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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."
This strikes me as a kind of fast-track immunization, i.e. getting the relevant antibodies into a person's immune system quickly before an infection can take hold. Rather than having to spend time developing the relevant treatment, simply borrow from another human who already has the necessary lymphocytes. Nice!
I'm aware of the correlation between infection and various cancers - I had Hodgkins Lymphoma a few years ago myself.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
How do I get tested for whether I've got the granulocyte cancer immunity? I've always wanted to take up smoking. If I could sell my granulocytes, I'd afford to buy a carton of cigarettes.
--
make install -not war
...young scientists, who discover that the real cure for cancer was inside of them all along!
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
Douglas Adams would approve of your hypothesis
The new plasma. Pay $20 bucks per donation and winos everywhere will be happy to donate, so long as they have the right granulocytes.
Invenio via vel creo
Obviously
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
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.
what a nutter
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.
Honestly, a lot of humans have those problems to begin with; I really don't think it contributes to the cancer in almost any cases, it just contributes to the way in which they deal with the cancer. Also, as long as we're going with anecdotal evidence, I've also known boisterous and accepting people with cancer. :)
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.
perhaps every person in the world sometimes has some (or all) of: unwillingness to forgive someone something they've done long time ago; unwillingness to accept the current state of something over a longer period of time; perceived loneliness , so that one (even if true) would not help much.
839*929
Oops. My reply was supposed to be to GPP. It is entirely true, of course, that religious objections slow scientific progress in this and many other medical and biological fields. But demand is high enough that in the long run, the research will get done and the medicines will be made available. No way of knowing how much unnecessary suffering and death people will endure in the meantime, of course, because some idiot priest or politician values their own chosen mythology over human life.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Definitely glad to see this story. It's the first of a number of techniques to reach clinical trials that actually show real promise.
I don't qualify as a patient participant as I still respond to conventional therapy. Hopefully they'll still be conducting trials if that changes, or will have expanded them to include patients who are still being treated conventionally.
It'll definitely be interesting to see the results if they expand trials to include patients with aggressive tumors. The patient requirements, while not explicitly saying so, eliminate consideration of such patients. Once you no longer respond to therapy treating an aggressive cancer, the likelihood of having a > 6 month survival rating is basically nil (thus disqualifying you from the study). I can understand the rationale to not unnecessarily skew the initial trial results when they can get good data from patients with less aggressive cancers, but if/when the trials go after the fast killers it will definitely show the true potential of this particular cancer weapon.
Here's to hoping for positive results. The other nice thing about this therapy is that, since it is not drug-based, it is not locked up by one single pharmaceutical company. Hooray for open source medical therapies.
Side effects may include:
1) excessive hair growth
2) the irresistible urge to eat cheese
3) increased fertility
>eradicate cancer in mice
Why would I want to eradicate cancer in mice?
Emphysema is not lung cancer.
It's a slow suffocating death.
Have fun dying! (Darwin Evolution at work.)
Dying from emphysema when you're old is not Darwinian! Most people would have passed on their genes by that point.
To the degree that the immune system responds to psychological conditions, I'm willing to agree. Though, I would argue that state of mind is a contributory, vice causal factor. A positive state of mind appears to elevate immune system response which aids healing. A negative state of mind appears to depress the immune system which impairs healing. In fact, we may one day discover that most types of cancer have a viral causation with a multitude of contributing factors, of which state of mind will be significant -- in that we can directly influence it -- but not unique.
Invenio via vel creo
In "Graft vs. Host" there is a specific side-effect known as Graft-vs-Tumor. The effect has been known for some time, with the main problem being the lack of control over whether the transplanted immune cells attack both the tumor and/or the host, as GvH can result in serious or fatal reactions.
In this case, I see the info page for the study mentions that Granulocytes are known to attack tumors without causing GvH, which appears to be the novel part of this study. Let's hope they've got a really efficient method for depleting T-cells from the mix.
Why would I want to eradicate cancer in mice?
Because capricorn has already been eliminated and the mouse zodiac is completely out of balance, you insensitive clod.
Invenio via vel creo
Please keep in mind that while positive attitude certainly doesn't seem to hurt your chances with cancer, it also really doesn't seem to help at all. Source.
And what the parent post is referring to seems very very far outside the pale as far as any info we have on the causes of cancer. It to me even seems to be a bit of blaming the victim for the disease.
Attitudes like that will not help in any way to actually progress our attempts to cure cancer. Science, like the topic of this thread, hopefully will. That is assuming that this turns out to work. Lets hope.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
that sounds like something an asshole would say. are you an asshole? because you sound like an asshole.
I wonder if this treatment will go by the wayside in 100 years just like how redheads will be extinct in that time. Since more people are getting cancer than ever, I'd imagine the genes required for healthy granulocytes could be recessive.
If this works, I think it's great.
