approach using sugars may hold real potential for the fight against cancer. This is not the first approach to use sugars, the article states, but is (by the researchers' estimation) the most successful. From the article: 'Sampathkumar and his colleagues built upon 20-year-old findings that a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate can slow the spread of cancer cells. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that butyrate, which is formed naturally at high levels in the digestive system by symbiotic bacteria that feed on fibre, can restore healthy cell functioning ... The researchers focused on a sugar called N-acetyl-D-mannosamine, or ManNAc, for short, and created a hybrid molecule by linking ManNAc with butyrate. The hybrid easily penetrates a cell's surface, then is split apart by enzymes inside the cell. Once inside the cell, ManNAc is processed into another sugar known as sialic acid that plays key roles in cancer biology, while butyrate orchestrates the expression of genes responsible for halting the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.'"
And still no cure for ca... oh.
Task Mangler
In other news: Many other researchers are currently working on projects that might some day lead to better cancer treatment methods.
I found that you can easily kill cancerous cells by burning them in a chimney or crushing them in a bowl. No need for radiation or chemicals. Those scientists are always looking for overly complicated solutions when perfectly simple ones exist.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
"as this new approach using sugars may hold real potential"
Mmmmm, sugar donuts. Is there anything they can't do?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
This is just a petri-dish experiment. It'll be interesting to see what happens when they put it in a mouse or a rat, then if it doesn't kill the rodents, you have to try it in a few desperate humans who aren't being cured by traditional routes, then if it doesn't kill them you have to try it in people with more curable forms of cancer.
and she's curing cancer like she's never cured before!
The seemingly more appropriate abbreviation would be ManNAd.
- Any monies derived from it can be fed back into further research
- Megacorp can't steal the idea and patent it for themselves
Universities have budgets to manage and need to behave in a business like way just like everyone else but they are not Big Business.init 11 - for when you need that edge.
There's nothing like a good gunfight to uplift the spirit--Calvin
Anyone else feels sour when reading the line :
.. an .. Idea ?
.. Like if the patent system wasn't abused enough. Sigh.
"The group is taking the step of patenting the idea"
Patenting
What the hell
Presumably the "Ac" is from "acetyl".
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
...but the chances of the healthcare industry letting this fly if it is real are slim to none. Think about it. Chemotherapy is a multi-BILLION dollar a year buisness. WHy do you think there have been no major cures in the past...what, 30-40 years?
Because the money isn't in the cure. The money is in the treatment.
Living With a Nerd
While this approach may be a promising avenue to investigate, it's pretty early in the game to get very excited over it. According to the article, this approach has not been tested in vivo AT ALL at this point. Treating cancer cells in a cell culture is a VERY large step away from even testing them in animals, which is yet another step removed from humans.
Nice to know they're spending their time filing for patents instead of, well, trying to use it to cure cancer.
Maybe someday you'll have a family member with cancer, and you'll look on the bright side and see this for the positive thing it is rather than using it as an excuse to regurgitate some anti-corporation blabber.
You do realize that if they didn't charge for their services, they wouldn't make money to do further research? Sure if a cure for cancer was found today, for the next 5-10 years it would be an expensive treatment. The reason is because the 100's of millions, if not billions, of dollars it took to come up with the treatment need to be recooperated. People have been looking for a cure for years and every $100,000,000 failed attempt at finding a treatment is a write-off until a solution is found. When that starts to happen, prices always drop and treatment becomes more common.
The logic contained in that "as" apparently dictates that curing cancer is more important for making money than for everyone's health. Apparently without any explanation needed, or question expected. Also unquestioned is the vast amount of money spent by the public (you and your family, for generations) subsidizing all the research these "inventors" used to produce their new idea.
There's a lot of discussion on Slashdot of justifications for piracy of media content. Fighting the arbitrary assignment of all value from medical inventions to the last people to use their predecessors to cross a commercial threshold seems not only more obviously moral, but more relevant to basic survival. And a stronger study in the arbitrary contrasts between the "robber" and the "robbed".
--
make install -not war
The humor is lost now. If there was any to begin with.
There's a Jamaican scientist and his German colleagues who have made some progress in this research as well. http://psa-rising.com/blog/index.php/2006/06/11/ja maican-scientist-extracts-anti-cancer-agent-from-t ropical-plant-p-alliacea/
For what its worth... There is the practice of defensive patenting. I certainly can't say for sure that is what they are doing, but imagine what would happen if they didn't patent it and some pharm lab did. You really can't cry prior art to save it because it would still lead to an extensive and expensive court battle that would drag on for ages and keep the technology down. Since, like you said, that is ultimately what a pharm company is likely to do anyways since they don't want a cure it would be an automatic win for their cause anyways. If the pharm company can patent it, or tie it up in legal stuff for a decade, they win regardless.
