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DNA Cancer Codes Cracked By International Effort
Enigma23 writes "As reported on news.com.au, scientists from the International Cancer Genome Consortium of 12 institutes around the world will today release the first DNA profiles of some of the most prevalent types of tumors. While the story asserts that 'A new era of cancer treatment has dawned,' I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Unfortunately, the patch is encumbered by patents.
> I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are > still very much in their infancy at the current time
Those are not the only applications for this knowledge.
Err, to fill in that empty shell of a comment, specifically, this will hopefully generate at least a few new genes that are useful as drug targets. Anything that can make chemotherapy a bit more specific instead of just a general metabolic poison is a bonus.
> Even the survivors die a little every day.
Everybody dies a little every day. Life is fatal.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Can they identify these tumors with a simple blood test now or do they still have to do an invasive biopsy?
Don't forget -- you might be able to get it done with a deep anal probe too! Everyone always forgets about the deep anal probe!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
The war on cancer and the war on drugs are pretty similar in certain ways. Both date back to Richard Nixon, ca. 1970. Both are vast, expensive projects of the federal government. Both have entrenched political/financial constituencies that want the federal money to keep flowing. Both have taken much, much longer and accomplished much, much less than Nixon and his contemporaries anticipated.
When it comes to cancer, the hype about prevention, early detection, and treatment has vastly overrun the actual medical gains. We were told for decades that eating lots of fiber would prevent colon cancer, but the first carefully designed study on this topic shows that it doesn't. We were told that PSA tests would save lives by allowing early treatment of prostate cancer; actually, the first good double-blind study showed that it saved no lives at all (while making many men incontinent and/or impotent). We were told that extending screening for breast cancer to younger women would produce better outcomes, but actually it turns out that it doesn't. In general, modern imaging techniques pick out tons of abnormalities than patients then demand to have treated, whether or not they would ever have caused a problem. People thought that personal genomics would allow individuals to get better prevention and treatment, but it turns out that there really don't seem to be any common mutations that predispose large numbers of people to a high risk of a particular cancer.
What we really need is more fundamental research on the biology of cancer. These half-assed attempts to find a quick answer have turned out to be mostly fruitless. It's like trying to send men to the moon without knowing Newton's laws of motion. We don't understand basic things like whether many cancers are caused by chromosomal abnormalities or whether the chromosomal abnormalities are caused by the cancers. While we're waiting for the fundamental biology knowledge to get figured out, we could concentrate on convincing people not to smoke tobacco.
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"I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Hence the phrase "era of cancer treatment has dawned" instead of "era of cancer treatment has nooned [or twilighted]". Putting the cart in front of the horse perhaps?
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
"...I'm a bit more skeptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Yup, and it'll likely stay that way if big pharma has their way with things. Why ruin a multi-billion dollar drug and treatment industry just to save a few thousand lives, right?
Greedy fucking bastards.
You can take some solace in that electronics has helped speed medical research in many, many ways.
You must favor the complete privatization of police forces, so the protection of lives and property and the arrests of criminals is bought on an open market and only available to those who can afford to buy it.
See what I did there ? Let's analyse your post:
Fallacy 1: Begs the question
Fallacy 2: Does not follow.
Fallacy 3: Strawman attack.
Stating that capitalism has no place at the sickbed does not imply or advocate that the correct method of paying doctors and research is governmental. This is the most common alternate system that has been tried (with huge success in general) but it's by no means the only one. There are quite a few completely different setups out there. Even your own country has thousands of free clinics run by charitable donation - e.g. there is no profit motive and it's not paid by government EITHER.
There are at least four other healthcare systems in the world where the cost of healthcare is shared by various entities - so not all paid by government and that's just what's in active use.
The amount of possible ways to do it that hasn't been tried and perhaps hasn't even been thought of yet is potentially infinite.
The parent pointed out problems with profit-motive in healthcare. You assumed without any evidence that he must therefore be advocating government paid healthcare. He may or may not advocate this, but the point is - you don't know if that is what he advocates because he did NOT suggest any particular alternate system - he merely said that he is not in favor of capitalist medicine. You then took what you perceive as the worst possible alternative, stated that he *must* be advocating it, and attacked that. Three fallacies in one short sentence- impressive.
Or is it just typical American dualist thinking ? Every issue only has two sides and two possible answers right ? That's why you can have a "democracy" where only two parties have any actual power, it works because your your entire 350 million strong population consists of people who have only one of the same two opinions on everything, and conveniently - your opinion one one issue means you must have the exact same opinion on all other issues as all the other people who share your opinion on this one...
Actually... that sounds rather silly when you think about it... it suggests a culture that has utterly and completely marginalized any individual thinking when all the other parties out there (the greens, the libertarians etc.) even in coalition can't get enough votes for a single seat in government. You've had an independent candidate in every single election for at least a hundred years, but I don't believe you've had an independent candidate *win* the presidential election in your entire history...
Well... the real world is not so simple. Most issues don't have just two extremes as answers, and people who actually think about things can adjust their opinion to the specific issue rather than attempting to fit one ideological extreme to all issues.
The best way for society to solve any given problem may be completely different from the best way to solve another.
Very few people would think that police protection should cost you money - because when you need it most, is often when you can least afford it (not to mention - a truly private police force would have zero motivation to pursue a murderer unless the family of the victim is wealthy). You happily accept that law enforcement is best done when provided entirely by the government (there is no logical requirement that the people who make the law should enforce it - we do it that way because historically we've learned it works best) but you cannot contemplate that perhaps the same failures of the market may apply to healthcare ? So maybe the government paying for all would, while not perfect, actually be better than a capitalist system ?
You didn't actually state your reasons for being against that - you merely declared that you are with no justification - when the arguments in favor of it are quite strong, and cleverly avoided having to even consider that there are a multitude of OTHER ways medicine could be funded which may be better than EITHER capitalism OR government paid.
In short... EPIC FAIL.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *