Cheap, Safe, Patentless Cancer Drug Discovered

PyroMosh writes "The New Scientist is reporting that researchers working at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have discovered that an existing drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) is effective in killing cancer cells, while leaving the host's healthy cells unharmed. DCA has already been used for years to treat metabolic disorders, and is known to be fairly safe. Sounds like great news, is it too good to be true? Why is the mainstream news media failing to report on this potential breakthrough? The University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board have set up a site with more info, where you can also donate to support future clinical trials."

Comments

Patentless?

[iluvcapra]

Open Source Medicine?

How would you write the GPL of pharmacopeia?

Re:Patentless?

[Cocoshimmy]

I think what you're refering to is Socialized medicine. One of the benefits of it is the fact that the hospitals and doctors aren't out there to squeeze every last penny out of you.

Re:Patentless?

[littlerubberfeet]

The doctors don't squeeze. Investors/shareholders (through HMOs and for-profit healthcare companies) squeeze.

Re:Patentless?

[MMC Monster]

As a physician, I may squeeze patients a little bit. But that's more because HMOs and the government are squeezing me for every nickel they can. I would love to spend an hour seeing every new patient and half an hour on every followup. I am limited on how much the HMOs will pay me to see those patients, however. And my overhead is somewhat fixed (have to pay that secretary that works for me, etc.) If I spend less time seeing each patient, I get to see more patients and hopefully break even.

Yes, I make decent income now. However, I did 8 years schooling (that I am still paying for) followed by 7 years of residency and fellowship training in which I made $50K for 80 hour weeks + overnight in hospital calls and every third weekend on call. I think I'm due a bit more than average U.S. income, thank-you-very-much.

Re:Patentless?

[Tinfoil]

in which I made $50K for 80 hour weeks + overnight in hospital calls and every third weekend on call.

Oh, so you worked for EA while you attended medical school?

Re:Patentless?

[budgenator]

My Dr. is squezzing me and workman's comp, but when I look arround his waiting room it's obvious that about half the patient's don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever paying the bill, yet I see them There every six weeks. I swear my doctor lives at the hospital two doctors covering a regonal burn center is insane.
Some places have formally socialized medicine and we have informally socialized medicine

Re:Patentless?

[El Torico]

For three years, I made about $15K a year as a Soldier protecting you. You're welcome.

Re:Patentless?

[Tinfoil]

I never understood the logic of that. We as a society will not let, for example, a truck driver drive for more than x number of hours in a day before they have to take a mandatory amount of time off. I forget what x equals, but it's 8-10 hours max. Yet, we'll stick a doctor into an emergency ward for days on end with said doctor only catching sleep when things are slow.

Re:Patentless?

[Brushfireb]

First, let me say that if you are a soldier, I appreciate it. This comment is more to clarify my understanding of how soldiers are paid. That said, your statement about $15k seems to be a bit misleading. 1 - Were you deployed in a foreign country? Correct me if I am wrong, but deployed pay is 2-3x normal pay. So, I suppose you can consider yourself 'protecting' him, but I would say only if you were deployed. 2 - Isnt it true that the military covers most of your living expenses? Living Expenses (either by giving you a place to stay or by providing off-base stipends), Food/Meals (again by providing food directly or stipend), etc? $15k in profit is more than I make after rent + food.

Re:Patentless?

[pngwen]

The problem I have with your attitude is simple. Doctors spend long hours and lots of time schooling, followed by a period in which they work extremely long hours for next to nothing. That much is certain. What about Engineers and Programmers? We go through the same crap, but we don't make near as much as you do. What is it that makes you feel your time is worth $800.00 an hour? (I arrived at this figure by timing how long my physician spends with me vs. how much I pay them.) The reason is simple. People would die without your help. What you are doing is nothing more than taking advantage of sick people, milking them for all they are worth. It is tantamount to extortion, except you use illness instead of violence.

You think you're the only type of business that has overhead? Virtually every business pays an office staff, has to be insured, needs a building, etc. Why don't they charge outrageous fees? It comes back to the arrogant sense of entitlement that you exhibit. My plumber is more professional and friendly than any doctor I have ever seen. He comes to my home, does his job and courteously thanks me. He charges less than my doctor. If he can do it, why can't you?

I will never trust you. You are a doctor. It is in your best interest to keep me just well enough to survive, but sick enough to keep returning. You are exceptionally greedy, and you wouldn't hesitate to prolong, rather than cure, any illness. I will only go to doctors if I need to, and I will second guess EVERYTHING you say. It is for the best, because you wouldn't hesitate to kill me by making me take medications that are dangerous, but which you get kickbacks for prescribing.

Re:Patentless?

[Henry V .009]

A lot of your training was part of a system designed to make it harder to become a doctor, artificially restrict demand, and drive up your current wages. There are faster and far better ways to assure a better quality of doctor. So pardon me if I don't cry you a river about what you had to go through.

Of course, doctors aren't quite the worst offenders here. You do know why orthodontists charge so much, don't you?

Re:Patentless?

[Tinfoil]

My father in law in a truck driver and apparently they've put new rules into place that state that for every 13 days of driving you have to take 6 or 7 days off now. He's a long-haul driver for Scheider, on the 2 week on 1 week off rotation for the past few years.

Re:Patentless?

[eli pabst]

Even if you were to get a PhD in engineering or CS, you would still likely spend much less time in school and would owe much less in tuition whe you were done. Then you'd starting making a pretty nice income right away. The fact that the majority engineers and programmers have a bachelors degree means they spend *way* less in time or money. If it were about money, most doctors (with the exception of higher paying specialties like surgeons, derm, etc) would be better off going to law school or business school and making close to 6 figures right out of school instead. I know plenty of physicians who are asshats that only went into it for the money/prestige, but by far the majority of doctors are people who really care about the patients and would rather spend more time with their patients. The OPs sentiments are dead on. They just don't appreciate it when jackasses tell them they're overpaid when they work 60+ hours a week+weekends+holidays, are paying of huge loans for 10 years, and had to sacrifice a lot to get there.

 

What is it that makes you feel your time is worth $800.00 an hour?

You do realize how little your doctor will ever see of that $800 right?

 

My plumber is more professional and friendly than any doctor I have ever seen. He comes to my home, does his job and courteously thanks me. He charges less than my doctor. If he can do it, why can't you?

If your plumber fucks up the pipes, he has to come back out and fix the leak. If your doctor fucks up *your* pipes you're dead.

Re:Patentless?

[El Torico]

To clarify, I was a Soldier in West Germany in the early 1980's (three minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock); our unit was expected to survive for about three weeks in the event of a NATO / Warsaw Pact conflict (other units were as low as a few hours). Yes, I was protecting him indirectly, just as millions of Soldiers and Police protect the rest of us (myself included) every day.

In the 1980's, there was no such thing as deployed pay for overseas duty, and we paid all federal and state taxes as well as Social Security. Hazardous Duty Pay today is still only about $150 a month.

Yes, we given "three hots and a cot", and our facilities were decent. However, when you are in the field, your living conditions can be a bit primitive, and you can be out there for quite a while. Yes, there were benefits, but the downside risks are very serious. You never forget the first time you are given mission load (the ammunition you will use) and told "this is not an exercise". Thankfully, I never faced combat, especially since a war in 1980's Europe would have gotten very ugly, very quickly.

In my original post, I just wanted to point out that we each have our cross to bear and we each chose it.

Re:Patentless?

[Xaositecte]

Deployed pay is confusing, but usually not much more than your base pay.

If you're in a hostile fire zone, you get (depending on your rank) around $100-200 extra per month, and tax-free income (Which is pointless at the lower ranks, because you're barely paying taxes in the first place).

If you're premenantly in a foreign country (Germany, UK, Japan, etc.) - you get a Cost of Living allowance that supposedly normalizes your pay to account for the dollar's shitty exchange rate. If you buy all your stuff on base, or over the internet, this is huge (~400 a month here in Germany, higher in the UK or Japan)

Military chow halls are, by and large, disgusting places to eat at. People who absolutely have to save money (heavy debts, etc.) - will eat there religiously. The rest of us buy food.

Housing is indeed paid for, it's adjusted to the local area's housing prices.

Overall with my allowances and base pay, I'm getting paid somewhere around $40K a year, total, as an E-3.

Re:Patentless?

[ShadowsHawk]

I wish others here could understand that soldiers are not politics. I wish they could appreciate the sacrifice that people make when they join the military and take on that style of life. Thank you for your service.

Re:Patentless?

[Joe Decker]

That much is certain. What about Engineers and Programmers? We go through the same crap, but we don't make near as much as you do.