I am MUCH more trusting of these university research guys than some corporate pharm lab research guys as far as doing the right thing with the patent. Hopefully it won't be misplaced, but lets not jump to conclusions.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
it will make one person happy in each city
Sorry, I couldn't resist
Patent, ay? Let's first kill all the lawyers and then kill the caner-cure-patent-holding scumbuckets. I will personally shove my patent-leather shoe up each of their patent-pening sphincter-lax assholes.
Yeah, those fucking corporations and their cancer profiteering. The way they sell all those cancer drugs makes me sick. Of course, most of those drugs are intended to eliminate the cancer outright so the patient won't need to take some kind of drug for the rest of their life, but still! How dare they!
Grow up. The company that comes up with a truly effective, broadly acting cure for cancer is going to make more money than God, even if they provide it at a low cost. And because every company hopes to be first, everybody has an incentive to throw a hat in the ring. And of course, once you make that huge investment, even if you can't be first, you still go to market, meaning that there's at least some competition to bring prices down.
Pharmaeceutical companies do plenty of seriously messed up stuff in order to make money, but disease profiteering isn't one of them. If there was the slightest shred of proof to show that they're purposefully avoiding developing a cure so they can instead sell palliatives, don't you think patients advocate groups would be screaming for blood from the rooftops?
Haven't they been telling us for a while now that high-fibre diets decrease the risk of some kinds of cancer? Is this just an actual explanation of the "why"?
But it wasn't what I wrote (the first sentence and the link are the same). Their post is better I think, but different. The next time someone has a thing about something they think is silly in the text of a submission, just remember that the /. editors change it before posting - a lot.
Not a complaint - an observation.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Is that pronounced booty-rate?
You science types are hilarious!
Makes me think of Thebacon Hydrochloride... seriously, the-bacon?
...still no cure for greed.
Is there any evidence this will be effective against the cancer stem cells that are thought to continually produce cancer cells? Those are supposed to be much more difficult to destroy, and if you don't kill them, the cancer will just keep coming back.
How would ghb relate to this (ghb is gamma hydroxy butyric acid)?
kind regards,
Robin
How do you know that it's not being patented specifically to prevent someone else from patenting it and charging outrageous licence fees? How do you know that this group isn't planning on making the research free for anyone to use, free of charge?
Besides which, as other posters have already pointed out, this is an academic group, not "Big Business"; they're not out to scalp people.
(Oh, and "FP?"? Sad, sad, sad.)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Thousands of compounds look like promising anti-cancer agents in cancer cell culture models. They haven't done any testing in normal cell culture or in any animals. It would be awesome if this worked, but it won't do anyone any good if it induces apoptosis in normal cells.
The Iraq war has cost $355,000,000,000 so far. That's 3550 potential cancer cures at your example rate, in the span of 4 years.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
"The Johns Hopkins researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans."
Relevant information: not yet tested on whole living systems. They pissed off some cancer cells in a Petri dish. Big deal. You know what kills cancer cells in Petri dishes? A sledgehammer. Cyanide. Dynamite. Driving over the Petri dish with a Buick. None of these therapies are likely to be useful, however.
Wait, you cry. Laetrile released cyanide in vivo, and that was an (alleged) therapy.
Yeah, systemic poison-giving is already at hand. It is called chemotherapy, and it sucks. It can work, but it is never pretty.
Infusing the patient with sialic acid, which will enevitably infiltrate by this method into every cell, cancerous or not, is twiddling with every biological pathway with which sialic acid interacts. Butyric acid (the essence of sour butter)? Rub it on. Hasn't harmed anyone yet - whats the LD50 for old butter?
Maybe there is promise here, and maybe there is just breathless scientific prose in a self-serving PR release.
My guess is that once whole animals come into the picture, these researchers, as many many before, will find out that biochemistry farts in your Petri dish's general direction.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Makes me wonder what possible correlation their could be to the rise in colon cancer and the use of sugar substitutes instead of good old sugar? And I just picked up a gallon of Splenda at Costco! Umph.
It's only a cure for cancer, not a new operating system!
more money than god ? Im all in'
I hate to be pessimistic, but I doubt that this will work in animals. It depends too much on predictable cellular behavior (primarily that whatever enzymes are going to split this thing apart will be present) but cancer cells are by nature unpredictable. If even one cell in a tumor is immune to even one of the steps that this drug depends on, the entire tumor is going to come back resistant because selective pressure has been exerted for that cell's trait.