But also interesting is what would happen to the cancer fundraising industry if all of a sudden all the newspapers' front page headline was, "Cancer Cured". My wife works at the hospital, and she sees that the amount of money that comes into the hospital from charities that raise enormous amounts of money to "fight cancer" is unbelievable. Everyone in the cancer unit gets new computers every year, has all the best equipment, etc., while the units right next to them, also treating terminally ill patients are still running Windows 95 and have waiting lists months or years long.
If you look at cancer survival rates now (in most part because of all the money that's been pumped into fighting cancer), it's pretty close to a "cured" disease already. For instance, consider if someone came up with a treatment of Parkinson's that reversed the disease in 75% of the sufferers - wouldn't we call that a cure? But everyone in the cancer community (medically) are always very careful never to say that anyone is cured - rather they are in "remission". After all, if word got out that cancer wasn't the death sentence everyone thinks it is, all the money would dry up (and along with it the big budgets and high salaries).
So if this new treatment really does cure cancer, and sounds like it has none of the terrible side effects of current treatments, it might be a boon for other illnesses that desperately need funding too. I think it's pretty exciting.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
People who protest against using animals for testing new drugs or therapies would be well advised to take note of how this advance relied on years of animal research. While unnecessary cruelty to animals is to be abhorred (and yes there may be times when suffering is necessary) this shows that the rewards may be significant.
It's interesting that (much of) the scientific community and christian fundamentalists agree upon this point. It's due to the christian fundamentalists' view that God gave Man dominion over all the animals; not because of any appreciation or understanding on their part of the scientific method.
Since the 1960s, survival rates in some cancers have gone from 90%. Is that tenable enough? Simple lumpectomy has a 30-40% cure rate for breast cancer ... add some radiation or short chemo and it's up to 80+%. Is that tenable enough.
This clinical trial is a scary one, and it's small for a reason. The granulocytes might turn on the recipient and kill them.
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.
Supporting evidence of how far we've come:
Every single person I have personally known that has had cancer (several people), was able to take care of the issue. This amazed me because in all cases I had the 1990s based feeling that cancer = death. I am slowly coming to realize that unless a person finds out way way late, their chances are pretty good nowadays.
I've heard of others that have died from cancer, but nobody I personally knew, and definitely not as frequent as the successes that must be happening.
Not to be rude but you, good sir, are talking out of your ass. My brother was 14 when he died of pancreatic cancer. He wasn't suffering from "psychological conditions," he wasn't "unwilling to forgive someone" for some imaginary event that caused his body to somehow psychosomatically create the cancer that killed him. You want to know what I think caused his cancer? I think it was Doe Run and Dow Chemical polluting the crap out of the everything around them. We lived in Herculaneum, MO for the first 10 years of his life, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was the cause. Your touchy-feely approach on this smacks of New Age "science" with nothing to back it up. "Oh it was their own feelings that did it!" Right. I suppose next you're going to start telling people that Thetans are causing all the world's ills.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
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
...but I think that cancer is likely to be triggered by some psychological conditions. Well, it might not be the *only* cause, but certainly the psychological aspect should never be underestimated when dealing with *any* illness.
Depression is certainly associated with increased mortality. There have been studies linking psychological states to subsequent cancer incidence, but their findings have been mixed.
The negative physical effects of perceived loneliness has had almost no attention in the scientific literature (as opposed to clinical depression, which gets a lot). I know this because I've recently been looking as part of my own research programme. I'm planning a study of the adverse effects of loneliness in the elderly, and I'm hoping to be able to separate the effects of loneliness and depression caused by neuronal changes, which is surprisingly hard in the clinical setting.
"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."
This is exactly what I told my father when he was diagnosed 2 years ago w/ stage 3 lymphoma. He's still around and doing well thanks to the hard work of these researchers.
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Excess stress drags down the immune system and very conceivably contribute to the effect, but I'd also guess that the effect is more likely to clump illnesses that would have occurred eventually and randomly toward identifiable events rather than change the occurrence rates in a given population over a given period. Get a grant and do a study, results might be interesting, might even be able to re-examine previous data to find new trends that were not looked for previously.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Recently, several people, in clinical trials, have been cured!! from metastatic (widespread) malignant melanoma - which is usually a 1-2 year death sentence after it has metastasized.
Many childhood leukemias have a 80% survival rate, whereas 30 years ago it was a 80% death rate.
Osteogenic and Ewings sarcoma (primary bone cancers) now has an 80% 5 year survival rate, 20 years ago it was a 20% 5 year survival rate. Now, 90-95% of the kids I operate on now get to keep their arms and legs with artificial bones. 30 years ago, they mostly had amputations.
Much of the advances have been from improved detection (MRI/CT/PET scans), and newer chemotherapies - ALL which have been based on animal research (F U PETA!)
Many scientists and MDs feel that immuno-therapy (using the bodies own immune system to fight/kill the cancer) will be the most fruitful research, and probably the most successful in the long run.
..........FULL STOP.
Sounds more like porn to me.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A better title would probably be, "Scientists test to make sure that interesting cancer treatment idea doesn't kill human subjects." This appears to be a Stage I clinical trial of an interesting idea, that is at least somewhat biologically plausible. I haven't fully reviewed the pulished data, so I don't feel comfortable saying more than that. However, most of us who work in biology and medicine would agree that our understanding of the immune system is still relatively primitive, so there may be potential cures still lurking in plain site. However, Stage I trials are only the very initial trials in humans - and they evaluate safety as the primary outcome; i.e, trying to make sure we're not going to kill anyone. Stage II trials would attempt to evaluate appropriate dosing, and Stage III trials attempt to compare the new therapy to currently accepted standards. While this may be a breakthrough (and all of us in medicine are always looking for breakthroughs), there are also huge lists of ideas that worked really well in mice, moved on to Stage I, II, and III clinical trials, and failed utterly. This is extremely far from being any sort of cancer cure at this point - though perhaps 20 years from now we'll look back at this as a step towards that goal. I think it's always interesting to hear
While not exactly what you are talking about, a psychology study found no connection between a positive attitude and survival rates among a sample of patients with head and neck cancers: Article
That's not to say attitude is unimportant in general. It does affect quality of life, which is important to enjoying whatever time you have left. It just doesn't determine how much time you get.
I'm not so sure if it is possible to be triggered by psychological conditions.
Cancer itself is a cell that has avoided programmed death from the body. In most cases the cells die and are replaced by newer ones once they have become irreparably damaged.
Even then these cells can be separated into malignant and benign tumours. The former spreads and is when you have a problem. The latter doesn't continue to grow and is often just a mole on the skin.
i remember over 15 years ago they did a documentary about the staff of scientists that worked at Chernobyl. They would regularly go down into the burnt our plant... really quite close to the core and really pressing their luck with the amount of exposure to radiation. recently there was a catch up documentary... and there was some expectation that a above average amount would have had or died of cancer. Interestingly it far higher average of heart attacks that was commonly excepted to have been induced the every day high stress of knowing that you are walking a razors edge with radiation. I don't think that any doctor doubts the causative link between stress and disease, but i think stress has greater impact your heart rather than cell division. of course this is a matter of effected odds, any one who says that you can stop cancer with positive thinking is just a nut.
Stress and anxiety can certainly depress the immune system, and it's recently come to light that the immune system in some healthy adults has some non-zero chance of killing off very early-stage cancers. In addition, stress and anxiety are often linked with sedentary lifestyles, and exercise has been shown to actually change which genes are expressed and help fight all sorts of maladies.
So yeah, live a healthy life-- mentally and physically-- and you probably reduce your chances of being diagnosed with cancer. But I still highly doubt the direct causal relationship between bad thought and cancer.
E pluribus unum
Well blaming Doe Run and Dow Chemical is almost* as irrational. You have no reason to suspect it wasn't natural.
* Okay the GP is in a whole other league of irrationality, but you're being somewhat irrational at least.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
And did you know that there was absolutely NO Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research BEFORE Bush? You act as if he cut off funding that was already there! Bullshit.
Bush was right; you were wrong . . . . . again. :p
It to me even seems to be a bit of blaming the victim for the disease.
Blaming the victim? Well let's see here... To use a much more obvious and practical example, if someone fails to take care of their teeth, and said teeth proceed to rot out of their sockets, is it the "victim's" fault? Yes! Someone sits on their ass and eats junk food for years on end and winds up morbidly obese and possibly acquires heart conditions as a result, should we "blame the victim"? Yes!
Not saying I'm convinced of GP's speculations about mental health affecting cancer onset, but yes, people's actions and behaviors drastically affect their own health and yes, in some cases, it is their own fault.
So let's suppose for the sake of argument that in time research shows a definite causal link between cancer and mental state. That would not be "blaming the victim", it'd be simple cause and effect. Obviously this would be much less obvious an effect than the more commonly known results of not taking care of one's teeth, or not getting proper exercise and eating all the wrong foods, but once the information is known, it'd be up to the individual to do something about the problem as a form of prevention.
Admittedly I do have a somewhat emotional involvement in the situation (I suppose according to the GP's logic I should worried about cancer myself now :-P), but there is evidence that the amount of pollution these companies produce can and do seriously affect the health of individuals who live around them. I provided the links as an illustration of this, so you may want to go back and follow them. I'll even provide you with another, just to drive home my point. As far as having no reason to suspect it wasn't natural, you can't seriously ask me to believe that lead levels like that are normal. Why do you think they don't use lead paint anymore? There is far, far more evidence pointing to pollution causing (some, not all) cancer than there is for any kind of traumatic psychological events that the GP is blathering about.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
You've got a lot of company with that POV... I think a lot of people don't express it, for the reason you mention: ridicule.
I too am aware of anecdotal evidence that cancer has a correlation to the sufferer feeling deeply "wrong" (or wronged), and even cases of remission where the feeling of wrongness is overcome.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see conclusive, repeatable studies on this subject without some methodological compromises, since "mental state" and "emotional state" will always have a subjective component that is difficult to quantify, though perhaps "qualitative" treatment of the subject might be of use, someday.
