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Mayo Clinic Reports Dramatic Outcomes In Prostate Cancer Treatment
Zorglub writes "Two prostate cancer patients who had been told their condition was inoperable are now cancer-free as the result of an experimental therapy, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester announced Friday. 'Cancer has a propensity for turning off T cells. Dr. Allison hypothesized that if you block the off-switch, T cells will stay turned on and create a prolonged immune response. Dr. Kwon, then at NIH, demonstrated that CTLA-4 blockage could be used to treat aggressive forms of prostate cancer in mice. There was one limitation to that concept — the worry that by simply leaving all the T cells on there may not be enough response aimed at the tumor. Dr. Kwon called Dr. Allison and designed the trial together. The idea: use androgen ablation or hormone therapy to ignite an immune approach — a pilot light — and then, after a short interval of hormone therapy, introduce an anti-CTLA-4 antibody that acts like gasoline to this pilot light and overwhelms the cancer cells.' After the treatment, the patients' tumors shrunk to such a degree that they could be successfully removed."
The information you got is either wrong or very short sighted.
I smoke and I've researched this issue into the ground. Its pretty accurate. There's a reason why the "smoking benefits" timeline doesn't have a reduced cancer risk on it. It takes too long for lungs to clean themselves after you quit. It's like asbestos... once those particles get into your lungs, a lot of them are not going to come out. So, quitting smoking now significantly reduces your chances of having a heart attack and stroke, keeps your COPD from getting worse, but, because your lungs are already covered in tar. By the time you go through the decades it takes for your lungs to really clean themselves out, those little particles of doom will have deluded a cell to mutate differently, and you are screwed.
They don't publicize this, because of course, people will get the idea that you may as well keep smoking because you are going to get cancer no matter what you do, which is pretty true, but, they overlook the heart attacks, COPds and other bad things that can happen.
This is my sig.