Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Crack 'Entire Genetic Code' of Cancer
Entropy98 writes "Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of skin and lung cancer. From the article: 'Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumors far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, say the Wellcome Trust team. The scientists found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30,000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure. The lung cancer DNA code had more than 23,000 errors largely triggered by cigarette smoke exposure. From this, the experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke. Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer.' Yet another step towards curing cancer. Though it will probably take many years to study so many mutations."
I didn't use to like skin cancer, but it grows on you
Smivs on the intertubes!
Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer
And some will give you super powers.
What does it mean that melanoma has 30,000 errors in the DNA? Is it that the one melanoma they looked at had 30,000 differences from the other cells in the patient's body? It appears that, far from finding the needle in the haystack, they've found 30,000 haystacks.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I wonder if they will patent this so everyone who develops a treatment using techniques discovered here must cough up a royalty?
Why are patents allowed on naturally occurring phenomena like genes anyway?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Maybe we can make cigarettes that don't cause cancer.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Well I just quit.
(Actually, I've been smoking less and less this week, haven't - and won't - buy a new pack once this last one's gone. With this news, the 1 in 15 smokes stat is a real motivator!)
Both my parents died from it and I suspect I probably will too. Or maybe not if they can find a cure.
Hopefully this will lead to treatments for other cancers as well.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
It seems that they should do this with cancer cells from several different patients and compare them to find out which mutations actually trigger the cancer.
Do these guys promise to come back in 2 years and report on their progress?
Hacking would be to add or change something on that code on a original but cheap way to produce a practical result. Chop chop.. hack hack.
The article sounds more like deassembling the code. but IANGE.
-Woof woof woof!
This is a terrible summary. There is no *single* cancer genome. They sequenced the genome of one cancer biopsy. There are probably as many different cancer "codes" (also a horribly misleading term) as there are tumors in the world.
Cancer is not a single disease, it is a phenomenon, like evolution. This would be like sequencing the genome of two organisms and claiming to've "cracked the evolution code".
The critical point here is that most of these mutations are acquired *after* the cancer gets going, regardless of whether the mutagen in question is still being administered.
Therefore, it's not proper to infer a linear relationship between the dose of mutagen and the number of mutations.
Beyond that, the numbers involved in that extrapolation seem to have been pulled out of thin air, and I question whether they knew the smoking history of the individual who donated the material that created that cell line. (The lung cancer in question had 30,000 mutations, so by their logic the smoker must have smoked 345,000 cigarettes, or 17,250 packs of 20. That's a pack a day for 47 years, which is admittedly within the bounds of possibility, but still an awful lot of smoking.)
Whatever. Smoking is still awful for you, but this kind of nonsensical extrapolation without regard to detail is terribly annoying.
It's exhilarating to see such visceral confirmation of the superior efficiencies of free market capitalism. If the scientists working for this cancer research corporation didn't have the profit motive behind them, who knows how long it would have taken for them to reach this point in their research, that is, if the project had even gotten off the ground at all!
Cancer will be issuing a DMCA take-down notice and sue the pants off the scientists for cracking its code.
I agree. Most confusing summary.
Are they saying that all 30,000 mutations are the DIRECT result of exposure to sunlight, or are they saying an initial mutation caused by sunlight exposure was then multiplied by cell division/replication?
If it was the first case, how did they determine the cause of each mutation? If it was the second case, the question still remains--How did they determine the cause of ANY of these mutations?
"Whatever. Smoking is still awful for you, but this kind of nonsensical extrapolation without regard to detail is terribly annoying."
Yes, terribly annoying, but apparently it gets them grant money.
you can smoke 344,999 cigarettes and not get cancer but if you smoke just one more BAM! CANCER!
I know it doesn't but the article kinda hints at that.
Wouldn't it be great though if it was that precise.
15 cigs = 1 DNA error
23,000 errrors = CANCER
15 Cigs X 23,000 = 345,000 cigs
345,000 Cigs = Cancer
Average life span ~67 years
If you start smoking at 18 that's ~17,897 days till your dead anyway
So you can have 19 Cigarettes a day.