Where did you do your residency? ;)

As someone who spent twenty years writing software professionally at startups before taking on my current career, I'm callin' BS, there's no equivalent of residency in my old career.

I will never trust you. You are a doctor...

Wow, you sound very angry. Perhaps you, like I, have had some very bad doctors in the past. If that's the case, I'd suggest voting with your feet until you can find someone who is both highly competent and worthy of trust. Talk to your friends for recommendations, particularly ones who have had complex medical issues. (My current doctor was recommended to me by my gf, who is currently dealing both with rheumatoid arthritis and Hashimoto's.) While no first-line doctor is going to be an expert at every medical problem, but a good one should be able to delegate to specialists when necessary, as well as being able to listen well to what symptoms you report.

I do not mean to suggest that you should trust doctors because they are doctors, you should give due caution to conflict-of-interest issues and the quality of the care you receive. Yeah, it's gonna be a pain in the butt to sort through the ones who are just interested in getting through the day. And I don't mean to suggest that determining the competency of doctors is somehow trivial for those of us who aren't doctors, either.

Still, in the end, ethical, friendly and talented doctors exist. We needn't argue their relative rarity or frequency, my singular point is that you should accept nothing less, and if you aren't getting that right now, you should start voting with your feet until you do.

Re:Patentless?

[mevets]

I think it is because doctors can only kill one at a time....

Re:Patentless?

[UncleTogie]

As a military brat, I'd like to be among the first to thank you for your service. We were stationed at Spangdahlem in the early 80s. For those who think that grunts 'n' pilots should only be paid extra in time of war, consider this:

In dad's squadron (81st TFS, flying F-4Gs at that time) we had a officer and gentleman name of Jerry Linn. As he and his back-seater were running routine patrol/training, their engines flamed out, and wouldn't restart. They had two choices. They could "punch out," leaving the F-4 to drop into the middle of the town they were over. The other option? Ride that *&@#! into a mountain. They'd die, but the populace would be safe.

The fact that they chose the latter is I believe why our troops deserve better pay and benefits, and is why I'll randomly thank people I see in uniform. They deserve as much and more.

Re:Patentless?

[Fordiman]

"1) There's nothing wrong with becoming a doctor to make money"

I disagree. There's everything wrong with becoming a doctor to make money. Without the passion for helping people, the training means nothing; like any profession, you have to give a damn about what you're working on. I'm not saying you shouldn't get into medicine without the expectation of making money; it's a profession, you have to expect returns on it. I'm just saying that the AMOUNT of money you make is peripheral to a good doctor: It should be enough to live comfortably; anything less is unfair, anything more makes his services prohibitively expensive.

Of course, below the surface, I'm agreeing with you, it's just that I'm picking nits. A good doctor performs a valuable service, and as a result should be compensated justly for it. The nit that I'm picking is that 'doing it for the money' implies that in this theoretical doctor's mind, the money is paramount. The second I sense that sort of thinking in a doctor, I no longer trust him; I feel that suddenly, a little green bit of paper takes precedence over my health.

After all, I've seen the same thing happen in IT; a tech fixes your computer *just enough* that it works today, but some strange fault *will* happen in the next week, so that you go calling the tech again, getting him a new fee. With money as primary motivator, a doctor is likely to do the same thing.

Of course, I never ever trust other people to be good; I only trust them to follow their motivations. If I believe a doctor is motivated by a passion to help people, I trust him.

Additionally, I never trust a doctor that uses the excuse of unreasonably high insurance as an excuse to gouge his customers; a doctor is charged high insurance for either being too 'inexperienced' (in which case he should still be working at a hospital), or having a propensity for lawsuits (in which case trust, while not explicitly undeserved, is questionable).

I do have a certain trust in hospitals; with enough MDs watching each others backs, I'm almost certain they're not going to accidentally kill me. Yes I watch Scrubs. No, that doesn't scare me, nor does it reflect on my opinions of the real world of medicine.

Notes: 'him' is used as a convenient placeholder only because writing 'him/her' everywhere seems ... annoying. This would be well solved by a singular form of gender-neutral personal pronoun, which doesn't exist in the English language, as far as I know. My own physician is female, has her own practice, is quite good at the job, and has what I believe to be reasonable prices.

Re:Patentless?

[bob_herrick]

Additionally, I never trust a doctor that uses the excuse of unreasonably high insurance as an excuse to gouge his customers; a doctor is charged high insurance for either being too 'inexperienced' (in which case he should still be working at a hospital), or having a propensity for lawsuits (in which case trust, while not explicitly undeserved, is questionable). Sorry, but not true. Insurance works by spreading cost over 'homogenous exposure units.' Doctors, as a class, have high insurance rates, particularly in high risk practices like anasthesia and obstetrics, in large part because the nature of the work is that it is risky and the consequences for individuals can be very harsh. When things go wrong in this country, the recourse is litigation, and juries, here, love their lotteries. Some premium variation reflects individual performance, just like your personal auto policy does, but the bulk of the cost is the result of averages, not the individual doctor. If you want lower health care cost one thing that can be done is to stop suing needlessly, and exhibit restraint if ever on a jury.

Re:Patentless?

[eli pabst]

Many tens of thousands of these mistakes result in someone dying. Hundreds of thousands result in serious harm. Please don't imply that doctors have higher standards than plumbers.

I wasn't trying to imply it at all. In fact I'll flat out say that doctors do have higher standards than plumbers (and virtually most other professions). They have to, in order to minimize errors. Which is why even the most minuscule thing must be documented, the words they use when writing orders/notes are extensively analyzed and standardized to prevent errors (many hospitals have regulations against use the greek letter mu when writing ul (microliter) because it easier to confuse with ml. People have actually done studies on that kind of thing. How many plumbers do you know that spend hours after work writing extensive notes on the jobs they did during the day. However, I'm certainly not saying doctors are perfect. They put a lot of effort into trying to be, but they're still human like the rest of us.

 

It's a more difficult job, but plumbing mistakes are pretty rare in comparison to medical mistakes.

I'd like to see some kind of reference for that. I've had some plumber screw things up pretty bad more than once.

 

I've had doctors force antibiotics on me for a cold, withhold pain medication with a back injury, suggest expensive and meaningless tests, and so forth.

Note that prescibing antibiotics for colds is largely a results of patients *demanding* they be given something. They don't want to be told "sorry, there's nothing I can really do for that" and family practice docs will often lose patients if they don't.

I realize that everyones experience is different. I can walk today because some guy who used to be an english teacher decided to go into medicine and become a neurosurgeon because he thought he could better help people. He put a shattered vertebrae in my spine back together in an 8 hour procedure and then went in saw patients afterwards. Probably put in a 12-15 hour day.

Re:Patentless?

[dgatwood]

This shows why you should never trust a corporation to make decisions about safety and the value of human life. They'll choose the bottom line over safety every time.

Re:Patentless?

[MMC Monster]

As for insurance rates: I assume you're talking about malpractice insurance. I'd be somewhat surprised if a physician talked to patients about malpractice rates except in the aggregate. Malpractice rates are based on the individual physicians' faults. However, they are also based on the specialty the physician practices.

For instance, in the state of Pennsylvania, recently there was an exodus of practicing high-risk obstetricians due to the increase in malpractice insurance for the specialty. It's a particularly high-risk specialty because (if I recall correctly) the child has the right to sue until he reaches 21 (at least).

As for being able to trust a hospital more than a physician: The worry is always continuity of care. A number of bigger hospitals are offering "Hospitalist" services. These are physicians who are payed by the hospital to take care of patients in the hospital. They save money overall because they don't have outpatient practices of their own; in this way, private physicians don't need to enter the hospital at all. They just entrust the hospitalist to take care of their patients until they are discharged. This leads to less continuity of care. The hospitalists don't really know the patients as well as the physician who may have been treating the patient for a decade or more. Also, the hospitalist is pressured by the hospital (who pays his bills) to discharge patients early to make way for more admissions.

Continuity of care is also the problem with limiting resident hours while on call. The resident who was taking care of a sick patient during the day will sign off to someone else who covers for the night and really doesn't get invested in the patient's wellbeing. I'm not saying residents should live in the hospital, but a 36 hour call may be of more benefit to patients in general, with the caveat that the resident is not allowed to do procedures if he is in the hospital for more than 24 hours.

Re:Patentless?