That aside, this is a promising development for cancer treatment. I wonder what the effect of simply having a person with strong "immunity" to cancer spend time (perhaps counseling) someone with cancer might do... particularly alongside medical therapies, especially something like this new treatment.
I also wonder if there might be a relation between this and how some dogs can "smell" cancer.
As someone pointed out yesterday in another thread: One datapoint does not nullify a generalization. It's been known for years that people who are lonely and/or stressed have higher incidences of cancer than those who are not.
"cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans"
If you have cancer, you are not healthy.
WTF? The test subjects have to pay $100,000 to get in on the study? This seems like a fairly promising treatment? Why isn't money pouring in to fund this?
One datapoint does not nullify a generalization.
Yes, because we all know how accurate generalizations tend to be.
It's been known for years that people who are lonely and/or stressed have higher incidences of cancer than those who are not.
Care to provide a link to a study or any kind of scientific evidence to back up this statement?
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
An elderly person may still be able to further protect their genes by taking care of their grandchildren, giving them a higher probability of reproduction.
I just spent 2 days reading a few articles about this general area of research in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, so let me try to explain this to my fellow /.r's who so generously explain to me about warez and the penguin.
Doctors now believe that cancer goes through several stages before it becomes a problem. Cells become cancerous all the time, but usually the immune systen destroys them. To simplify a bit, immune cells such as dendrocytes (which is the hot immune cell these days) recognize cancer proteins. Dendrocytes take a piece of the cancer protein to a T cell, and the T cell kills the cancer cells. There's a great explanation of the immune process on Kimball's Biology Pages http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/A/AntigenPresentation.html, and if you take a few minutes to figure it out you'll understand one of the most amazing discoveries of the last century.
The reason we get cancer is that sometimes that process doesn't work. All it takes is one time during your lifetime when a cancer cell "figures out" a way to evade the immune system, and the cancer takes off.
It obviously occurs to doctors that it would be cool (and probably win a Nobel prize) if they could figure out some way to goose the immune system into fighting cancer, just the way they goose it into fighting viruses with vaccines.
One guy who tried that was Steven Rosenberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rosenberg at the NIH. Rosenberg took melanoma cells from patients, and tried to stimulate the patient's immune system with a molecule called interleukin-2 that cells use to signal immune attacks. I remember reading about that around 1984, I think. The cancer slowed down but it came back. Rosenberg has been working on it ever since.
I remember seeing a cover headline in Fortune magazine back then about Rosenberg, to the effect, "Cure for cancer." (No question mark.) Do you suppose the media hype these things?
In order to understand cancer research, you have to understand that they can kill cancer cells in laboratory bottles, they can cure cancer in mice, but when they try to kill cancer cells in humans, time and again, it doesn't work. When it finally works in humans, that's news. The other thing you have to understand is that there are many treatments that make cancer tumors shrink or disappear for a while, but they usually come back. Cancer patients don't want the cancer to go away for 6 months -- they want it to go away forever. There are a few cancers that can sometimes be cured, like testicular cancer and childhood leukemia, and maybe some prostate cancers, but most of the time, for the big 3 (colon, breast, lung) oncologists are just trying to extend life. Of course, if you're 65 and your doctor can keep you alive for another 20 years with colon cancer or leukemia, that's not so bad. Most of the successful treatments for cancer extend the life of a cancer patient from, say, 20 months to 25 months, or 40 months to 45 months, but sometimes they get a really big jump, and for people with chronic myelogenic leukemia, imatinab (Gleevec) can extend their lives indefinitely.
Anyway, the really big news is that somebody actually managed to get a treatment like Rosenberg's to work on a real human with melanoma, who seems to be cured after 2 years. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Treatment of metastatic melanoma with autologous CD4+ T cells against NY-ESO-1, Naomi Hunder et al., 358:2698 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/358/25/2698 In the past, they've gotten melanoma (and kidney cancer) to regress for a while, but it came back. This time it seems to be gone for good -- in one patient.
Basically, they had a patient with melanoma that had spread to his lungs. He had T cells that
In the early to mid 1900's, the global population started soaring. I believe this was due to the discovery and implementation of immunizations. We started treating all the nasties that have been doing us in for centuries, if not millennia.
I'm all for the curing of cancer -- lets all assume this really works, and it really eradicates cancer once and for all.
Just imagine the next population explosion.
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
Except that the post you are replying to includes a reference that a person's attitude does not effect cancer survival.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Are we making good progress on cancer? Why not look at some actual data and listen to some actual scientists? Here's a great show giving a historical overview of the trends in cancer:
Why Me, Doc? What Scientists Know - and Don't Know - About Cancer
And here's a somewhat discouraging outlook from the Nobel-winning head of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center here in Seattle:
Medical Research: The Agony and The Ecstasy
Why learn about cancer from kibitzers on slashdot, when there are great resources for technical-minded folk to learn directly from scientists?