Hey cigarette companies I think I have a new marketing campaign for you. You just need to start selling packs of smokes with 19 Cigs in each.
So, since it's cigarette smoke that's the problem... Everyone switch to pot?
I know you're joking, but there's no conclusive evidence that nicotine itself causes cancer. It's particulate matter and other smoke residues that seem to drive lung cancer, and we know that there are just as many carcinogens in pot smoke as tobacco smoke.
Weirdly, however, large studies seem to indicate that there isn't an increased cancer risk from heavy pot smoking. Other research suggests that THC reduced lung cancer growth. However, pot smokers are at elevated risk for other lung diseases that come purely from breathing hot smoke all the time.
So, if you're going to switch from tobacco to marijuana, consider going with methods other than smoking. You may not get cancer from smoking, but it's still not good for you, and there are much safer ways to get high. (They are also ways that do not force other people in your presence to participate through second-hand smoke, which will bother others regardless of the long-term health risks or lack thereof.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I just completed an intensive undergraduate course on cancer with a focus on genetics at UC Berkeley. We spent a significant amount of time on cancer genomes, and I have to say this announcement doesn't mean that much unfortunately. Cancers are genetically very unstable, and any given tumor you sequence will have many mutations that are completely unrelated to the cancer's survival and proliferation. they are known as passenger mutations, and need to be separated from the causative 'driver' mutations. sequencing many tumors of the same type and applying statistical analysis has been useful in this area, but considering that there are potentially millions of different combinations of active and inactive genes that lead to tumor formation, this approach has its limitations. this is especially true given that some genes are both tumor suppressors and tumor activators in different contexts (eg the TGF-b pathway). even if you identify a genetic locus as highly associated with a particular cancer, it is hard to go from there to understanding the molecular biology behind that association.
we have a long way to go before we defeat cancer, and sequencing can only take us so far.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Well the summary actually says it's 30,000 mutations for skin cancer and 23,000 for lung cancer, but at least you got it right in your math.
Yes, I am obsessed with ellipses.
Oh my. An AC troll without a spelling mistake and good grammar! Sorry Mr AC but you fail
If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
"The scientists found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30,000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure."
This is obviously such a ridiculous statement that I'm surprised it made it into the BBC article.
Show me the evidence that almost 100% of DNA errors in skin cells or skin cancer cells are caused by sun exposure...
Ah let me see...my crystal ball says that in the future you will be excluded from insurance cover if your DNA shows cancer markers. What about that job you applied for? Your DNA says that you may have a propensity for borderline personality disorder...go straight to management!
I can't help but think that cancer is acting as a brake on the population explosion.
Umm, no.
Cancer, in general, happens to people well past the age of reproduction. Which means it has little, if any, effect on population growth rates.
If there are diseases you'd like to keep around to prevent overpopulation, may I suggest lobbying to return Smallpox to the wild instead? Or just become a pro-AIDS activist, since the latter seems to be doing a good job of cutting into African population growth.
Seriously, some of you people scare me....
I realize that birth control education/legislation/etc. brings up an entirely new conversation (one I'm not trying to start here) but I'd pretty much support anything that would have kept friends and family from dying a slow, painful death.
One of the things driving me when I began the quitting process was that my back of the napkin math showed I had smoked in the area of 148,000 cigarettes. I had a hard time putting that in terms of anything else. I couldn't compare it to any other non-reflexive thing. I haven't signed my name 148,000 times, or tied my shoes. What have I done 20+ times per day for 20 years?
Now I learn that that means I have 10,000 cell mutations on top of that. Neato. Of course, 10,000 cells is kind of a drop in the bucket compared to the inner surface of my airway.
To smokers: Please note his does not mean that I'm not still hopefully addicted to nicotine. Now it just comes in the form of Cherry Commit Lozenges. They work pretty OK. I've had maybe 1 cigarette per month for the last 5 months.
On the other hand, I miss that I no longer look cool.