[cluckshot]

Isn't it ironic that a profession alleged to be dedicated to the good of mankind is completely unwilling to accept human limitations as a criteria for their management in the work place? Sorry if I am so crass but the medical profession has made a business out of this sort of cruel behavior. (No this isn't troll -- its a fact)

Actually this whole story and it's subsequent discussions illustrates the conflicts of interest that develop as you take a person and reduce them to a mere cog in the wheels of society. The interests (Adam Smith "Invisible Hand") of the individual have in modern society become so departed from the common interest of the survival of society and the general welfare of all mankind that we allow arguments and policy that are insane on the face of them. The "Invisible Hand" only works when it is driven with the whole picture in mind. As such the economic and social arguments of many "Libertarian" and "Conservative" types (Not all of them please!) often depart from any reality. Medicine when driven by profit motive does not seek to cure, that is a one shot one time customer who pays little. It seeks rather to treat where many expensive unsuccessful repeat visits occur.

It is a complete reality that there are multiple technologies out there which for little cost will cure many conditions of mankind. There are also other solutions awaiting "research funding" that work well or will soon work well if given the chance. Examples of these include "Cold Lasers" which can improve healing, reduce most arthritic conditions, stop many infections and more. Another is strong magnets. They work for pain relief (in some cases as strong as morphine without the problems) and to accelerate healing. These all languish for lack of FDA approval due to the fact that they cannot be patented and held hostage to pay back for the expensive studies needed. The argument for socialized medicine becomes strong here. Many other things like vaccines could cure or prevent many diseases and will never happen because of this system. For example a vaccine against Syphilis and some other Sexually Transmitted Diseases would dramatically cut costs in our world. They compete against the ineffective treatments so they never happen. The reasons here are very simple. The "Invisible Hand" is pushed by the MD and Hospital Paycheck rather than by the end customer's needs.

In medicine there is another nasty realty. Answer for yourself, have you ever known anyone who was seriously ill that could pay their own medical costs? (Rare for sure) Everyone sick depends on the healthy to support them back to health. It is a reality that has no answer in the "Free Market." It has an answer as an obligation of mankind and a function of society. (Read Thomas Payne "Common Sense" [1776]) Government is the proper agent to compel those who forget this obligation of society to do their duty. All defects of Government admitted.

As to the kindness of Medical Personnel, there are many decent persons there. However; there is a group largely the management level who have no human compassion what so ever. They call the shots. These people think there is something right about having staff who does not have health care coverage. These people run an industry in the USA which has a very high rate of uninsured parties and primarily as a result of the determined policy of management. The best way to describe the management of Health Care in the USA is that it is a gang of vultures and jackals.

Re:Patentless?

[cartman]

I should start off by saying that I thought your post was utter bullshit times ten.

I'll try to address your points briefly.

Doctors spend long hours and lots of time schooling, followed by a period in which they work extremely long hours for next to nothing. That much is certain. What about Engineers and Programmers? We go through the same crap, but we don't make near as much as you do.

No. I am a professional programmer, and I can attest that the average programmer/engineer has a bachelor's degree. We don't go through anywhere near the same crap, since we didn't endure 5+ years of graduate school or 80 hr/week residencies.

What is it that makes you feel your time is worth $800.00 an hour? (I arrived at this figure by timing how long my physician spends with me vs. how much I pay them.)

I looked at my most recent medical bill and the "negotiated rate" was $150 for about half an hour. Part of that money obviously goes to office rent, paying the secretary, malpractice insurance, etc. The average doctor actually makes about $90/hr, so your estimate was off by a factor of about 9.

People would die without your help. What you are doing is nothing more than taking advantage of sick people, milking them for all they are worth.

Thus far, very few sick people have been "milked for all they're worth". I've been to the doctor several times and none of them demanded my current net worth.

It is tantamount to extortion, except you use illness instead of violence.

No. It's not extortion unless they caused the illness or are threatening to cause one, and then they charge you for a cure. Simply curing an illness (or treating it) is not extortion.

You think you're the only type of business that has overhead? Virtually every business pays an office staff, has to be insured, needs a building, etc.

Doctors don't claim that their business is the only one with overhead.

My plumber is more professional and friendly than any doctor I have ever seen. He comes to my home, does his job and courteously thanks me. He charges less than my doctor. If he can do it, why can't you?

Do you honestly not know why? Do you think it's the best use of a neurosurgeon's extremely scarce time to drive to people's houses? And, would it be possible to take your pipes to the plumber's office?

I will never trust you. You are a doctor... You are exceptionally greedy, and you wouldn't hesitate to prolong, rather than cure, any illness... You wouldn't hesitate to kill me by making me take medications that are dangerous

You should be extremely grateful they even take you as a patient.

Re:Patentless?

[LunaticTippy]

You hit on the one thing I think our doctors are good at: critical care. If you have a broken something or a leaking something they can fix you up amazingly. I know there are good doctors, I just think they are rare and subject to burnout. It's the little things that leave me feeling cheated. I shouldn't have to explain how the common cold works to a doctor.

You're wrong about the error rate. According to the FDA medical errors in hospitals kill 50k-100k Americans per year, and are the 8th largest cause of death. Not all of these errors are caused by doctors, but I think it's fair to mix doctors and the health care system up. This doesn't even begin to cover the millions of less critical errors made on an outpatient, office, or long term care facility. The linked document (from 2000) outlines an ambitious program to reduce medical errors. The results so far are hardly impressive.

I don't think minimizing the error rate and huge financial and human cost are helpful. I have respect for people in the health care field, but we need to be honest about the problems.

Re:Patentless?

[radtea]

Where did you do your residency? ;)

Caltech. Only we call it a post-doc.

I used to work in medical physics (after a relatively short 13 years of undergrad, graduate school, and post-doc'ing in pure physics) and it was very clear that MD's had it made financially over PhD's, despite the fact that we had at least as much opportunity to kill people with our mistakes.

MD's are highly paid for exactly one reason. As Adam Smith once said, "Never do two or three men of the same trade sit down together over a pint of ale that it does not end up in a general conspiracy against the rest of mankind." Or words to that effect.

Much of what MD's do could be done by various forms of paramedic and nurse-practitioner. But the legal lock on "one certification to rule them all" has kept MD's in a safe, competition-free bubble for the better part of a century, and no-where moreso than in the U.S.

Dupe

[KillerCow]

Cancer Drug May Not Get A Chance Due to Lack of Patent

Thanks for playing.

Re:Dupe

[Dirtside]

I would hope that of all the articles you could complain about there being a dupe of, the cure for cancer would probably be at the bottom of the list. ;)

Even this announcement is a little late...

[Dieppe]

If anyone was paying attention this is a few months after the previous mention of it.

And the reason it won't get any funding to study whether or not it's a real cure for cancer is because there's no money in it! If it's a cheap solution and it magically cures cancer... where's the profit in that?

So people will continue to die from cancer, who could have been cured by this cheap drug, because it would offset the bottom line. Nice world we life in, huh? Up next: Other things about this world you didn't know! Wal*Mart sells toys made by third-world children in order to sell them cheap in the United States!

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[Speed Pour]

And the reason it won't get any funding to study whether or not it's a real cure for cancer is because there's no money in it! If it's a cheap solution and it magically cures cancer... where's the profit in that? This may not be entirely accurate. If the drug already exists, companies can mass-produce it cheaply because they also don't have to pay somebody else who owns the patent. That handles the profitability side, at least as to why companies might use it if it's ever shown to be truly successful.

As to funding studies, there are plenty of rich people, or simply the giving types, that would donate towards this. Again, with the drug already in existence, it's not a question of production, simply a question of supply and testing expenses. I've heard the same argument about Linux (why use it? It'll never be updated because there's no money in it...) but it keeps a lot of people pretty happy. Besides, this is a college, they can apply for more grants or funding than anybody would care to count.

The part I'm worried about...while pharmacological companies can mass-produce cheaply and without patent overhead, the bigger concern is that this drug shows some shred of a chance to cure some types/cases of cancer. The problem is, as the old saying goes "There's more money in treating the disease than there is in curing it". Just because there's profit to be made, and real potential here, there's a real chance that it won't happen because it won't induce continual and regular profit.

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[Cocoshimmy]

You mention that it won't get funding because there is no money in a patentless cure. I beg to differ. At least from a Canadian perspective, where we have socialized medicine, it makes a lot of sense. This is after all a Canadian institution that discovered this.

Cancer is very costly disease which costs the government, and as a result Canadian citizens a lot of money. If there was something that could cure cancer at a very minimal cost, it could save the government millions (possibly billions) in health care dollars every year. Not only that, many other countries which also have socialized medicine, such as all of the EU, would benefit from something like this in a similar way. I can see government funding filling the role that pharmeceutical companies normally play in this simply because it could save them billions.

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[Maxo-Texas]

Not all countries are dominated by lawyers.

