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A Virus that Attacks Brain Cancer
Ponca City, We Love You writes "In the past few years, scientists have looked to viruses as potential allies in fighting cancer. Now researchers at Yale University have found a virus in the same family as rabies that effectively kills an aggressive form of human brain cancer in mice. Using time-lapse laser imaging, the team watched vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) rapidly home in on brain tumors, selectively killing cancerous cells in its path, while leaving healthy tissue intact. 'A metastasizing tumor is fairly mobile, and a surgeon's knife can't get out all of the cells,' says Anthony Van den Pol, lead researcher and professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology at Yale. 'A virus might be able to do that, because as a virus kills a tumor cell, it could also replicate, and you could end up with a therapy that's self-amplifying.' It's not yet clear why VSV is such an effective tumor killer, although Van den Pol has several theories. One possible explanation may involve a tumor's weak vascular system. Vessels that supply blood to tumors tend to be leaky, allowing a virus traveling through the bloodstream to cross an otherwise impermeable barrier into the brain, directly into a tumor."
The premise of several of the zombie movies is a brain virus that gets out of control. "I am Legnd", "28 days"
Doctor: I have good news and bad news. The good news is, your cancer is under remission.
Patient: And the bad news?
Doctor: We gave you rabies.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
However, as long as we are on the topic of symbiotic relationships, I've always felt that training domesticated zombies to home in on cancer cells as a delicacy would be pretty effective. Remissions wouldn't be a problem, cause zombies have pretty big appetites.
On a tangent, it upsets me when people talk about how the government shortchanges the field of stem cells, when practically nobody is talking about zombie-centric methods of treatment. I swear, you have all these good ideas and can back them up with sound science, and it is as if no one is listening.
Oh well, maybe one day we can grow up in a world where somebody can truthfully say, "... if it wasn't for the walking dead, I wouldn't be here!"
I got a catholic block.
You see, I, the great Doctor Alexander von Hubris, have found a means by which to re-animate dead cells! But those foolish, short-sighted politicians cut my funding! My colleagues called my research "irresponsible" and "dangerous". And the ethics review panel called my experiments "troubling" and "unnecessarily painful". The fools! They laughed, they all laughed!
But now, I can cure all diseases, because I have now found a way to bring dead tissue back to life! Yes, certain... shall we say, sacrifices... had to be made, but it was all in the name of science! And now, now I have found that which mankind has always dreamed of: a path to immortality. And nothing, I tell you, nothing can possibly go wrong! Tonight, I will test my technique on myself, and then you will see, you will all see!
It has an even more serious problem than that: Sure, it's effective against human brain cancer in mice, but unfortunately it's only effective against mouse brain cancer in humans. So, not very useful I'm afraid.
Hunting humans is generally frowned upon in modern society but if we loaded dart guns with anti-tumor brain virus and let hunters track cancer victims through a jungle or something then the patient and hunter could go dutch on the treatment. The patient's give them a good hunt and the hunter bags their prey. The incentive for the patient is that they don't have to pay for any of the treatment if they evade the hunter for 3 days.
In the end the hunter gets a happy picture of a bald person with a dart in their ass as a trophy and the patient gets their expensive treatment. We could handle vaccinations for poor 3rd world kids the same way. Next time Angela Jolie goes to bumbuck nowhere I say we hand her a rifle with MMR shots.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'