I like music
If this is true, does that not mean (by cause and affect) that there is a provable direct relation between cigarette smoking and cancer? Would that not indicate that a lawsuit is in order?
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
Now that these scientists got the genetic code for skin and lung cancer, should we get them to figure the genetic code for the stupidity cancer? I think so, it will be hard, but very well rewarding
Nope. There's been a large reduction in cancer deaths due to research and treatment advances (I'm a two time cancer survivor, 1 a stage 4 of the neck) so cancer is having a much smaller reduction on population than it used to. Also, since cancer occurs after the reproductive years in the vast majority of cases there is no breeding it out of the system. If cancer killed people before they reproduced then the genetic causes of cancer would be eliminated pretty quickly.
You can support your family and get support at the American Cancer Society Cancer Support Network (http://csn.cancer.org/). A lot of people there going through the same things you and your friends are.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
> The genes aren't patentable.
Tell that to Monsanto. If the genes from their GE plants turn up in a farmer's soy crop, he's in for hell even if they just drifted over as pollen from neighboring fields.
In the United States, patents protect not just the device or technique, but also the product of it. Thus, those who patent techniques for isolating genes also have patent-protection for the genes, themselves. Patents do not ordinarily cover "products of nature," but when something exists in a lab in "purified" form, it's exempted from this limitation. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/patents.shtml
Here's what Monsanto does with their patents:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0115-04.htm
Under U.S. patent law, a farmer commits an offense even if they unknowingly plant Monsanto's seeds without purchasing them from the company. Other countries have similar laws.
In the well-known case of Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, pollen from a neighbor's GE canola fields and seeds that blew off trucks on their way to a processing plant ended up contaminating his fields with Monsanto's genetics.
The trial court ruled that no matter how the GE plants got there, Schmeiser had infringed on Monsanto's legal rights when he harvested and sold his crop. After a six-year legal battle, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that while Schmeiser had technically infringed on Monsanto's patent, he did not have to pay any penalties.
Schmeiser, who spoke at last year's World Social Forum in India, says it cost 400,000 dollars to defend himself.
"Monsanto should held legally responsible for the contamination," he said.
Another North Dakota farmer, Tom Wiley, explains the situation this way: "Farmers are being sued for having GMOs on their property that they did not buy, do not want, will not use and cannot sell."
Don't worry too much about population explosion.
It is a mystery to me, but somehow human population is controlling itself. And this is without any war, famine or diseases.
Look for example at Japan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan
There hasn't been any large conflict there ever since World War Two. Haven't heard of any kind of outbreaks or hunger. Yet the childbirth rates are falling.
Seems like similar is happening in Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Europe
Saying they've "cracked" the code to these two cancers (skin and lung) is not really as big a step as the title implies. They've found the genetic mutations associated with the cancers. That's probably the easy part (and it wasn't so easy). The problem in studying cancer is that the function of genes is often dynamic and interdependent. Think of a room with 30,000 light switches. Sometimes light switch #5 will turn on the light bulb, but sometimes it won't. It depends on whether light switch # 7, 100, and 10542 are all on simultaneously or not. And if switch #2742 is on, the light, if it's on, will be very dim. This why even though we give a cancer a single name - e.g. "melanoma" - there are often very different mutations present, any one or multiple ones which can affect the person's survival, but not necessarily all the time. There are cancers which reliably result from single mutations, but the most common ones are due to mutations in many many different genes. To the point that most cases of cancer can or should be considered unique.
IMHO, where I think the results of these studies may be most helpful with regards to treating people successfully is figuring out which mutations cause the cancer to spontaneously regress, whether it's by self-destruction or immune mechanisms. Even then, maybe it's not even because of a cancer mutation. Maybe some people possess some genetic trait in their immune system that allows them to destroy cancers. In which case, too many people would be looking in the wrong haystack for a needle.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
"the experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke."
I will now become a heavy smoker in hopes of gaining X-Men-like superpowers.
After much research and thought, I've come to the conclusion that white mice actually cause cancer.
