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Cancer Resistance Technique Moves To Human Trials
TaeKwonDood tips us to news that a new cancer resistance treatment is going into clinical trials after being quite successful at eradicating cancer in mice. Researchers discovered that certain white blood cells called granulocytes from cancer-immune mice were able to cure cancer in other mice. Now, doctors are putting out the call for healthy granulocyte donors in order to test how well it works on humans. The article quotes lead researcher Zheng Cui saying, "In mice, we've been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors. Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans."
Progress is slow when new medicine is constantly under attack and being made...
illegal: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071900524.html
'sinful': http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7287071.stm
and unteachable: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080627-louisiana-passes-first-antievolution-academic-freedom-law.html
If you are diagnosed with cancer today -- any kind of cancer, and remember the word "cancer" covers an enormous range of disease -- your chances of long-term survival are much, much better than they were five years ago. Five years ago, your chances were much better than ten years ago. Etc. The general public loses interest when a promising new treatment turns out not to be The! Cure! For! Cancer!, but yes, research does make its way from the lab to the bedside. Probably no new medicine or treatment technique will ever cure all cancer, but there's a good chance it will take care of a significant portion of a certain type of cancers -- which is, of course, of infinite interest to those diagnosed with that particular disease.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Well, you've just described 90% of the human race. I guess we're all screwed.
Joking aside, it's an interesting hypothesis. I certainly wouldn't rule out someone's mental state in regard to survivability. Not so sure about it as a causal factor, though I suppose long-term stress could contribute to weaker systems. I'd love to see a proper study done.
Enough of this "We found a cure! We're headed to trials!" crap. We've seen this for the past 20 years, yet NONE of these 'cures' are actually used on a daily basis. Either put up, or shut up.
OK, sure. Have a look at the Kaplan-Meier curves for survival for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia in children. In the 60's your child's chance of long term cancer free survival was less than 10%. Today, your child's chance of long term cancer free survival is in the 90% range. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/support_cancer_research_now.php Orignial article: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/2/166
While big leaps and bounds are great. The progress in cancer treatment and research is made through slow and consistent work at the same problem. More power to these people. But each one of these 'we're headed to trials' announcements is one grain of sand - possibly a big one - working toward grinding the machine to a halt.
I'm pretty sure that orthodox Jews have lightened up on the blood prohibition, there are probably a few sects there that wouldn't partake, Witnesses will not like it and a few other radical fringe cults. Of course when the whacko extremists are the only ones still dieing of cancers it'll be because of a gov conspiracy to kill them off.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In the past 20 years, we saw a number of surgical and radiologic techniques reach clinical use. When I was doing cancer research, I worked on projects using Gleevec and Zolinza, both now FDA approved. However, both of these drugs currently have very narrow uses; Gleevec is only effective against CML, for example, and Zolinza [aka vorinostat or SAHA] is currently only approved for certain types of leukemia.
I am skeptical of anyone who says they have any 100% Cure For Cancer. As other posters have noted, cancer describes a single overall pathology, uncontrolled growth of cells, that breaks down into many subtypes based on tissue type and further based on the underlying genetic fault. Immunology, in particular, is guilty of following trends (so it's granulocytes this week, huh guys? Have you given up on Tregs, vaccines, etc.?) and pushing for the ultimate single cure.
While it's true that cancer is a disease of the old, and it's increasingly well known that the composition of immune cells changes as you age, I suspect that someone would have noticed by now if it was as simple as transplanting granulocytes. How about a retrospective study of blood transfusion recipients? Shouldn't this population, on average, have a lower incidence of cancer relative to a comparable control population?