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[Dirtside]

Yeah, just in the same way that you can't patent a spoon, which is why nobody makes spoons.

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[Bobzibub]

If you read it again, you'll see that that was not the argument. It was given that in Canada there is socialized medicine, that it makes sense for the tax payer to pick up the tab of the trials due to cost savings.

touchy touchy.

PS: Canada does cover everyone for less per capita than the US covers the old and the poor. ; )

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[Silverlock]

Of course not. There is no spoon.

Re:Even this announcement is a little late...

[DarenN]

Except it's already used in humans for other reasons and shows minimal, minor, side effects. So the clinical trials are a case of equipment (to test for cancer progression rates or lack thereof) and patients. Plenty of people suffer cancer, I can't imagine many of them turning this down, can you?

So the cost should be minimal compared to other clinical trials. Does this mean we can smoke again?

Not what it seems

[Raindance]

DCA kills many sorts of cancer in mice. This is a good sign. It's based on something found naturally in food and is already used safely in humans. That's also good.

But many, many things kill cancer in mice but don't in humans-- mice have significantly different molecular machinery than we do re: cancer prevention (just look at the cancer rates of control lab rats!). This is promising, but it's no breakthrough until it proves itself in humans.

I feel there's a lot of politicking going on behind the scenes on this issue.

Re:Not what it seems

[Wills]

I think further research on the effects of DCA is needed before anybody can say that DCA is safe to use in humans. There seem to be very good and very bad effects reported in different studies:

• DCA and a related chemical TCE were both found to play a prominent role in creating liver cancers with DCA accelerating the growth rate of liver cancer

• Later research found that DCA and its metabolites may have different roles in the cancer process and that dose-response is very non-linear because DCA inhibits its own metabolism.

• DCA has such serious side effects on the human nervous system that in a recent study 15 out of 15 test patients had to be taken off experimental DCA treatment because of toxic neuropathy and the study was terminated early.

• DCA has been found to prevent and reverses pulmonary high blood pressure

Re:Patentless

[KillerCow]

Patentless is the best part. Now, capitalism will lower the price and make it more affordable to those who need it.

Actually, no-one can afford to run it through clinical trials since they can't protect their investment.

It's only hope is to be prescribed as an "off-label" treatment, or for a University to foot the bill for the betterment of mankind.

a little early

[mugnyte]

  while the revelation of the compound is somewhat novel, research around diseases has supposed "breakthroughs" like this quite often. the quest for funding outright on the web seems awkward, since there's more than enough foundations that fund cancer research and medicine. but i'm not in academia, so maybe this is the norm?
  i'm not a big believer in conspiracies, and if cancer folks will travel to the backwaters of the earth to get voodoo remedies, shark parts and holy men to pray over them, they will surely fund anything with even a glimmer of promise. if this works, i expect it to float to the top once the news catches on (and it works).

Please, not another breakthrough

[jenik]

Not only is this story a dupe but having read the paper in Cancer Cell I'm nowhere near that optimistic. Yes, they show death of cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo but the proposed mechanism of action (re-activation of mitochondrial metabolism leading to increased free radical production and apoptosis) is debatable to say the least. Moreover, even though DCA is registered for treatment of congenital lactate acidosis, it has quite a few unpleasant side effects so it's definitely not a silver bullet. The paper is not clear on how they came to interpretations they present as some of the data could easily be interpreted in other ways. Although the concept of targeting mitochondria to treat cancer is very interesting, as usual, beware of breakthroughs in medical sciences - they often aren't. jan

Re:Please, not another breakthrough

[Yetihehe]

Well, chemotherapy has side effects too. Does DCA make your hairs go free? If it would be painfull only two weeks or month, is it worse than several months of pain with chemotherapy?

Re:Please, not another breakthrough

[prefect42]

Read the next issue of New Scientist, and the reader letters includes a piece that notes that it's rather early to be suggesting that this drug is a wonder drug, including the fact that it's known to cause cancer as a side effect (in much lower doses than would be needed to treat a cancer). Not that that's necessarily a killer.

Re:Peer review?

[loconet]

Here is your scientific biweekly peer reviewed journal with an article on the topic. Those "I'll wait until the peer-reviewed journal" rehearsed responses are getting annoying.

This is a repeat

[Aurostion]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 7/1913210 Cancer Drug May Not Get A Chance Due to Lack of Patent Regardless, I know plenty of people are calling BS on some of the things in the article, and I have some big problems with it:

pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can?t make money on unpatented medicines.

The drug can be patented in regards to its specific anti-cancer applications or by the mechanism by which it attacks various problems, in this case various cancers. Regardless, the big bucks are in the licensing. Either this guy is wrong, or he's taking a cheap shot. Further, this is a huge oversimplifcation:

The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer.

The FDA approves drugs based on their specific application. It has to be approved for each different kind of cancer it's used on (granted, doctors often use drugs that are approved for one thing for another).

For real this time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a student at the University of Alberta. The student newspaper is called "The Gateway" and at the end of the winter term there is a joke issue called "The Getaway." In THIS YEAR'S December joke issue the cover story way "U of A Scientists Cure Cancer." Five issues later they broke the real story here: http://www.gateway.ualberta.ca/index.php?iid=247. No one believed the real story...

Re:Peer review?

[arivanov]

Here went my moderation to this thread, but sod with it.

The original article apparently was published in Cell. I am not subscribed to it so I cannot verify that right away, but I am assuming this to be true. If the stuff passed peer review it would have been published in something at that level.

There is an ongoing joke in molecular biology (for the last 10 years). "If you publish once in Cell you can happily retire". Compared to Cell, Science or Nature are yellow corner newshop rags. Also, if it was published in Cell, they are going to be getting money regardless of the patents. All major foundations follow it. There is another joke amidst the molecular biology crowd: "If you publish once in Cell you will never have to ask for funding till you retire, it will come to you". So I would not worry about lack of sponsorship by major pharmaceuticals either.

Why isn't it reported??

[ObiWanStevobi]

Come on now, we should all know the answer to that by now

The questionable veracity of the story would certainly not scare the 24 hour news cycle away. The subject matter is certainly important enough to everyone. But does it scare you? No, a non-poisonous cure for cancer doesn't keep you glued to TV in fear to watch the 55 minutes of speculation, filler, and opinion to follow, and is therefore not news.

The news day has to be really slow to get more than a passing mention of good news on any major media network.

Then again, I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.

Re:Patentless

[QuantumG]

foot the bill for the betterment of mankind. Wow, almost sounds like what governments used to be all about.

why no press? No $$$$!!!

[Ralph Spoilsport]

it's patentless. No one owns it, so no one with money to pay the press is going to bother to pony up the green to get the wheels turning.

Now, if it was brand new, and cured an imaginary illness, then we'd be inundated with advertising on its behalf, as the plutocrats running the drug industry would be spending every dime they could to make as much money as fast as they could to recoup the losses of development and to line their own greedy pockets.

I don't see why this is even a question.

RS

Re:Patentless

[Tsugumi]

Rubbish. Firstly, it's an existing drug, so the burden of clinical trials is reduced. Secondly, governments, charities, and drug companies that make their living producing generics could fund this easily.

DCA is completely useless: it harms profits

[gd23ka]

Yes. You are right on the money, there are no profits to be made
on DCA, in fact it even harms industry profits. Think of all the
chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy that doesn't get done
because of it.

A cancer patient usually brings in more or less a cool $100,000 in
profit, a breast cancer patient slightly less, a prostate cancer
slightly more.

Re:DCA is completely useless: it harms profits

[the_womble]

I think you'll find that a lot of that money you class as profit merely goes to cover the huge expense of developing the drugs in use, and the drugs that are developed but dropped at a later date.

Actually more of it goes into marketing patented drugs than into research.

Re:DCA is completely useless: it harms profits

[Weedlekin]

"All three high profile cases show the callous disregard for the
health and well-being of people and a single-minded focus on profit -
whatever the human cost."

Here's a fourth one: AZT as an AIDS treatment. The drug was initially produced in the early 1960s under a NIH grant as a cancer treatment, but wasn't particularly efficacious and had nasty side effects, so it fell out of usage. Then, in the mid 1980s, three scientists from the National Cancer Institute who were working with a couple of others from Burroughs-Welcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) discovered that it was effective against the AIDS virus, and after a small trial that cost very little (the initial Welcome scientists were working at the National Cancer Institute and using their facilities, so Welcome's initial investment amounted to two peoples' wages), Burroughs-Welcome were given a usage patent by the FDA on this previously public domain medication, and proceeded to charge the _highest price of any treatment in prior history_ for something that was extremely cheap and easy to produce. Furthermore, this patent was upheld by the US Supreme Profit Ensurers (those people who decided that "eminent domain" lets local governments take your property and sell it to someone else whenever they feel like it) against challenges by AIDS organisations two separate occasions.