'Show me the evidence that almost 100% of DNA errors in skin cells or skin cancer cells are caused by sun exposure...'
Not 100% perhaps, but from the paper:
'DNA damage due to ultraviolet light leads to the formation of covalent links between two adjacent pyrimidines. Consequently, C>T mutations due to ultraviolet light usually occur at dipyrimidine sequences. Therefore, to evaluate further the role of ultraviolet light in the pathogenesis of somatic mutations in COLO-829, we examined the sequence context of C>T substitutions...[Lots of technical stuff about the sequence context of the mutations with some impressive looking p-values] ...Therefore, the mutation spectrum and sequence context indicate that most C>T/G>A somatic substitutions in COLO-829 are attributable to ultraviolet-light-induced DNA damage.'
// Not sure where I was going with this.
Their they're doing there hair.
Cancer isn't some magical disease that turns up. It's literally coding errors (for the most part). If you want a computer analogy, it's like expecting an hard drive as old as you are not to have any bad sectors - it's possible, but it ain't gonna stay like that forever. And if those errors are in the wrong places - the whole thing becomes a mess that destroys itself. Of course, a lot of the time those errors go unnoticed for decades or even forever if they are in an unimportant part of the code. And there's a certain amount of "error checking and correction" going on in various reproductive processes of the cells that lessens the impact.
Cancer is, basically, the MTBF of a human. If something else doesn't get you, cancer will eventually catch you up by sheer random statistics - enough time exposed to the sun (not even in a sunny country, or deliberate exposure), or a million and one other factors (which is why *everything* is stated in the news as "causing cancer"), and the cell's DNA "bits" will flip and it'll go crazy and stop all its highly-evolved self-limiting processes until it starts to take over your body. With some people it happens within their first year of life, some people live to 100 and never see it... but live long enough and you'll get cancer.
You can extend life, you can treat cancer, in theory you can "cure" it (i.e. push its statistical error rate outside the lifespan of a human) but it'll always be there. Try and find someone who's lived past 40/50 and hasn't had either several friends/relatives or themselves have it / die from it... we've all been there. I can name five serious (two fatal) off the top of my head just from blood relations and I'm only 30 - and those are just the ones I know about.
Cancer isn't a brake on population growth - the genetic factors are rarely subject to natural selection as others have pointed out - it's just the natural lifespan of a human. We didn't have it very much a few thousand years ago because we weren't living long enough for it to have a big effect. In the future, it will always be there even if we "trick" our way around it (there are animals that live longer than us and don't see such a high rate of mutation). Just look at the primary methods of treatment for a condition which sinks billions of pounds of research money - surgically cut it out, poison it or nuke it.
Pulling some stats from the wiki: Cancer causes 13% of all deaths worldwide and 25% of all deaths in the US. More than 30% of cancer is preventable via avoiding risk factors (which suggests that 70% of it is not preventable at all). It's a statistical function, not a disease, and the more exposure you have to things, the more your chances go up (but, some would argue, the more your quality of life would go down). Nothing brings those chances down below their base rate, though. It can be made more survivable, less painful, less affecting, but you can't "stop" it. Change your lifestyle and you have more effect than researching drugs that few can afford, won't be effective and will have terrible side-effects - the story of all medicine ("Since 1971 the United States has invested over $200 billion on cancer research... Despite this substantial investment, the country has only seen a five percent decrease in the cancer death rate in the last 50 years"). Who here wants to give up alcohol and sex and modern living to live longer? I would guess few. Same as everything else on the planet: Live life, enjoy and if you exercise and take care you'll extend your average lifespan. You could still get cancer tomorrow, though.
Cancer is what you're left with if you've survived everything else. In the brutal, inhumane terms of statistics, it's not very important in terms of sustaining the planet / population or anything else.
I always thought that the nicotine is completely harmless. You can chew the nicotine gum for every second of your life and you will probably be fine.