Second paragraph:
Whatever flack came up with the headline "Cancer Cure Patented" (in the press release the poster refers to) ought to be horsewhipped.
Go find some interview with a journalist who had been or still is fighting with this illness. They all say they've become more cautions when choosing such news for headlines in their newspapers or tv news.
But we found that when the right sugar is matched with the right chemical partner, it can deliver a powerful double-whammy against cancer cells."
WHAMMY!
Why is this insightful? In fact, this comment couldn't be furthr from insightful if the OP tried, "Great. Patent a potential cure for cancer so it benefits no one but them." Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a cure for cancer greatly benefit cancer patients? Sure, Johns Hopkins stands to benefit financially from the patent but its existence is of major importance to those who suffer from the effects of cancer. And do you have any proof that "Big Business" doesn't want a cure for cancer or are you just spouting tinfoil hat conspiracy theories right out of your ass? One corporation will care more about being the company that developed and markets the "Cure for Cancer" than keeping it behind locked doors so they and their competitors can sell pills that cure the symptoms without curing the disease.
but does someone know why muscle cell cancer is so rare ?
Most of our body is made of muscle or fat cells, yet sarcoma is quite rare.
Has someone studied a way to make the other kinds of cells so resistent to cancer ?
If the claims are true, the vegetarians and those ethnic groups that have lots of fiber in their diet should have lower cancer rates. Some epidemiological (sp?) study should be able to figure out the patterns. Should study groups with highly off the norm dietary habits. Results would be intersting.
insert your favourite big agro conspiracy theory that has depressed the natural and less refined food consumption in America
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This will cause a sea change in the Fark headlines.
Evil is the money of root.
Also, similar stuff about moderate amounts of Beer protecting against colon cancer, which I suspect could be related as well. I have a very non-scientific and "gut" feeling that, one day, we are going to discover that a diet based upon whole, un-processed foods is probably the healthiest of all.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Non-Profit is just a tax status. Meaning, you're more than welcome to make as much money as you want, but you are limited to what you can do with those profits. Some non-profit CEOs do in fact make eight figures a year.
The other thing, to support your argument further, I once knew a nutritionist who worked with folks to reduce their heart disease risk by helping them with their diet. The CEO of the hospital she worked for canned the preventitive program because the heart surgeons were complaining that the preventitive program was hurting their business!
You are right! It IS all about money!
I know this has been said before so, perhaps it is redundant. However, if "patent" is the current rule, then it becomes necessary to use it defensively. I.E. if the university does not patent it, then someone else might. What is needed is a GPL for medicine.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
You're comparing a budget plan based on Jesus coming back within the next 2 years with one for curing diseases which Jesus would be able to cure (that is, based on Jesus not coming back within the next 2 years).
Your comparison is obviously invalid.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This approach may turn out to be useful, but it's important to keep in mind that "cancer" isn't a single disease, it's hundreds of different ones (albeit related); as a result, there is unlikely ever to be "the cure for cancer". Also, note that the researchers have only shown that the treatment kills cancer cells, but it still remains to be shown that it doesn't cause other problems, something that's a real possibility given its mechanism of action.
In terms of research, academia and "Big Business" have become interlocked to the point of being indistinguishable. It's become common for academic researchers to obtain patents, then turn around and use them to start private companies. An interesting and highly relevant example is the (since overturned) patent on broccoli sprouts obtained by Hopkins researchers.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I heard Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he's never cried.
The Iraq war has cost $355,000,000,000 so far.
Has it? Really? Got a cite for that? Because that number looks a bit, um, wrong.
That's 3550 potential cancer cures at your example rate, in the span of 4 years.
OK so what do you feel happens, exactly, to the money that is spent on the war? Where does it go? What does it buy? Who does it employ? What do _they_ then buy with it? The money doesn't just evaporate, it gets spent on high-tech items. Which employ high-tech people. Which improves the job market for the rest of us. Could we be spending some of that money on cancer research instead, or in furthering domestic biofuel infrastructure, and this and that? Sure, but pretending that the money somehow -whif- is gone, is naiive and/or dishonest.
It is insightful because it agrees with the notion that making money is evil. Instead of focusing on making money these universitities and corporations should write code to improve FOSS distributed number crunching clients and hope that enough people voluntarily install them so that enough numbers get crunched that a FOSS cure for cancer is developed. It will be Freely distributed to Everyone. All ads will be blocked by ad blocking software while this goes on.
You might thinking that it is inevitable that some geek would fork the number crunching client project because they got in a huff over a mailing list disagreement about some trivial detail of the philosophical ramifications of the animal chosen as mascot, and you would be correct, but all that means is that we'd have 2 FOSS cancer cures.