Re:DCA is completely useless: it harms profits

[Anonymous Coward]

From the stacks of pens and post-its and bits and bobs that I've got on my desk from pharmaceutical companies, and the stories I've heard of people being taken out for expensive meals etc, buying people expensive reference books and tools in an attempt to curry favour, I could quite see that that's the case!

At least here in the UK they're banned from advertising prescription medication on TV and in the papers - although I guess that's why they keep leaking stories to our sensational media...

Although strictly speaking, the chap you quoted was kinda right - if it's going into marketing, it's still not net profit! And it is true that they need big money spinner drugs to cover the cost of others - I've seen several spend 5+ years in development, only to get to trials and be found to destroy patients' livers and have to be dropped.

Cheap does not make some people happy

[tanveer1979]

I guess this will not receive any help from Pharma companies.
Reason, low amount of money.
I have personally seen this happening in case of another drug.
Once after a culture report we found that the only drug which would deactivate this bacteria was the cheapest antibiotic available in the market (1rs/tablet in India, or 1p in US$ amount).
But very few chemists stock it.
Why? doctors don't recommend it. It also can take care of many bacteria for which there are much more expensive antibiotics available and only those get prescribed.
Had to literally scout the whole city to get the medicine.
Low profit margins? Nobody is interested, this is the state of the drug industry today, and it is a sad state. So if somebody developed a cheap "open source" drug which will take of most bacterial infections, nobody will be interested, however, if the same drug is so expensive that you can't afford it without insurance, it will get backing, no matter how lousy it is.

Re:Patentless

[jparp]

How about all those folks that "Run for the Cure" every year? They've been quite good at raising money for cancer treatments.

There is a lot of people out their with cancer. A lot of them have money. I am sure that given sufficient evidence and a means to provide that money to the proper source, (as the original article linked to) the money will be fourth coming.

Big-Pharma is a dinosaur that deserves whats coming to them.

The future is of this kind of funding is in better organization of charitable donations and social lending.

Re:That's the government's job

[cosmocain]

There should be some sort of government program to support drugs like this that benefit everyone. hell, yeah! why didn't anybody mention THAT before! the "free medical drugs for everybody"-programme! i guess the funding for this should be safe, as soon as the "free oil for the industrial magnates" and the "free democracy for the folks with turbans"-campaigns are finished. uh, wait. how about a "free brains for the naive"-masterplan?

Disinfection byproduct

[ramk13]

DCA is one of several haloacetic acids (HAA) that are disinfection byproducts (DBPs) water. When chlorine (or chloramine) are added to natural water to kill microorgamisms, the chlorine reacts with natural organic matter in the water to produce several byproducts, most notably trihalomethanes (THMs) and HAAs. The other HAAs have different levels of bromine and chlorine substitution. Disinfection byproducts are regulated because they may increase your cancer risk (surprise!). It's a problem because drinking water represents a chronic exposure.

The regulated concentration of DBPs is several orders of magnitude below the doses of DCA that are listed in the linked articles, so don't count on getting (or killing) cancer from your drinking water.

List of common Drinking Water Contaminants

Re:Peer review?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is another joke amidst the molecular biology crowd: "If you publish once in Cell you will never have to ask for funding till you retire, it will come to you".

The long winter evenings must simply fly by.

Re:Peer review?

[Mex]

I was skeptical so I checked, and indeed, there it is:

http://www.cancercell.org/content/article/abstract ?uid=PIIS1535610806003722&highlight=A%20Mitochondr ia-K+%20Channel%20Axis%20Is%20Suppressed%20%20in%2 0Cancer%20and%20Its%20Normalization%20%20Promotes% 20Apoptosis%20and%20Inhibits%20Cancer%20Growth

Slashcode will most likely screw that link, so just go to cancercell.org , and search for the title
A Mitochondria-K+ Channel Axis Is Suppressed
in Cancer and Its Normalization
Promotes Apoptosis and Inhibits Cancer Growth
by
Se bastien Bonnet,1 Stephen L. Archer,1,2 Joan Allalunis-Turner,3 Alois Haromy,1 Christian Beaulieu,4
Richard Thompson,4 Christopher T. Lee,5 Gary D. Lopaschuk,5,6 Lakshmi Puttagunta,7 Sandra Bonnet,1
Gwyneth Harry,1 Kyoko Hashimoto,1 Christopher J. Porter,8 Miguel A. Andrade,8 Bernard Thebaud,1,6
and Evangelos D. Michelakis

Re:Peer review? Here's the peer reviewed version

[Mex]

Crap, I forgot to include the summary:

The unique metabolic profile of cancer (aerobic glycolysis) might confer apoptosis resistance and be
therapeutically targeted. Compared to normal cells, several human cancers have high mitochondrial
membrane potential (DJm) and low expression of the K+ channel Kv1.5, both contributing to apoptosis
resistance. Dichloroacetate (DCA) inhibits mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK),
shifts metabolism from glycolysis to glucose oxidation, decreases DJm, increases mitochondrial
H2O2, and activates Kv channels in all cancer, but not normal, cells; DCA upregulates Kv1.5 by an
NFAT1-dependent mechanism. DCA induces apoptosis, decreases proliferation, and inhibits tumor
growth, without apparent toxicity.Molecular inhibition of PDK2 by siRNA mimics DCA. The mitochondria-
NFAT-Kv axis and PDK are important therapeutic targets in cancer; the orally available DCA is
a promising selective anticancer agent.

I won't claim to understand what it means, but there it is.

There's a direct link to download it, in case you understand that sort of thing, here:
http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/cancer_cell.pdf

Canadian Health Care System

[mrSnowman]

I bet the public Canadian Health Care System would foot the bill to produce this drug. If you had a universal health care system in your country eradicating cancer cheaply would definately reduce the money the government would pay for overall health care costs.

Keeping all the people who would have died of cancer in your economy would also keep it nice and healthy.

Re:Patentless

[DrLang21]

Except now that it's been publicly disclosed, you can't patent this way either. This is what's wrong with researchers. They think they're bettering mankind, but so often end up hurting it because they can't get reality through their head. Now because they disclosed what this drug can do, it will likely be a long time before it ever is approved for this use, if it's ever approved at all.

DCA is not safe (neurotoxicity)

[waterbear]

DCA is not in any medical formulary that I have seen. The prospects of it being accepted as safe and efficacious for anything look rather thin, in view of the neurotoxicity seen in a recently reported clinical trial for a different possible medical indication ----

see "Dichloroacetate causes toxic neuropathy in MELAS, A randomized, controlled clinical trial "
P. Kaufmann, MD, MSc, et al, NEUROLOGY 2006;66:324-330
[see http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/3 /324 ]

[excerpts:-]

"Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of dichloroacetate (DCA) in the treatment of mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes (MELAS)."

[...snip...]

"Conclusion: DCA at 25 mg/kg/day is associated with peripheral nerve toxicity resulting in a high rate of medication discontinuation and early study termination. Under these experimental conditions, the authors were unable to detect any beneficial effect. The findings show that DCA-associated neuropathy overshadows the assessment of any potential benefit in MELAS."

It seems that the researchers at Alberta have not put DCA into any patients yet, and so we can't know how the effective human dose (if there even is one) for discouraging the growth of cancer cells relates to the toxic doses (which unfortunately do exist) seen in the reported clinical trial for another potential medical indication.

This begins to smell to me of hype.

-wb-

Re:Patentless

[tomstdenis]

Contrary to popular belief, many of us dont get that warm and fuzzy feeling for helping people with no return expected.

I pity thee.

While not religious myself I do believe in the vague notion of karma (I say vague as not to insult the religious as I only really take the superficial qualities of it).

While I'm all for having money to buy toys and what not, helping people for no other reason than they need the help and I can provide it, is often more than enough reason for me to move to action. And you know what, usually down the road it pays off.

Perfect example of why patents are good

[goombah99]

If this drug were patentable then it would be worth the cost of bringing it to market, setting up factories, distributing it, and undertaking the risks if it caused harm. But it's not so the drug founders. It might not even be any good after. But we'll never know because the research to really test it in clinical trials won't get done.

One could bring this to market through a socialized medicine scheme of course. Or one could let third world countries implicitly test it for us for safety and efficacy.

It's a really good example of why patents and intellectual property are good things. They encourage private investment in the public interest by creating a profit incentive.

and there is even more...