There's some controversy over some research that needs to be hashed out over nicotine and FOXM1 expression. Recent research has suggested that if you have a mutation in this gene (which is a precursor to cancer), nicotine may worsen your chances of getting cancer. Nicotine alone won't do it, but if you're already heading down that route...
Some researchers are skeptical over the study because numerous other studies have shown no link between nicotine and cancer, but only time will tell who is right.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Seriously, what you are suggesting is ether unreasonable; recoup direct investment costs only, or; basically, the regulated utility model, where you could turn a profit by redecorating the presidents office and old investments where never called failures or obsolete, just run forever (and ever and ever) with guaranteed ROI.
You've heard of the floating break-even? (Hollywood accounting) Do you really want to inflict that on R&D? That's the first obvious unintended consequence.
As long as patents don't go the way of copyrights and extend the term unreasonably they remain necessary. There scope is a question to me (not that I've got shit to say about anything). Particularly business method/algorithm patents.
Your capitalism light around R&D approach fails on capital mobility grounds alone. The R&D capital will travel to the best ROI.
Leave us with the current capitalism light, at least it sort of works for now.
I expect old fashioned secrets to return to vogue when the international IP landscape fractures just slightly after the Dollar does (which is to say well after the Pound craters but slightly before the Euro.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
One of the reasons why slashdot is good is because its readers tend to be aware of the state of the technology. Thanks commenters for precise answers to some very stupid genetic advertising. And yes, skin cancer grows on you....:D
I'm not saying whether or not I agree with that, but that's the way it is.
No, it is not. Research is expensive, but a lot of that is already paid for by taxes. Furthermore, the resulting medicines are themselves very profitable and expensive, and a lot of that profit is, again, derived from the government.
Additionally, market forces aren't working: profitable drugs (the ones drug companies have an incentive to develop) are not the drugs that people actually need. Drug companies love to develop drugs that reduce the symptoms of uncurable diseases and need to be taken for life; the drugs we actually need are drugs that cure diseases with a single dose. They also prefer to develop lifestyle drugs and drugs for common but harmless ailments, instead of developing drugs for curing serious disease.
According to them, without patents, there would be no research and progress in this field whatsoever.
We'd have to increase public funding for research and clinical trials somewhat, but on balance, we'd pay a lot less and get better drugs.
The market works for a lot of things, but it doesn't work well for either research or drugs.
Nope. There's been a large reduction in cancer deaths due to research and treatment advances
Unfortunately, that's not really true - the overall mortality rate for cancers is roughly the same as it was in 1950, as aresurvival rates for people diagnosed with cancer.
I would suggest that spending more money on cancer research is unlikely to have a significant impact on survival rates. From the proteins on his surface to the sequence of his DNA, we know the enemy. What we lack is the bullet that can reach him and kill him - essentially the same problem that prevents us from curing AIDS, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and many genetic diseases. Now that gene therapy has proven to be a dud, there's no incremental advancement on the horizon that could lead to a large increase in cancer survival rates. Funding is unlikely to help because the advisory boards making the money decisions prioritize incremental research deemed most likely to succeed over more ambitious experiments. The few major breakthroughs in treating specialized forms of cancer have mostly come from lone wolves who secured funding from private benefactors.
No one can argue against funding cancer research while so much of our economic output is earmarked for empire building or making really great sitcoms. But I do not believe that additional funding for cancer research is likely to produce a large increase survival rates.
Many well intentioned people contribute millions of dollars to increase the rate of death from cancer. They donate to heart research. If you don't die of a cardiac problem, you're more likely to die from cancer. Or you can give money for cancer research and increase the rate of death from cardiac arrest. The total death rate is constant.
OK a new size TV
Is this poster savagely mocking the Randroids and Glibertarians that infest /., or is he one of the Randroids and Glibertarians that infest /.?
"It's exhilarating to see such visceral confirmation of the superior efficiencies of free market capitalism. If the scientists working for this cancer research corporation didn't have the profit motive behind them, who knows how long it would have taken for them to reach this point in their research, that is, if the project had even gotten off the ground at all!"