My mother wasn't so fortunate; I do wonder though if she'd been diagnosed 5 years later if she would've survived. The first round of chemotherapy didn't quite work, during the second she told me "fuck it I cant take it anymore" and passed a few days after :(
Anything less intensive, painful and stressful than chemotherapy is a good thing IMO, even if this new method isn't too effective on aggressive cancers there's still hope that it can be applied for more general cases and help people live normal lives instead of being stereotypical "cancer patients".
Please read about confirmation bias until you realize why your anecdotal ad-hoc observations are essentially useless.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
"Anything less intensive, painful and stressful than chemotherapy is a good thing IMO, even if this new method isn't too effective on aggressive cancers there's still hope that it can be applied for more general cases and help people live normal lives instead of being stereotypical "cancer patients"."
Indeed; I think my father fared well because chemo didn't make him sick as it makes others, so he was able to take in more chemo for a longer time, allowing it to kill more of the cancer.
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[Citation needed]
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.
Think of it as evolution in action.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
A lot of immunizations stopped children from dying.
Cancer on the other hand tends to effect older people (post reproductive age) more than younger people.
That might cause populations to swell (and age) but it won't cause a population boom.
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Depression is certainly associated with increased mortality. There have been studies linking psychological states to subsequent cancer incidence, but their findings have been mixed.
Good luck in your study. Please be very careful to separate correlation from causation. There are far too many "scientists" that don't and I find it pretty depressing. ;-)
In this case things like "bad genes" (sub-clinical genetic mutations), sub-clinical developmental abnormalities, sub-clinical poisoning (e.g. mercury) and sub-clinical viral infections could easily be a common cause or increased risk factor for many forms of depression and cancer. Also, when people are stressed by both obvious and sub-clinical effects the total "load" on a person could easily lead to increased loneliness due to lack of support when feeling mediocre/bad, even though loneliness may not be directly caused by these factors.
In other words if you discover a correlation between loneliness and increased mortality don't assume that loneliness is causing increased mortality.
Thanks for the writeup. Very understandable without skimping on interesting details. A perfect example of why I read comments and not articles :)
Even living a totally "natural" lifestyle can eventually result in cancer. Look at the ages at which it starts: usually after the normal prime of the human body's life.
We've extended our lives through improvements in lifestyle and medicine, but the fact of the matter is that our bodies were designed to wear out and their reliability rapidly declines after a certain age. It's not some amazing government/industrial/capitalistic conspiracy, it's life. Everyone dies sometime, it's just the cause that differs.
By the by, eating sugars isn't bad for you (they're kind of necessary, actually), it's too much sugar that's bad. Again, that's pretty much life all over: excess is usually unhealthy.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
What in the name of horrible trolling combined with advertising was that aborted abomination?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
It's only evolution in action if it kills them before they breed
Not sure about that. There's a young people culling mechanism involved in having your oldsters die off -- lose the environmental control provisioning from your tribal elders ("those are raptor tracks, you young fool, not eohippus!"*), the younger folk could tend not to breed as successfully due generally to an overdose of stupid. Not to mention the eugenics practices of cultures that practice match making, which might have an impact too.
(* illustration for illustration purposes only. IANAP)
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
... so basically evolution tends to select for people who are inclined to keep oldsters around. A bit indirect, but there is an evolutionary effect past the point of breeding.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It's been known for years that
[Citation needed]
You mean you weren't thrown off by the passive voice?
"It has been known" rather obviously leaves out *who* is doing the knowing... unfortunately that's rather key info, isn't it? But if the GP *had* some respectable source, I'm pretty damned sure it we'd know it already.
No cures have been found because it is so frowned upon and has trouble getting funding. Most firms avoid the risk of using them and look other directions, often towards adult stem cells. With unfettered research surely cures would have been found. Although embryonic stem cellls arent just about finding cures. They are very VERY important to science and understanding. If no cures came out of it it would still be valuable.
And you are right about the research funding if not about bush. I however don't think you should be marked troll even if the post had a troll flavour most of it was solid.
they always have stories like this cancer can't be cured.
Hitechlotech.com is like the only place I trust to find moneymaking programs!
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Moniques3Monsters/more%20funnies%2010/ronery1.jpg
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Lead does not cause cancer.
Well, the American Cancer Society says the evidence disagrees with your point of view. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_1_3X_Lead.asp?sitearea=PED
Perhaps you should stop talking out of your ass - especially when you are responding to a guy who is expressing a reasonable response to an unreasonable suggestion: that people deserve the cancer's they get because they haven't been forgiving enough.
Moreover even if lead doesn't cause cancer, its still an extremely toxic agent. Saying 'well it doesn't cause cancer' is the equivalent of saying Mussolini made the trains run on time.
No ... but you have to watch out for the lymphocytes that are fellow travellers in with the granulocytes. Those can produce antibodies and kill their host.
Every single person I have personally known that has had cancer (several people), was able to take care of the issue. [...] I've heard of others that have died from cancer, but nobody I personally knew, and definitely not as frequent as the successes that must be happening.
I could introduce you to my Mother-in-Law; but you'd have to hurry, the aggressive breast cancer...
sig?