[gd23ka]

Many infected with AIDS prefer the virus than the
slow death inflicted by what is at best a palliative
drug but you're certainly right here.

I personally however doubt they would take the same
approach on DCA and give someone a monopoly on DCA,
as DCA saves lives. That however is not their concern.

Here's another one... take "TeenScreen" for an example,
the Bush backed at school mental illness screening programs
they've set up. Kids are asked to fill out a questionaire
developed by pharma usually without parental knowledge or
consent and if they check the "wrong" answers they're
prescribed medication.

Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[TapeCutter]

As an Aussie I concur, few people here have private health cover, and the cover normally boils down to a gaurentee of a private hospital for elective sugery. All private hospitals are fairly small and some have nice nice garden's, they are generally less well equiped and use the same doctors/surgeons as public hospitals, if something goes seriously wrong with a patient they are immediately transfered to a better equiped public hospital.

If you are just interested in your health then use the "free" (1.5% of taxable income) universal health cover, even millionaires are not forced to pay more than $1200yr for prescriptions. The doctors are well paid, nurses are well trained and the PUBLIC hospitals measure up to anything offered overseas. What's more I recently visited the UK and got a chest infection, went to casualty twice and got antibiotics "free". The doctor laughed when I ask "should I pay at reception", seems our governments have a recipricol arrangement to look after each other tourists.

A company must make a profit, that is it's sole reason for existance, if the government can't do it to a higher standard with less money then they are doing something wrong. No Australian politician would dare dismantle the public scheme and go back to the early 70's privatised "pay or die" scheme, the voting public would tie them to an ambulance and drag them through the streets. This situation is also boosted by a "balance of power/share the blame" component, the fed's collect the money and the various states spend it. If you are seriously ill in this country there is absolutely no fucking around, especially with admin, accountants and lawyers, because guess what - prevention and early treatment is much cheaper than "the machine that goes ping". Oh and guess what - a healthier population is less profitable for private hostpitals and more productive in ...what's that thing called...oh yes, "the market".

Having said that I will also point out Godel has proven no system is complete, some doctors are butchers and that is when the lawyers, accountants and admin come out of the woodwork. However all I ever hear from American's when asked "why not have UHC like just about every other wealthy country", is a ranting reply about their pathological fear of "socialisim" and vacuous examples of "higher costs". Some will listen and are surprised by the reality they find, others are like the people who talk about global warming on Mars to deny it on Earth, there is no possible reply to that level of brainwashed dogma other than sarcasam and abuse.

And before some free market zealot starts waving the WSJ to point out the painfully obvious: yes UHC is a form of "socialisim", some things just work better that way, New York's central park for example or does Disney sell tickets to walk your dog now?

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[quixote9]

The level of brainwashing in the US public on this topic is breathtaking. It comes as total news to them that we're paying about 2x per capita for less than half the service of other industrialized countries that do have UHC. It comes as news that the difference is spent on bureaucracies for hundreds of different redundant "plans," on beancounters to figure out ways to deny payments to patients, and on marketing.

It comes as such news to them that they can't believe it. It implies Fox and CNN and the rest have been lying to them, or at least not giving them the facts. And we know that never happens. So it can't be true.

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[fotbr]

well, I'm just a dumb American with asthma, but my insurance and medical bills (including prescriptions) over the last 5 years have averaged about $1000 / year, which works out to less than 1.5% of my annual income.

So why would I be better off under socialized medicine? I'd pay more, and if managed the way the government manages everything else they touch I'd get less. You all in the rest of the world like to point out how incompetent the US government is (and often with good reason), why do you think they'd be any better at running health care than they are at other things?

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[Chemicalscum]

Wrong. Here in Canada we get better outcomes at a far lower cost than the US. There are a lot of fear mongering campaigns put out here by effective paid hacks of US corporations, that would like to come up here and make big bucks. The Canadian public knows however, that we have a better and fairer system than in the US. Yes there are problems, we continually have to fight the neo-cons that have crept into our political system (sometimes under the guise of being big-L Liberals as well our Tories or Conservatives) to keep up sufficient funding and support for the health system.

The fact is we get far better outcomes overall than the US for far less per capita expenditure. The UN ranks the health care system in the US as about equivalent in terms of outcomes to that of Cuba. They are both significantly better than poor third world countries. But they are nowhere near the high level of outcomes achieved by the western European countries, Canada, Australia, Japan etc that have universal health care.

During the cold war Americans used to joke that Russia was "a third world country with rockets". Now the joke is that the US is " a first world country with third world infant mortality".

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[radtea]

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". The GP is absolutely correct and backed by a mutlitude of hard statistical data: Canadians spend less on health care than Americans, the Canadian government spends less on public health care per capita than the American government spends on public health care per capita, and Canadian life spans are longer than American's, quality of life is better, and infant mortality is lower.

Now watch some idiot ignore the bold-fonts in the above and try to make some bogus counter-claim. I'll repeat it for effect: the socialized, publically-funded health-care system in the United States (Medicare and Medicaid and all that) spends more money (per capita across the whole population, not just the population that uses it) than the public health-care system in Canada. And Americans get far worse outcomes.

Oh, and you can sue a doctor in Canada. Its just that our judicial system is moderately rational, and we rarely see the kind of insane American-style jury awards.

This is not to say, as others have pointed out, that the Canadian system does not have problems. We have a two-tier system with effective rationing via waiting lists. The ultra-rich, particularly the wealthy memebers of the political class like John Rae, go skiving off to the States to get treatment and jump the queue. There is a significant push amongst Canadians to allow some level of private care, as is done in Australia, Germany and elsewhere. Unfortunately, our politicians are only capable fear-mongering and handwringing, and any suggestion that the sanctity of the Canada Health Act be violated is met with screams of anguish that our system might degenerate into something as expensive and inefficient as the American system.

Given the empirical facts of the matter, one can understand why Canadians are concerned: when something works as well, relatively speaking, as what we've got, we should be cautious about messing with it. The sad tale of a grossly expensive, mixed private-public system south of the border makes our purely public system look awfully good.

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[srussell]

So why would I be better off under socialized medicine? I'd pay more, and if managed the way the government manages everything else they touch I'd get less. You all in the rest of the world like to point out how incompetent the US government is (and often with good reason), why do you think they'd be any better at running health care than they are at other things?

Common FUD, courtesy of the HMOs and the Republican party.

I'm not going to claim a direct causal relationship, but you might consider that the United States, with its vaunted privatized healthcare system, ranks 42nd in life expectancy among the countries of the world. When I did research on this a few years ago, 80% of the countries that came in with longer life expectancies than the US had some form of universal health care coverage.

On a more anecdotal note, I've waited hours in an emergency room in the US to get broken bones taken care of, so I call bullshit on claims of how the US medical system is oh-so-efficient and effective and superior to socialized systems. On top of that, since we have organizations (insurance companies, HMOs) actively working to penalize for and dissuade you from spending money on health care, I also call bullshit on any claim that you're getting the best care money can buy in the US.

--- SER

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[cdwiegand]

Because that's not the full figure - you're not figuring in the amount of your income tax that goes to pay for uninsured/underinsured that the government picks up the tab on.

Re:Dogma shoots the US in the foot...again

[Dcnjoe60]

So why would I be better off under socialized medicine?

Maybe for the same reason that you are better off with socialized highways and socialized airports and socialized fire departments, etc. Why is it that health care is the only pay as you go item that makes people through up the socialism flag?

It used to be that belonging to a society meant that we all sacrificed a little for the common good of the society. No one individual pays enough to cover the cost of the roads they travel or the cost of building an airport. Yet society benefits as a whole from having good roads and airports (and railroads, although in the US, we seem to ignore them). Why is it so hard to fathom that having basic health care provided would also not benefit all of society?

Those who could afford it would of course still go to their "private" physician, however, for the vast majority of uninsured and underinsured, they could now get health care treatment. Might it take longer than those with private insurance? Possibly, but it would be better than no treatment at all.

The government already provides some health care through various entitlement programs that are funded through taxes (or borrowing). These are usually only available to the poor and not the lower middle class. Those who fall into the uninsured and underinsured who fall through the limited government funding and require treatment for major illnesses either still get the treatment or they die. If they get the treatment, which by law, hospitals must provide, the hospitals pass the costs on to those who can pay (not directly, but through their pricing structure).

So, like it or not, we are all paying for health care via taxes and inflated medical charges already. Going to a universal health insurance plan, just makes it official and above the table. Will it cost any one individual more? Probably. Will it be a benefit to society? Definitely!