With this tech advance, 2 unhappy citizens in each city are made content.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
there already is a way to ensure world peace
Thermonuclear Holocaust
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Must be Friday...
My mother died last year from cancer. The type of cancer she had is not very frequent so there's not much money to make. The chemo-therapie and other therapy forms were not specifically developed for this type and do not work very effective and so she died.
I also travel frequently to developing countries and people I have known there died from malaria, no vaccination or anything because the people mostly affected are poor. And so there is not much research.
No, sir, no "anti-corporation blabber". It's just a plain fact that corporations (and by that patents) will help you only if there is enough money to be made. That is no blabber but pure clean capitalistic economy.
It is nothing else. It doesn't matter how many people are affected (malaria and AIDS) or how severe the problem is (cancer vs obesity), it's just about profit. So do not start with family member or the children examples. Business means revenue over humans.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
> The group is taking the step of patenting the idea, Once, just once, I want to hear a story where someone cures a hitherto incurable disease and releases the cure into the public domain.
Gramps has cancer again.
Damn, that's the 3rd time in 10 years, you'ld think he'd have quit smoking by now.
Nah, he still gets a kick out of the fact that he can get & get rid of cancer like the common colds of the 20th century.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
It's easy to decide the solution to the world's ills is to give away other people's stuff, isn't it?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I shouldn't have to remind someone so intelligent as the parent that selling a cure is vastly less profitable than selling treatment considering anywhere near similar cost per dose. So big pharma has a big reason to not sell a cure which might only take 10 doses vs treatment which takes 100 doses/yr for however many years.
I bestow a virtual +1, Insightful upon your post.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Since everyone's already voiced my thoughts in on way or another, I'll just say that all our current cancer treatment methods seem like the health care equivalent of releasing cane toads.
I'm not saying I have an answer. But since - as far as I am concerned - medicine is about the well-being of people and business is about profit, they are not a match made in heaven.
But we have that combination and now we have to see how we get along with that, "family member" and "the children" examples don't help much.
I could make up a one like: "Imagine you are poor and one of your family members has XY and medical care would be a human right and free." It doesn't help with concrete problems either.
cheers
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Step 1: Find cure for one of the most terrible diseases that humanity faces.
Step 2: Patent said cure.
Step 3: Profit!!!!
Honestly though, there's a time and place to make money, and a time and place to do what's right for the world.
Another goofy anti-capitalist liberal with a skewed view of the world, typing their posts from a dorm room somewhere complete with a "Bushitler" poster on their wall.
"Sufferin' succotash."
New techniques and technologies developed during the current war in Iraq are already starting to show up in the US and other parts of the world, and are starting to save lives.
When you look at the history of medicine you generally see big advances during and after wars. While that is a sad and unfortunate fact, it is a fact.
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=co
And before you simply disregard this a liberal propaganda check here http://costofwar.com/numbers.html for the logic they used to find it. Basically they took all of the emergency congregational war spending bills and added them up. So these numbers do not include normal military spending just war costs.
I went and found a cite for you http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182. Maybe the OP figured it was so easy to find that you wouldn't come back asking for a cite before at least googling a simple phrase like "cost of the iraq war" Looking further into it to make sure that site is not pulling numbers out of it's ass I checked this page http://costofwar.com/numbers.html which documents how they calculated the total from congressional documents.
Anyone who has seriously studied cancer, would hardly frame this kind of thing in terms of the prospect of "curing" cancer.
The idea in the article sounds interesting, but it is clearly being framed in a way to provoke an audience to become outraged at the idea of "patenting the cure for cancer."
Shirley there are researchers here on slashdot who have worked in cancer, who are rolling their eyes about now, in fact, I have an extended family member who is a PI on a long standing cancer research project and I can't wait to hear their take. I suspect this is old news among people in the cancer research community, but I'll have to wait for the school year to start before I can ask. I won't even forward an article with the title "Cancer Cure Patented", come on!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
So they have found an high tech method to attack cancer based on the same principle you'd get by eating enough vegetables...
Riiiight....Hmmm. In both undergrad (private, 3k students) and grad school (state, 25k students), I had any number of upper-level classes with between 6-12 students*. I'm in law school now, and in a couple of my (admittedly more specialized) second-year courses, there are 6-8 students. And yes, profs do tend to have 3-4 classes each per term.
*Electrical, Computer, and Nuclear engineering classes
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
while butyrate orchestrates the expression of genes responsible for halting the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.