Pretty much most mice will die from cancer at around 2 years of age in the lab, they generally only live to about one year in nature before they are eaten.
Mice are used in immunology experiments because their immune system is extremely similar to humans.
As far as thinking I'm above nature - don't know much about that. But because humans are omnivores, I don't mind a tasty steak now and then. Don't criticize me on this, or do you also protest that wolves, lions and monkeys eat meat?
..........FULL STOP.
One interesting theory related to this is the Grandmother Hypothesis, which states that menopause was a trait that was selected through evolution because infant humans who had post-menopausal grandmothers to look after them had higher survival rates than those whose grandmothers were still reproducing, and therefore less available to help out with their grandchildren.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
This is not that scientifically controversial at all - as long as you are not giving some sort of spiritual reasoning. :)
The immune system has been long proven to be closely linked with stress/anxiety hormones and state of health/well being/happiness etc.
One study I read talked about woman have a 30% (read: placebo-style numbers) better survival rate for breast cancer if they had a positive state of mind.
We seem to have a immuno response capable of nuking cancers. (long suspected)
Putting two and two together this all should not be too surprising at all apart from the fact that we seem to have found an immuno super weapon. (assuming this is not a research hoax to get funding again...like cold fusion)
So dudes. Relax. Vapourise some Weed. (smoke causes cancer) Put on some jack johnson/bob marley. Tell your boss to stick his job.
Soak in the cancer killing happiness...
Not to be rude or insensitive, but being filled full of chemicals that cause cancer is obviously an alternative method of getting cancer.
As is swimming at "Chernobyl lake".
It does not therefore follow that people "spontaneously" getting cancer may not be effected by state of mind. It does not mean that someone can be "Mr Happy" and not get cancer spontaneously also.
It all about percentages.
I am sorry your bro died so young dude. That just sucks. Doubly so if it WAS from such poisoning.
I'm very happy with the advances in the cure for cancer, and I hope it helps many people lead much more fulfilling lives, if not at least longer lives.
But still I have to wonder... we're cutting darwinism out of the system here, and not only allowing weaknesses back into the system but almost making it a strength (amping up the immune systems). What's this going to do to humanity in the long term (5,000 year range) speaking from a strictly evolutionary standpoint?
>I also wonder if there might be a relation between this and how some dogs can "smell" cancer. I wonder if, maybe, just *maybe*, it's linked to the dog's sense of *smell*.
And did you know that there was absolutely NO Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research BEFORE Bush? You act as if he cut off funding that was already there! Bullshit.
He did cut funding that was already there just not up front, he did it around back. He made it a crime to share resources between programs.
So, unlike all other kinds of research, if you wanted to do embryonic stem cell research you had to draw a bright white dividing line around your facilities. In many cases this required entirely separate buildings just for stem cell research. In other words, Bush made it so that any idle resources purchased by other programs must remain idle rather than be used opportunistically by any embryonic stem cell researchers, and absolutely no pooling of money to buy and share 1 larger faster, more efficient piece of hardware over 2 smaller, cheaper and dedicated slower pieces of hardware. That is if they wanted to keep the federal funding for any of those other non-controversial programs.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Everlasting Lightbulb in 3... 2... 1...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Be careful about using absolutes like "anything" or "nothing", "always", or "never". They frequently come back to bite you. Remember, all of this research is extremely nascent, most results are just getting to the human testing phases. Further, embryonic stem cell research receives far less funding (especially in the United States) and what research does occur here is very limited. Even with one hand tied behind its back though:
Ok, I'm tired to cutting and pasting. The list is way too long. And as far as Bush not opposing embryonic stem cell research, your daft if you actually believe otherwise. He's stated as much on many occasions. 8 years ago, embryonic stem cell research was a glint in sciences eye. It's no wonder that funding didn't exist before then.
That we have received funding despite Bush's efforts is not a sign of his support. Simply compare the funding being provided within the U.S. to that being provided in other countries. It's no wonder the U.S. is lagging far behind the rest of the world. You know what happens when a societies backwards, ignorant beliefs prevent funding into cutting edge technology? The cutting edge sciencists leave.
I could introduce you to my Mother-in-Law; but you'd have to hurry, the aggressive breast cancer...
And I could introduce you to my mother, who has aggressive, stage 4 kidney cancer. Her doctor told her she had 6 months. Fortunately her general practitioner didn't know what he was talking about, and made that statement 20 months ago. Also, it looks like my mother will be able to see the birth of my child, and with a bit of luck, get to know it as well.
I'm very sorry to hear about your mother-in-law, but understand that cancer research is making great strides now. That may be a bitter pill for you now, but in the future, there's a strong chance even aggressive cancers will be cured. For my mom, and your mother-in-law, I hope those advances come quickly.
Too bad there's been no studies or evidence whatsoever supporting such a view. Psychological state is effective in dealing with symptoms, but nothing has turned up showing a connection with contracting a disease, nor getting cured from it. In fact, many people devastate themselves trying to maintain a positive outlook while ill.