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
See - it's just not a problem for most of us pasty white boy types :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Congrats on that. How did you beat stage 4 cancer of the neck? What was the treatment (what were the main drugs) .. also how long have you been cancer free.
Can you be a little specific like .. how was it diagnosed and how did they start off the treatment and did they use combination therapy.
Did you have a particular genetic disposition?
Maybe some of the saving from strokes and heart disease mean you are more likely to eventually die of cancer. But the death rates from all these diseases have declined steadily since the 50s. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/23/science/0424-cancer-graphic.html
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
Never worked in a VA hospital, eh? :) You measure smoking history in "pack-years" (actually packs/day * years). 47 is pretty unremarkable. It's not until you hit triple digits that it seems extraordinary.
So how many joints does it take to get a mutation?
No, I will not work for your startup
Though the story is newsworthy, this has the misleading title of the century. They didn't unlock it. They sequenced it. There's a big, big difference. It's the difference between having a map of South America and doing Sharon Stone on the throne of the Lost City of Gold.
http://seqcore.brcf.med.umich.edu/doc/educ/dnapr/sequencing.html
Nature has a nice summary of the original research paper published in the same journal: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091216/full/news.2009.1143.html
I quit 4 years, 3 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds ago.
And I don't miss them at all.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
If you fire a rifle at a running car, it might survive several shots and still keep running. Some of the shots go through the windows, some through the doors, and some just bounce off the pillars. But some shots could poke holes in the body and leave underlying parts exposed. Then further shots might puncture the gas tank or the radiator. A little less likely, shots might break the fuel pump or electric distributor. And just maybe a shot will interrupt the ignition circuit.
Even though any particular car's damage will be unique, the damage that made cars stop running will be common. Most will involve the gas tank or radiator. And a few will involve smaller parts.
A study like this is looking for those major parts which are likely to be damaged in cancer cells. It might also reveal common patterns of damage which disabled protective mechanisms and left those key part vulnerable. Then you might have an idea of how to detect critical damage, how to repair subcritical damage, how to armor critical areas, and how to completely disable malfunctioning cells.
You quote the article as saying:
I follow that link to find the article saying:
And now there's a notice at the bottom:
Nature got it wrong and got corrected.
Under the new ACTA agreement, this is considered to be an international act of mass genocide. But before they get tried for that, they'll be sued one million dollars per Human Genome End-User License violation (you'll learn more about that when the time comes) - somewhere around 6.8 quadrillion dollars - by the Pharmaceutical Industry Association of Earth (again...you'll find out about that later).
Remember, the PIAE only wishes to protect your rights as a Human Genome licensee from those who wish to undermine the value of HG code by illegally reverse-engineering, illegally altering, or making illegal copies and illegal derivative works of the code. Without the PIAE, the rightful owners of HG copyrights and patents would not have the money they need to make life better for us all.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is definitely a very impressive achievement in its own right, and the technology that has made this possible is pretty amazing, but it's a bit premature to say "we've cracked the genetic code of cancer" full stop.
But how then would they manage to catch the attention of enough reader/viewer in order to accumulate enough eyeball-time to sell at an interesting rate to advertiser ?~
More seriously :
If they can find mutations that are more common than others or genes that are mutated more often than others, then they can perhaps discover new genes which, when mutated drive the development and progression of the tumor. If you can discover which genes are important you can perhaps design treatments for that.
Yup. There's some interesting potential in data-mining if this experiment is repeated enough. You could also achieve some interesting result to pin down possible suspect by sequencing *several* tumoral cells and trying to see which mutation are common to most cells of 1 patient's cancer. But it needs to be also repeated over a population of several cancerous patients to obtain a list of "usual suspect" (beyond those we already know about. Like p53, BCR-ABL, ABC-transporters, etc.)
By having a bigger amount of "gene usually over- / under- expressed in tumor", scientist may find expression pattern which don't- or seldom- occur in healthy cells and thus design drugs which are more cancer-specific.