Cancer cells mutate at extremely high rates. That's why tumors come back after chemotherapy shrinks them. This approach, if it works (a bigger if than the article made it out to be), isn't going to be immune from that.
From the article: "The double attack triggers cellular suicide, also called apoptosis, in the cancer cells."
Sure, but many cancer cells have already mutated and lost some number of the many genes that cells use to undergo apoptosis. And those cells are the ones that kill a patient.
The floggings will stop when morale improves.
So, Mary Poppins was right! A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down! And in a most delightful way, too!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It actually did make me take a second look. Although I wonder if they are doing it to prevent some other company the chance to patent a part of the process and profit for themselves - i.e. patent it before someone else.
For the guy asking about perspective, take a look at the sugars vs. hepatitis article from a couple days ago, where they were working around a patent for treatment to produce a low cost version, while the drug company charged $14,000/yr for treatment. A cure for cancer is worthless to most of the population if it costs a million bucks.
Corn flakes are a "potential" cure for cancer. This stuff hasn't even been tested on mice. We can already cure cancer in mice 1000 times over. Curing cancer in people is a COMPLETELY different thing. There are a gazillion "potential" cures for cancer and have been for decades now. Please save the big headlines for when something actually works on people...
Or at least find a simple, inexpensive treatment that allowed them to redner it cured for all intents and purposes?
How would that effect our attitude towards things that cause cancer or are seen as highly carcinogenic? Would smoking become the equivilent of poor oral hygiene (probably not considering the other problems)?
It's often interesting to wonder how or if our priorities or attitudes would change if suddenly what was a major problem for decades becomes considered an easily curable condition.
...but if they announced it, and did not begin the patenting process, couldn't someone else just work on their ideas and patent it in turn?
I figure they announce it to generate funding, and they patent it to prevent it from being stolen from them. Either they patent it or someone else will, right? It's not their evil motives, it's our reality.
In any case, they will (er... might) perfect the idea or someone else will, and then they will be paid for the rights to manufacture it. Then the patent will belong to big pharma and the monetary pain will commence.
... "Mapled Cured"
Of course crap like that is bad for you. Anyone who doesn't think so should watch "SuperSize Me". I'm talking about whole apples vs. apple juice or apple sauce...not vs., McHotApplePie(TM). I'm talking about raw sugar vs. white sugar...whole wheat bread vs. white bread....that kind of thing. Even things like raw vegetables vs. cooked vegetables (besides that, I think raw vegatables taste better anyway).
Perhaps I wasn't clear...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I'm sorry for your loss. I was a bit luckier; both of my parents are colon cancer survivors. But my comments were directed towards Dosius, so please do not take offense.
I never said that diseases don't mean big business. And for the most part, I agree with you. But the point of the article was this one particular advance.
As someone who is more-or-less destined to get colon cancer (despite eating healthy, most people with that type of cancer have a family history of it), I see any and all advances in cancer research as a positive thing. What upset me about Dosius' comments was that rather than talking about the specific new advancement that this article was referring to, he chose to use it as an excuse to attack medical corporations as a whole.
If this were a seperate thread dedicated to discussing the greed-induced system that is in place today, I would probably be arguing on the same side as both of you. But whether or not the system in place is corrupt and evil, this advancement is a good thing.
All too often cynical ranting is used as a substitute for knowledge or experience. Nice to see someone with an actual background speak up. It has also not escaped my attention that the biggest whiner on this thread has not responded to your post.
You said what I had neither the background or experience to say with any authority...well done.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Another thing you might want to consider is that certain charities may be competing against other charities in ways that are net harmful to society. It may very well be harmful to society if I give 90% of my charitable contributions to, say, breast cancer instead of to things that would return a greater benefit with less dollars and bring them much sooner (like, say, treating malaria in the 3rd world).
The primary difference is in their stated missions. This, however, does not mean that the non-profits actually do more with the money they make. By the time you add up all the money wasted to raise more money and maintain the relatively inefficienct overhead structure of the typical charity, they may well be far less efficient with their resources than, say, the typical pharma company. Compare the ~15% "wasted" to dividend payouts and stock buybacks in 05 at Pfizer to the ++50% of revenue wasted to simply raise money at most charities (the dividends of pharma serve as their own sales pitch and they're much cheaper).
A lot of money is spent by BigPharma (in both research and marketting) on things which aren't cures, but are instead on-going treatments.
That's because many of todays "diseases" (really, conditions) aren't necessarily curable, absent retroactive genetic modification.