It is because the Medical community dropped black-magic ideas like yours and embraced the scientific method that they'd made such great strides in the past decade or two.
Don't forget that the research on embryonic stem cells started about a decade after that into adult stem cells. That head start means that embryonic stem cell research has not had the time yet to provide cures.
Even if embryonic stem cells never directly provide a cure they could do so indirectly. Comparing the results of research on embryonic and adult stem cells can give information that might have been over looked for years.
Preservation of human life (any human life, not just our fellow Jews) is Orthodox Judaism's highest value.
It's reasons like this why people should support Israel and be very afraid of imperialist orthodox Islam. As Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah said, "We [ the Muslims ] are going to win, because they [ the Jews / Westerners ] love life and we [the Muslims ] love death"
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
Yay, we figured out a way to save ourselves from a deliberate design flaw in life created by God. Praise God!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This has actually been studied. People with "positive attitudes" do not live longer than the morose after being diagnosed with cancer. Sorry, but this theory is false.
Many people believe it because of confirmation bias. But that's all it is.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
We've already cured cancer IN MICE 1000 times over, too bad it is still a death sentence for humans.
I'll be impressed when people stop dropping like flies from cancer and being given a "choice" between dying from cancer or suffering with chemo (barfing and loosing hair) and then still dying of cancer.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
"I've heard of others that have died from cancer, but nobody I personally knew, and definitely not as frequent as the successes that must be happening."
Me and my buddy were running a while back on the side walk. We'd do 10 kilometers twice a week together. He told me "This is great. If we keep doing this every week we'll likely die of cancer." He was right. Statistically if you die early it is heart disease or a stroke but if you are in good shape, exercise and eat right you can avoid that but then the second most common thing out there gets you later.
> Not to be rude but you, good sir, are talking out of your ass.
/anything/. If you can feed me more data about your case I will consider it when bringing up similar topic in the future.
/empathy/ than science.***
I'm not talking out of my ass. I just said what I have observed by myself. In my observations, I simply find a lot of correlation between a state of one's mind and their health. I am aware that correlation does not mean causation, I also am aware that in many cases correlation does not mean
> with nothing to back it up
I don't have anything of real value to back up my POV, because I have better things to do in my life than writing down the history of random people's diseases. And even if I had, how would you tell if I hadn't faked all of it? Will you dig down right to the sources? Remember that I live in Poland, will you go to Poland and talk with those people's families? Well, even if I had anything serious to back me up, you'd just tell it's bullshit, fake, or something along that, because you believe in what you like to believe in (so does everyone, me included).
Also, try not to forget that I've mentioned: "the psychological aspect should never be underestimated when dealing with *any* illness". NO aspect that has even a slightest chance of having an impact on something we're dealing with should ever be underestimated. That's the scientific approach, isn't it?
And one more thing; many people in this thread are giving links to TFAs which try to disprove that there's a correlation between one's mental and physical health. But let's face it: we mostly know next to nothing about the true nature of human mind. It's one of the most complex things around here; everything that makes up our civilization has been created by it.
***A human mind is not a machine we can disassemble and take a look at to find out how it works or what's wrong with it***. Many psychologists can't tell a shit about what's wrong with a guy (I know *many* such cases), probably because they have problems themselves (often that's why they got interested in psychology in the first place...). If you want to dig up someone's deepest subconscious complexes, then you need not him to have a session with a psychotherapist, but for both of you to drink a few bottles of beer. I've been able to actually *help* someone who's been treated (without any effects) by at least six different psychologists, who has been dangerous to his own surroundings (a lunatic; in his "second self" he liked to pull out a knife when having a nightly walk, and then attack and *hurt* random people. Watch them being hurt. He possibly killed a few), after talking with him for less than 20 minutes. ***When dealing with human mind, you need much more
To everyone: As of the New Age thing - I don't give a fuck what do they say, think or do. I've long since realized that I have no real need to be associated with any formal group. My opinions are mostly based on my own observations and thinking. Of course I haven't come up all by myself with "what you think is what happens to you", but as I started to observe myself and the world around me, it seems that there's more truth in that statement that one might expect. And before you bring up "of course but I have been thinking positive thoughts and so on but shit still happened" - most of your thinking is not conscious, and complexes & beliefs add *very* much to the equation. Get a degree in psychology, or self-educate yourself to an adequate level, learn Huna, or better yet - screw formal studies, *be effective*, and we may talk.
Now, go on and burn my karma. Or at least READ this post before modding it. Slashdot... Where having an unpopular opinion or discussing unproved theories is "troll", and trying to defend your point of view is "flamebait". DUH.
Life imitates Battlestar Galactica
Simpletoneity, n. -- The phenomenon of many people all doing the same stupid thing at the same time.
I know I shouldn't even be responding to you at this point, but...
There is a word for this, it's "opinion." I don't begrudge you your opinion, but don't be surprised when you air it over the internet in a public forum and someone responds negatively to it.
I believe in science, facts and theories. Show me some of those and I might be more inclined to listen to you.