If one's goal is to avoid socialism or the appearance of it at all costs, then one better be prepared to quit using all of those government provided resources we take for granted, including roads, airports, police and fire protection, etc., etc.

Re:Socialized medicine

[Knuckles]

Studies in Austria revealed that private health care has administrative overhead costs of up to 30%, while public ones had ca. 4%. Which makes sense to me considering the ridiculous advertising and applicant screening that private health care seems to need. And I won't even go into the minor stuff like the different costs created by the CEO of a private company vs. the director of a publicly-held insurance.

Inaccurate

[FellowConspirator]

The premise of the article is flawed. First, using DCA to treat cancer IS patentable -- it would be a new indication for the compound. Also, it's known to be moderately toxic in humans, causing organ damage and exacerbating certain cancers (esp. hepatic). Also, there's not any evidence that it may have the sames effect in humans as in mice. Further, the safety work for the drug, production, and formulation have been worked out long ago. Right now, one would only need to do a study to show efficacy and that'd likely cost less than $1 million; which is an amount for which grants are still widely available.

So, the article is a little misleading. Nobody (other than the article author) feels that this drug would cure cancer, or that it's even less toxic than current treatments. There's also most assuredly profit to be had from it.

Re:Patentless

[rahrens]

Again, it is not the Brand, per se that FDA approves.

FDA approves the drug as manufactured BY THAT MANUFACTURER. The reason is that the manufacturing facility itself is part of the approval process. It must meet FDA standards in order to be approved. If a manufacturer builds a new facility, even if it will make currently approved drugs, it must still be newly inspected and approved for each drug it will make.

So the reason FDA requires each manufacturer to seek separate approval for each drug isn't Brand related, but related to the fact that not all physical manufacturing plants are necessarily made equal.

If a company wants to use a currently approved drug for a use other than for which it is currently used, it must apply for a new NDA (New Drug Application), which starts the approval process off as new. Safety isn't an issue, since the company can point to a safety record as part of the original NDA, plus a public record of safe use under that prior approval, so the process IS cheaper. However, unless the company can point to a lengthy record of the drug being used for the new purpose (doctors can use approved drugs for different uses than that for which they were approved but it isn't strictly legal) new clinical trials will be needed. These trials are needed to prove efficacy, not safety. When other companies then apply to use that same drug they do so as a generic drug, so the applications do not require clinical trials.

This time it ain't the drug companies...

[pointbeing]

If this treatment or some other new treatment did in fact cure many cancers inexpensively, it would be a nightmare come true for the chemotherapy industry. How big is that industry, something like $40 billion a year? Wow...

The vast majority of chemotherapy costs are *not* drug costs.

Case in point: My spousal unit has Stage IV breast cancer and has had for almost eight years. She's currently on her sixth course (not round, course) of chemotherapy and is doing pretty well, thankyouverymuch ;-)

Let's talk about drug costs. Doxorubicin (trade name Adriamycin) is generally accepted first line chemotherapy for breast cancer in combination with another drug, Cytoxan. In some parts of the world they use Epirubicin instead, but I digress.

Wholesale drug cost for a single dose of Adriamycin is about $300. Considering the drug is toxic as hell and requires special handling and disposal protocol at the manufacturer level that seems reasonable. Cost to administer? Seven thousand bucks - I can show you the bill. Since it's administered as an IV push over a couple hours it takes a little more work than other drugs but in a healthcare system that charges $180 to start an IV (doesn't matter that the spousal unit has a mediport in her chest) or $40 for a liter of normal saline for that IV it's not difficult to see where the markup is.

Don't get me wrong, I have no real love for drug companies - the two most widely prescribed post-chemotherapy antinausea meds are Zofran and Kytril. Zoftan has an average wholesale price (AWP) of $26.25 _per_tablet_. Kytril is even better, at $59.67 per pill. They normally give you Kytril if Zofran doesn't work. You pay or you puke for a couple days - your choice.

The drug that's keeping the spousal unit alive right now is called Herceptin and costs about $48k per year. Reasonably new monoclonal antibody made from the ovaries of Chinese hamsters. Guess $1000 per dose is reasonable since you probably gotta grind up a lot of hamsters to get enough to be useful.

But again, it costs much more to give the IV than the drug costs.

I got sued by our local cancer center because my insurance company decided to play games one month. Since the patient is responsible for medical charges in order for the hospital to collect they have to sue you and name the insurance company as a codefendant. One month of treatment - which included two rounds of chemotherapy, two 15 minute doctor visits, probably eight blood tests and ten days worth of a drug called Neupogen they used to give you to stimulate white blood count?

Glad you asked. $39,000. Thirty Nine Thousand Dollars for one month's treatment. Drug costs? Less than 20% of that. Fortunately it only cost me $150 to a friend who's an attorney to write a letter to the insurance company to make it all go away.

One more and then I'll STFU. I hate insurance companies too, even though the spousal unit would probably be dead without them. The aforementioned Neupogen? They give it to stimulate white blood cell production - we decided to give it at home. Got the oncology nurses to give me a class on giving injections and even got to practice on the spousal unit. Our oncologist writes the prescription and I take it to the corner pharmacy. Pharmacy calls two days later and says prescription is in, your insurance company won't cover it and please bring in a check for $2800.

Turns out my insurance company at the time was really an insurance broker and the prescription and major medical components got in a big argument over who was gonna get to pay for this. Major medical lost - and rather than give the shot at home we had to go in for an office visit every day from day 4 through about day 10 of each treatment cycle to get the shot.

There are so many holes in the system it's tough to pinpoint any one problem, but I've rambled long enough.

cheers -

Re:Patentless

[orcrist]

But why would they? Contrary to popular belief, many of us dont get that warm and fuzzy feeling for helping people with no return expected.

Yeah, and the rest of us label people like that (you?) "leeches", or just "assholes" - people who benefit greatly from the advantages of civilization, rule of law, and a modern infrastructure, then turn around and say "That's mine!! How dare you tax me!" when asked to contribute to that. Generally, that's the sort of behavior which encourages societies to eventually entrust their governments with such tasks, despite how the human leeches cry "Oh no, Socialized Medicine!!!" or "Free market will save us, free market will save us!!!"

-chris

(heh, can't wait for the flames on this one)

Good article on the drug here...

[bmfs]

Dr. Steven Novella discusses this drug on his blog.

From: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/default.asp ?Display=28

There has been a media flurry surrounding this new study by lead author Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, in which he found that dichloroacetate (DCA) can selectively kill a wide range of cancer cells.

Basically, in most cancers the mitochondria are turned off. Mitochondria are the little energy factories inside every cell. They also are responsible for triggering apoptosis - programmed cell death. Cancer cells make their energy outside the mitochrondria, their mitochondria turn off, they lose the ability to trigger apoptosis, and they become immortal. Being immortal is part of what makes them cancer. DCA turns mitochondria back on, which in Dr. Michelakis's study caused the cancer cells to immediately die, while having no affect on healthy cells.

This is an exciting discovery that is sound in principle and likely to have implications for future cancer research and treatments. And Dr. Michelakis's study is very hopeful. But (here comes the skepticism) his study was carried out in vitro - on cells in test tubes. Before we get too excited we need to carry out clinical trials in humans with cancer. Experience has shown that it is difficult to predict how a drug will act inside the body based solely on in vitro studies. Even animal data - although very useful - has its limits. We need to prove that the drug will get to cancer tissue in sufficiently high concentrations to kill the cancer cells, and that it won't just suppress the tumor for a while. We also need to make sure there are no unforeseen negative consequences.

Historically there have been frequent laboratory discoveries that seem to show a promising new treatment for cancer, but when studied in humans the promise is not realized, or the effect is much more modest than was hoped. Cancer research has slowly ground forward, and we have made steady progress, but the "magic bullet" has never been found, despite frequent false alarms heralded in the press. So at this point in time the rational outlook to have is one of cautious optimism. Certainly this is a promising discovery, and it deserves to be studied clinically. We can also hold out reasonable hope that this will turn out to be more than an incremental improvement and will actually be deserving of the moniker "breakthrough." Let's do the research and cross our fingers.

There is another very interesting aspect to this story, mentioned in Jeff's question. DCA has been around for awhile, so no pharmaceutical company can patent it (it is already in the public domain). This means that it is unlikely a pharmaceutical company will pay the millions of dollars needed to fund the research for a drug it cannot own the patent on. I don't think it's impossible, just unlikely. As an advantage, the drug is already well studied and so many of the preliminary hurdles have already been overcome. Therefore the cost of research would be much less than if a company had to start from scratch with a new drug.