Take, for example, hypertension (high blood pressure). If I have a genetic predisposition to get high blood pressure given my current lifestyle, I have two choices to change that: change my lifestyle, or take a pill every day. It's not like a virus or bacterial infection where the harmful agent can be killed and the disease goes away (but see below). It's the nature of an individual's metabolism, genetically determined. (And yes, lifestyle changes do work in treating some conditions -- but if I change my lifestyle, am I the same person?)
The same goes for a multitude of conditions that the "bigpharma" sells expensive chemical treatments for; many of those conditions can also be treated (or prevented) by changes in lifestyle (diet, exercise, etc). This indicates that there's no specific causative agent (like a virus) involved, but rather a metabolic condition. (And some lifestyle changes are easier than others).
However: It is also the case that some conditions that were previously thought to be lifestyle-related turn out in fact to have a viral or bacterial cause. Stomach (peptic) ulcers, for example, were long thought to be strictly a physiological result of stress, spicy foods, etc. It turns out that there's a bacterium - Heliobacter pylori - involved in most cases (some ulcers have a different cause), and killing the bacteria really does cure the disease. Human papilloma virus has been linked to cervical cancer, and there's now a vaccine against it. There's evidence to lead some researchers to think that there may be an obesity virus, and/or that heart disease has a bacterial component. (Mind, if the hypothetical obesity virus were a retrovirus, it itself is changing the genetic predisposition of the host.)
We're a long way from using artificial viruses to genetically tweak metabolic pathways. Inserting a missing gene is one thing, subtly changing the trigger level at which certain genes get expressed is another. For example, one fix for high blood pressure is to inhibit angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE). A chemical fix for this via daily drug dose is much simpler than genetic reprogramming (if we even understood all the underlying mechanisms), but it's a treatment, not a cure.
-- Alastair
I'm Leary of this. *Ducks.*
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
And what relation does $380B have with $355,000,000,000 please? Because I'm seeing an awfully large difference between those two numbers.
You and the other guy are off by nearly a factor of 1,000. Unless "billion" means something different in your numbering system.
Other peoples' stuff? What the global hell are you talking about? This is a cut and dry matter of priorities.
You know, like that time you had to decide between the snickers and the twix? Or maybe the time you wanted to ride the roller coaster and the ferris wheel? Only, this is capitalism so it's more a choice between having your dick hard or some poor bloke you don't even know dying of disease or famine. Big deal, I know. Happens all the time, I know. If it's not that then it's some rich bastards using their country's poorer members to shoot and bomb the poor bloke. All in the name of liberty.
Yeah, give away other peoples' stuff. Sounds real good. Like other peoples' common resources, eh? The environment? The airwaves? What you want to buy a patch of the sun, brand it for all the world to see? Ah who cares if they all own it, my company is gonna get there first and you can get in on the ground floor eh? We'll make a killing, right??
Yeah, buddy. Because it's not like universities and corporations and rich people have enough. If a three year old gut-bloated child can't pay me for my medicine, they don't deserve to live, god dammit! And while we're at it, let's dig up their grave to see if there's oil down there.
And you know, obviously this mean-spirited rant of mine isn't solving anything either. I recognize that and apologize for it. We need to, you know, come to terms with the fact that there's over six billion sets of genitals in the general vicinity of the planet, and they all get horny. They all got needs, eh? And you know, this is a nice planet. It's not a Rolls Royce of planets maybe, but it's not a go-kart either. With a little bit of work we can do some pretty righteous stuff, you dig?
So you know, if pressed on a choice between another scoop of polycarbonic-dextrobenzoate and each of us chipping in to buy some decent farm equipment for the third world (don't worry, no payments until after we figure out the prerequisite task of getting the warlords the fuck out of there so the equipment can actually be put to use)...nevermind.
I say BS.
Where is the PROOF ?Hmmmmm. Anyone cured from this???
This is a HYPE article to get 'hits' on websites.
Don't be fooled.
Speaking as someone who actually has cancer (a brain tumor), I've seen 100s of promised "cures" over the past year. Obviously, none of them have panned out. Not looking for sympathy here, but there is no reason to believe that this is not just another theory that doesn't turn into anything (like cold fusion) and not a "Silver bullet". Of course, researchers should keep trying, because even incremental improvements in cancer care can prolong life.
"I'm sorry I caused all that cancer"
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
And like most scientific discoveries, I'll be 30 years older by the time it gets deployed.
What we need is a web site with the Medicine Science news stories (like this one) that was in 1988 and then give us an update on how close they are to deployment, or if it turned out to be a dud.
"Sampathkumar and his colleagues built upon 20-year-old findings..."
whew. good thing no one will be able to do that with their freshly-patented findings.