I'm sorry, but I'm sure psychologists and neurologists around the world would disagree with you.
Remind me never to go drinking with you.
Insert your rambling piece about assisting lunatics with knives that I'm not going to dignify with a repost here.
Wow man, you're good. Have you ever thought of becoming a psychologist?
So which is it? Are they full of shit or not, and if so why are you advocating psychology?
I had to go and look up Huna (Thank you Wikipedia, and kudos to you I guess for getting me to research it.), and lo and behold it looks like I made a hole in one in my first post! Look man, believe whatever you want (because as you said that's what everyone does), but don't expect the world to bend to your point of view, especially when the fact don't line up the way you would like them to.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
> don't be surprised
/. long time ago.
/empathy/ than science." < will they disagree with that too? Well, I think I'm going to disagree with MANY people who are experts in their crafts - because if believing something that is an exact opposite of their theories might help me, I'd rather help myself than not. So far this attitude has proven to be beneficial to me. Let's see what time will show.
/effective/. Huna is all about being effective, nothing more. Did I mention I also have some natural bioenergotherapeuthic skills? You don't have to believe this - ask people who I've helped, my family and friends.
I'm not. Oh, maybe I am - surprised, that I haven't left
> I believe in science, facts and theories.
I believe in what I see. How many of these scientific experiments have you reproduced by yourself? How many "facts" there were in history that later were laughed at?
> I'm sorry, but I'm sure psychologists and neurologists
> around the world would disagree with you.
"When dealing with human mind, you need much more
> Remind me never to go drinking with you.
OK. I rarely drink anyway.
> Wow man, you're good.
No, I'm not good. As opposed to some psychologists I've met, I'm just
> So which is it?
It wasn't targeted at you. I'm just generally being pissed of by people who, for example, know almost nothing about such basic concepts as subconsciousness, yet they grant themselves a right to bitch at me when I bring up the topic of how subconscious beliefs are affecting people's everyday lives. But maybe it's the wrong audience that I'm trying to talk to?...
> I had to go and look up Huna [...]
Well, a very good step. I think you should not look at what kind of person I am, or what feelings you associate with me, and just make another. Perhaps a library?... (just a small suggestion)
And... Sorry if I've pissed you off... I think I've had a bad day.
You are pathetic! Shut up or grow up. When are you going to realize that it wasn't their choice to be born that way? And even if it was their choice, it still wouldn't make a difference because they are just a little bit different looking. Ignorance is not bliss, ignorance is anger and hate! Bliss is happiness which leads to an ultimate understanding of yourself.
Allright, so there is a bit of evidence that lead might possibly, maybe, p
Allright, so there is a bit of evidence that lead might possibly, maybe, potentially be linked to certain types of cancer. Not exactly convincing.
1) There is evidince that lead causes cancer in lab animals (and we have a reasonable mechanism of action - impaired DNA repair).
2) There is weak evidence that lead causes certain types of cancer in humans.
3) The reason that the evidence is weak is not because there is a weak effect (it was a 30-50% increase in the pooled studies), but because it is exquisitely hard to study the effect of toxins to produce relatively rare outcomes (cancers of the CNS and kidneys, etc) that takes decades to emerge. Its easy to show that lead causes anemia and decreased IQ in children, because most kids with significant lead exposure will get anemia and a measurably lower IQ within a few years time. However if you are studying a disease that takes 20-30 years to emerge and occurs in 1/100 people in a no exposed population and 1.3-1.5/100 in an exposed population, that will have to be a freaking massive study. That is in fact why I can remember the tobacco companies arguing that the evidence that smoking causes cancer was inconclusive. (And I'm only 38...)
However, this conversation is specifically about assigning the blame to this person's cancer death. Given the above, I assert that the mention of lead is irrelevant given the context of the conversation, however bad it may otherwise be.
Perhaps you should consider a job as an attorney for the Pharmaceutical industry. I think the Merck/Vioxx cases were argued on the same premise: well you can't prove that this heart attack was due to Vioxx rather than bacon, so we can't be found at fault (conveniently in all cases.)
Oh, and for the record, I think that the guy who claimed that cancer is caused by, essentially, evil, is a total asshole who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Then maybe you should have mentioned that asshattery a bit more and focused less on ripping into the guy who lost his brother to cancer. Not that this makes him less vulnerable to logical errors, but you might want to save the flamethrower for the people who so richly deserve it.
I'm just sayin.
In studying for my licensing exam for Psychology I was repeatedly exposed to the following information, which I believe to be true but I have no references handy to back it up: for a while, shortly after the successful linking of "type A personality" (actually just a few of the type A traits) to heart disease, researchers thought they were seeing a pattern emerge linking another personality type (or, again, a few traits) to cancer. The idea at the time was that there may be a set of traits that predispose people to cancer, or at least certain types of cancer. After several years more data collection, it looks like that isn't true. However, there does seem to be an enduring relationship between having certain traits (things like optimism and openness) and _prognosis_ for cancer. So the positive attitude won't help you avoid cancer, but might indeed help you survive it.