But let's assume that the bean counters at all the pharmaceutical companies calculate that the return on investment would not be sufficient to justify the research. And let's further assume that the PR value of "curing cancer" is not deemed sufficient either. That does not mean that DCA will not be researched.

There are other ways to fund research. Universities fund research programs, programs that also support their infrastructure with money they get from doing pharmaceutical company funded research. So university researchers can use their own resources to do the studies necessary - as Dr. Michelakis a

Re:Not what it seems- some science background

[quixote9]

Those are interesting links and it's always good to keep the downsides in mind. But, on the scientific merit I did want to add:

The first link refers to a summary about trichloroethylene environmental cleanup, and the effects of DCA as a metabolic breakdown product of TCE. This is rather different from controlled dosage in a medical application. Every cancer drug known is a violent poison whose effects at uncontrolled dosage are not pretty.

The second link is a scientific article talking, again, about the medical effects of TCE in the environment.

The third link discusses the use of DCA in a similar context to the cancer study, ie to lower metabolic rate of mitochondria. However, they were trying to lower the rate of all the patient's mitochondria, not cancerous ones, because they were trying to treat a metabolic disease. The dosage rate was 25 mg/kg/day. For a 70kg person (154 lbs), that's 1750 mg per day, which is on the order of two teaspoons-worth of pure drug. That is an enormous dose. The whole point with the cancer cells is their metabolism is so revved up that they're susceptible to much lower doses than normal cells. I don't know what the dosage in the Alberta study was, but I'd expect it to be a lot lower.

The fourth link discusses research that showed DCA-induced cell death (=apoptosis) in the smooth muscle cells of pulmonary arteries. Again, these are not cancerous cells, but they are over-active, I gather from the article, in pulmonary hypertension.

Any time there's a difference in mitochondrial activity between normal cells and targeted cells, there's the possibility that DCA could be used to selectively target the abnormal cells without harming the others. That said, anything that targets mitochondria is a vicious drug that does need to be treated with lots of caution.

One more link in the chain

[bigtallmofo]

The doctors don't squeeze. Investors/shareholders (through HMOs and for-profit healthcare companies) squeeze.

There's at least one more link in the chain that you're referring to... Don't forget the attorneys that launch frivolous lawsuits against the doctors and insurance companies to extract windfalls for clients and take 40%.

Why is the mainstream news media not reporting?

[Yosho]

Why is the mainstream news media failing to report on this potential breakthrough?

Because this is a potential cure for cancer, not a proven one, and potential cures are a dime a dozen. If they made a big hooplah every time somebody came out with a potential cure, that's all they'd ever be reporting about.

A tad hostile in your approach but....

[JudgeFurious]

mostly I just find myself wishing I had mod points so I could mod this up. I have rosacea and my dermatologist prescribes an antibiotic for it. There's no cure and I'm told there's not going to be one because nobody is bothering to try and cure it. The response I've gotten from multiple dermatologists is that they can "manage it" which basically means that I get to take a pill every day that makes me sick to my stomach whether I take food with the medicine as recommended or not.

  I get to pay a doctor once a year to go into their office and get told "Yep, you still have it. Lets write that prescription for another years worth of puking pills and some topical crap that I get a kickback for recommending".

  If Doctors can treat it forever instead of curing it they will. I spend moments with my doctor and he charges my insurance company hundreds of dollars. It's an immense crock of shit.

Re:When were you protecting me?

[CRCulver]

...at worst, are simply "gangsters for capitalism", as Smedley Butler put it.

Yeah, quoting a notorious Communist fellow traveler is really going to make you look respectable in a debate. There are plenty of legitimate, peer-reviewed political scientists you could quote, why you have to quoted a deranged vet with no appropriate qualifications is beyond me.

...it carries with it some disturbing baggage, such as the recent habit of calling the President "the Commander in Chief".

The title of "commander-in-chief" goes back to the early days of the United States. Even the most popular civilian usage of the term, the march "Hail to the Chief" was penned in the first half of the 19th century.

Doctors need longer schooling

[bill_mcgonigle]

I never understood the logic of that. We as a society will not let, for example, a truck driver drive for more than x number of hours in a day before they have to take a mandatory amount of time off. I forget what x equals, but it's 8-10 hours max. Yet, we'll stick a doctor into an emergency ward for days on end with said doctor only catching sleep when things are slow.
--

Part of it is pure hazing - the medical chiefs had to go through it so the new guys should too...

The other part, which is probably harder to fix, is that medicine is getting harder and harder every year. In 1940, when you set bones, had those new-fangled X-rays and antibiotics were cutting edge, you had four years of medical school to learn everything. Today you have four years of medical school to learn everything. This continues on into residencies and fellowships. Extending the term of learning would allow the hours to come down by allowing the number of students to increase for a given period of time. There are also very real studies showing that memory storage sucks when sleep deprived, as well as error rates skyrocket and judgment plummets. Yeah, it would suck for the students to have to be in school two more years, but if they're civil years I think as a society we can decide that's worth it to improve (and save) the lives of the citizenry.

I'm not a regulation-first kind of guy, but there's no opportunity for competition among philosophies here.

You don't get a damned thing, eh?

[Grendel Drago]

Are you kidding? You get to walk down the street without old, sick, disabled people heaped up on every corner. I think that's worth a few percent of my income. As for the programs not being around long enough for you to use them, whatever problems there are with Social Security and Medicare are eminently fixable; the manufactured panic of the last few years was yet another of those boneheaded drives for privatization.

Re:Patentless

[non0score]

Governments? Charities? Drug companies? Why make it that farfetched when you can just ask the medical insurance companies to do it? They're the ones who're forking out $100k+ per cancer patient. This should be more than enough incentives to make them want to invest in it.

Re:The "Presidential" Link

[Muad'Dave]

... he channeled the spirit of the little girl with CP to make his point (seriously).

Whew! You mentioned channeling and for a minute I thought you meant this guy!

I shouldn't have to keep telling you children this

[drinkypoo]

...but "Troll" does not mean "anything with which I disagree."

I sincerely believe what I posted above. If you want to have a reasoned debate about it, I'm game. But modding me down just makes you out to be the ignorant child you are.

Now, let me address something ShadowsHawk said in response to my comment.

People join the military for all sorts of reasons, but I doubt "helping to build the American hegemony" is one of them.

That's right. People join the military to get job training, or to get money for college, or because they've been brainwashed into a military tradition by their family, or lastly and leastly, so they can serve their country. But what all of these people have in common is that, wittingly or not, they are doing just that.

Now, I would argue that any responsible adult should be able to consider the repercussions of their actions, and one of the things that results from joining the military is that it grows. I know this sounds like a very sophomoric point to actually address, but since some people (including your esteemed self) don't seem to be getting this point, I'm going to belabor it until the dead horse has been well-whipped. I can think of no other way to get the point across. When the military is larger, it is easier to apply it to various situations in which it is not warranted. For instance, http://adbusters.org/media/flash/hope_and_memory/t imeline.swf is one of my favorite little presentations on American military history. If you just glance through it you will see that the majority of American military actions were questionable to say the least. We forced Japan to trade with us by force, and of course we all know that we invaded Mexico repeatedly, and stole large portions of what is now the Estados Unidos Norteamericanos away from them, forcing them at gunpoint to sell the rest for a song. We were involved in the Opium wars. We annexed Hawaii in 1898. Especially check out Honduras in 1905; this is one of many American military conquests specifically supporting the United Fruit Company. Look carefully at Nicaragua in 1910, Cuba in 1917, Guatemala in 1954, Haiti in 1959...

The list goes on and on but what all of these things have in common is that they were financially motivated. They weren't about helping people. They were about money and power. Yes, in the same list there are conflicts that are about protecting people from bad people. There's attacks on pirates (the real kind) and their institutions. There's WWI and WWII.

Today, we are seeing much the same thing. We have bombed the shit out of a middle eastern company yet again. And yet again, the bulk of the rebuilding will be carried out by American contractors. In fact, the sole contractor overseeing and profiting from the entire thing is, guess who, Halliburton. The government claimed that they were the only contractor that could be ready "in time" and so they got the contract. Gee, I wonder why they were the only ones to meet the lengthy, detailed, and frankly unnecessary requirements so suddenly. Could they have had, you know, advance warning? Given the connection between certain high-ranking officials in our government and Halliburton, not only is that highly likely, but it is a virtual certainty.

Are you getting the message yet? There are times when the American military has done good things. Most of these were minor conflicts. A couple of them were major. In the case of the minor conflicts, a large standing military was not necessary. In the case of the major ones, the draft was utilized to bring up the numbers of people sent off to combat the menace. In neither case is a large standing military requir