"Yes. uh huh, yes, I know. But sir, wait, please slow down. Sir? Sir? Yes, ok, as I explained to you already, yes. I know, I looked at your research, and I agree, you do seem to have found a cure for cancer. It looks good, solid. Unfortunately, you violated several of our patents to do so. Yes.. yes sir I understand your frustration, but we aren't selling licenses at this time. Well sir, because honestly; a "cure"? Why would we want that? We're looking for something a little more viable, you know, in the long term. Something along the lines of a "lifetime treatment", requiring daily doses. Hopefully several daily doses, if our scientists can swing that. I don't know what you were thinking sir, a cure? That just doesn't help anyone at all. Do not call this office again. Good day."
Sadly, that's the same magical thinking that makes cancer patients pay $2700 for a jade bed to lie on. It's true that I don't know that no cure for cancer is imminent, just as I don't know that lying on a jade bed won't cure cancer. With magical thinking, all things you can't know for certain are equally possible, but that's just not true. I can assess the likelihood of a near-term cure for cancer and the likelhood that lying on a jade bed will cure cancer, and know that both these things are very, very, unlikely.
I understand the desire to raise money by issuing a press release on a chemical so preliminary that it hasn't even been tested in vivo, but I can't help but cynically think that these same scientists, once they get far enough along to start enumerating the problems with their new chemical, will be issuing press releases cautioning the public not to get their hopes up too soon.
Of course, a less toxic chemotherapy is greatly appealing. Artemisinin had such appeal. Plant-derived, and already used extensively in the treatment of malaria (the malaria parasite has some things in common with cancer, so more than once an anti-malarial drug has been applied to cancer with some success), artemisinin offers an in-vitro story just as exciting as the one listed here. It's still an active area of research, but like all previous compounds that showed absolutely stunning success in the test tube, it's offering a murkier picture when applied to patients. Much less toxic than standard chemo, though there was that one patient who got brain stem neuropathy.
Or perhaps you would like to try Paw-Paw, an annonaceous acetogenin derived from a plant that likewise offered stunning success in a Petri dish, but not such a stunning miracle in people. Much less toxic than standard chemo, though there is concern it could increase the risk of Parkinson's disease.
Of course, we already have a cure for cancer. If you read the pilot studies of the many, many compounds tested on cancer patients, you will often find that in a "failed" study, there were one or two patients that experienced complete remission, and are still alive. The drug is certainly a failure if it fails to help 99% of patients -- but for that 1% the drug (which will never be developed further!) is a cure for cancer.
We already have a cure for cancer -- we have many cures for cancer, we just don't know which cure works for which patient. That's the root of the drive for "personalized" cancer therapy, where we will actually someday be able to look at your cancer's genes and know exactly what to give you to cure it. Actually, gene testing is already reaching the clinical level, so isn't that exciting?
Well, not so exciting as hoped, once again. The gene mutation theory of cancer is falling apart. The researchers who once thought BRCA was going to offer a simple cause/effect explanation for certain breast cancers keep having to adjust downward their expectations of how often the "cause" actually produces the "effect". Like Einstein throwing in a cosmological constant to make the formula come out right, cancer doctors lean on "penetrance" to make the failed gene theory formula add up. BRCA "causes" breast cancer. Except when it doesn't. We used to think the BRCA theory was ~95% "right". But then it dropped to close to 80% "right". Hmmm.
Most likely, some form of aneuploidy is at work to produce the unpredictability, and uncurability we see in cancer. So, your cancer gets some characteristics from the site of origin (breast, prostate, colon, etc.), but also
they need to hurry up with this! and fuck the patents.. HELP PEOPLE INSTEAD.
chemo was the worst experience in my life. (having cancer doesn't help either).
i wouldn't wish an agrressive chemo treatment on anyone..
so, hurry up and figure this shit out!
.cig
They said 'Peace' not 'Pieces'...
I hope cancer never gets anywhere near MaNAds!!
for that smoking habit I've been meaning to pick up.
...all the money and time has been spent on attempting to cure AIDS/HIV. Not the worst thing in the world but a shame nonetheless. I honestly believe that we would have a "cure" or be closer if such a large chunk of resources hadn't been diverted to finding a cure for AIDS/HIV. Way too much of our attention has been diverted to this cause. Ask yourself this: How many people do you know with AIDS/HIV? How many do you know that have had cancer?
Well, to be fair, the headline says the cure was patented - not that it actually works...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Lets Patent this great discovery and make it unaffordable for the regular masses. If patents and greed were around when Curi or Pastuer were alive we would all be dead by now.
The point is that the research might cure cancer. If you're more concerned about those darned profit-seeking corporations making a profit, perhaps your attention is misplaced- your eye seems to be more on the money than on the cure for cancer.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
Patents expire.