In an over-simplified caricature :
- Lots of current cancer drugs target fast-replicating cells, because that's typical for cancer cell. Sadly, other important healthy cells also do replicate quickly - such as the immune system. Thus people treated with these drugs are immunodeficient
- Such series of study might reveal a complex network of 30 genes all working together in tumours. Activity of the same genes might occur in other cells, but never more than 3 at a time. One could design a treatment which contain a mixture of two dozens of drugs, targeting these 30 genes and slightly lowering the efficiency of the produced proteins. Healthy cells won't be that much affected : they slightly lose some activity in only 3 crucial proteins. Cancer cells would be much more affected : they have decreased activity in all 30 proteins - this adds up and they might be significantly less good at surviving.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Doesn't the presence of childhood diseases that have genetic causes, like cystic fibrosis (to name ONLY ONE), falsify this logic? Heck, doesn't childhood CHOKING have a genetic cause (genes place that windpipe where it is, after all, sure is good for speech though). Doesn't the same genetic trait that causes sickle cell help defend against malaria? Maybe life-form design involves trade-offs, some of which we know of, and some are yet-to-be-discovered.
Secondly, this logic fails a whole different way by assuming grandparents don't help survival of their young.
Great post. Despite what you say, I believe that the death rate for cancer will be near zero by 2100. Yes, it may always be with us, but at that point, it may be just an inconvenience (like baldness is now).
On a pedantic note, my "faulty logic flag" went up, when I read this:
Actually "More than 30% of cancer is preventable" means just the opposite of what you said.
If "More than 30% of cancer is preventable" is a true statement, then the statement "70% of it is not preventable" must be a false statement.
It's possible for "69.999% to be not preventable", but impossible for "70% to be not preventable".
I will just throw away every 15th smoke, that should about do it.
Not as "cool" as you wasting one of your two posts to moan about it.
Totally agree with your logic. Thinko.
I beat it because I went in once I found a lump in my neck and they were able to claim "early detection". Most people ignore things until they get painful, I didn't and that has lead to to survival. I was treated with surgery (a radical left neck dissection), Radiation (primary treatment, 71 rads of IMRT proton beam radiation over 33 doses in 6 weeks) and chemo (secondary treatment, cisplatin once a week for 6 weeks). Pretty much any cancer found in the head/neck will be at a stage 4 level because it's big and has a very good blood supply. I was given anywhere from 60% to 90% odds of 5 year survival depending on the doctor. I am at 4 years since diagnosis right now. It wasn't genetic, smoking or drinking caused. It may have been caused by the HPV virus but as far as I know that testing wasn't done. My tumors are in a tumor bank though so they can be used for research.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
....They found 30,000 needles.
Regards;
Actually, cigarette smoking lowers public expenditures. Cigarette smokers are likely to die younger.
The main savings is in pensions, social security, and health care for the aged.
An Eastern European country required a cigarette company to submit data on the costs of cigarettes. The company handed the job over to their usual health economists and PR guys, who came up with a report that cigarette smoking would save the country money for those reasons.
It was nice to see such refreshing candor from a cigarette company. Or maybe I should say, I'm glad they didn't stop to think about it before they released the report.
Sorry I don't have a citation.
Well, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The study mentioned by the NYT corrected for age and perhaps other factors they had models and data for. But I don't know if they could quantify all environmental factors like exposure to synthetic materials, stress, intake of preservatives and saturated fats, obesity, etc.
Second, there are specific cancers that they have been able to treat with more success like leukemia. The NYT series did show graphs of age adjusted deaths by individual cancer, but alas these graphs only go as far as 1994, so individual success stories tend to be obscured.
Wait, so if I patent topological sorting, I also have a monopoly on the use of sorted lists?
Possibly.
Adobe got a patent on code for generating tabbed and docking windows and sued Macromedia for using completely different code that would not have in any way infringed copyright, but nevertheless produced similar tabbed and docking windows in a GUI.
Adobe won.
I had a customer many years ago, who was an oncologist. He said the main reason we see cancer so much these days is because we live long enough to get cancer.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."