Whatever evil you think might result from the fact that people can apply for patents on stuff like this, in 20 years the patent (if granted) will expire and its contents will be free for anyone to use.
God doesn't have money!
Even if we assume for a moment that pharma companies are NOT directly suppressing cures for diseases, I think one can assume without invoking a great deal of paranoia that pharma companies invest their efforts on finding treatments - not cures. After all, why kill the golden goose?
It's debatable whether a pharma company would suppress a cure that would destroy the market for their profitable treatment drugs, but I think they themselves will admit that their focus is on treatments because cures are harder to develop and will result in smaller profits. As a result, of the billions of dollars going into research, one wonders how much, if any, is actually invested into a search for cures.
rephrase your question:
if it were possible to cure a difficult disease, would a cabal of companies conspire to prevent its release if it they could profit 10 times more on the treatment than the cure?
and before you answer,
look at the history of addictive drugs.
Article slashdotted. Here is another source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/07010 3201405.htm
I'm guessing it might.
1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion
1,000,000 = 1 Million
1,000 = 1 Thousand
I am guessing you are using the British definition of a Billion (1,000,000).
$380B = $380,000,000,000 so not much of a difference.
1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion
1,000,000 = 1 Million
1,000 = 1 Thousand
I am guessing you are using the British definition of a Billion (1,000,000). You're not actually serious here, are you? Because either you don't get basic farking math, or you're lying by a factor of nearly 1000 to make a misguided point. Honestly, it doesn't matter, you're either wrong mathematically or you're wrong through an intentional desire to lie. But, 300 billion, is NOT 300,000,000,000. That's 300 TRILLION. This has nothing to do with brit either, I'm a merkin.
Just so you know, when you blatantly lie to make your point, your point automatically is disregarded by anyone who spots the blatant lie.
But then you say "Microwaving food basically kills any nutritional content" which makes you look pretty foolish.
It's possible that heating by other means is more healthy (as long as your "other means" isn't grilling, or some similar carcinogen-loading technique) but your statement is pure bunkum.
Wow...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
How about this for proof.
or this if you don't believe wikipedia:
http://www.jimloy.com/math/billion.htm
9 billion 1000 million (1 milliard)
9 zero's... 1,000,000,000
Or if you still don't believe me:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LargeNumber.html
Now, your turn find me just 1 site that says 1,000,000 is a billion.
Or are you just a troll?
380,000,000,000,000 is 380 trillion. See my other post.
Nice try. Now, go reread. The person posting a number posted in trillions for a number in the billions. This isn't complicated. Retraction accepted but not expected.
Here's another. Ford develops the technology you propose, but they have a billions dollar factory and trained workforce geared towards making cars like they always have. As long as they own the technology it doesn't threaten their current business model. What if I develop the technology? Should I make the world a better place with longer lasting cars or sell it for millions... There is no conspiracy necessary. They make cars a certain way, if I develop a way to grow them in vats from seeds Ford is definitely going to want to buy it and they will likely shelve it because they already have prior investments for making them the same way they did yesterday.
Checked the Catholic Church lately? Their assets are insane. I'm not kidding. God is definitely loaded.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
until then it's just more false hope and assholes digging for funding.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Watch very very carefully...
Originally I said:
$380B = $380,000,000,000 so not much of a difference.
To which you responded:
Bloody fucking hell. That's 380 TRILLION, not 380 BILLION. So yeah, a factor of 1000, is a big difference. Which was and is my farking point. I mean, if you want to complain about something, go ahead, but don't farking exaggerate by, what, 100,000 percent?
At which point I pointed out:
380,000,000,000,000 is 380 trillion. See my other post.
Notice the trillion has a whole new set of zeros over the billion. You can count them if you want. I guess I now understand how math and science is messed up in the US, you can't even tell the diference between 10^9 and 10^12.
Nice try fell free to go re-read yourself. (How in the world did I get into 2 threads arguing with an obvious troll?)
I have no clue where you got the mistaken notiont that 380,000,000,000 is a trillion that has NEVER been stated in this thread. 380,000,000,000 a number you brought to the table is 380 billion dollars. This has been the point of the argument from the beginning. I have provided links proving the orginal budget number is correct, and additional links proving I know how to count. As you said "Retraction accepted but not expected."
Knowledge is however produced in the process. I don't think it's possible to supress cure. Dellay it on the other hand...
Where are you from?
1,000,000 is 1 million
1,000,000,000 is 1 billion
355,000,000,000 (the number in question) is 355 billion
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion