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FDA Approves Vaccine For Prostate Cancer
reverseengineer writes "The US Food and Drug Administration has given its first first approval for a therapeutic cancer vaccine. In a clinical trial 'involving 512 men, those who got Provenge (sipuleucel-T) had a median survival of 25.8 months after treatment, while those who got a placebo lived a median of 21.7 months. After three years, 32 percent of those who got Provenge were alive, compared with 23 percent of those who got the placebo. ... "The big story here is that this is the first proof of principle and proof that immunotherapy works in general in cancer, which I think is a huge observation," said Dr. Philip Kantoff, chief of solid tumor oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the lead investigator in Dendreon's largest clinical trial for the drug. "I think this is a very big thing and will lead to a lot more enthusiasm for the approach."'"
You are an idiot and have no clue what 'the placebo effect' even is, and some of the pills during her regiment are not medical effective and are there just to keep her in the habit. That is NOT a placebo effect.
"Girls who get Pregnant like symptoms when they really want to be pregnant. People who catch an actual cold when they call in sick for work faking it"
neither of those are a placebo effect.
People like you are driving us back to the dark ages.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That was just the median. What you should focus on more is the 3-year survival rate: 34% vs 23% -- almost a 50% increase in long-term survival.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
You got a (well conducted, well documented, and peer reviewed) study to cite on the saw palmetto helping cancer survival rates?
Cause I'm pretty sure that's bullshit.
I am currently in a country with socialized medicine. The grandparents of my wife came to witness the birth of their great-grandson. My wife is anemic on a good day. She's turned away from donating blood almost every time unless she remembers to take an iron pill the day before and eat an abnormally large breakfast. In pregnancy, it gets worse. When she had a kid in the US, they held her in the hospital because her count was low. They wouldn't let her go. She had no symptoms of anything, but they didn't release her until her insurance ran out, then, without having the issue fixed, they discharged her. They treated the "disease" of anemia without regard to the patient. There were no symptoms and no reason to hold her other than one test.
In this country, she was anemic the whole time of pregnancy, including during and after birth. She was asked whether she had symptoms. She suffered no dizziness, no fainting, or anything else. So they cleared her for release while failing a blood test. Her grandmother had a fit. She gets a new pill for every test she fails (regardless of whether it is even causing her symptoms) so, by God, that's just how it's done. To not give my wife something was neglect or malpractice or something, according to Grandma. I'd be interested in seeing the average number of pills per week of an American vs a European. My perception is that the US will be leading by far, even though the live expectancy doesn't reflect any better care.
In the US, they treat the test results, regardless of the condition of the patient. Outside the US, they treat the patient, using the test results as a tool to that end. That difference alone is a major factor as to why the US has the most expensive health care on the planet, yet a middle of the pack (for industrialized nations) life expectancy. Cutting the medication of everything, and instead identify problems with patients (rather than just failed tests) and treat the person, not just the diseases will reduce cost and improve care.
But, the "easy way" is to give a pill for every failed test and then you can't be sued. That takes less time and effort too. The cost isn't borne by either the doctor or the patient, so neither really care it isn't cost effective. And you get an over-medicated society in poor health. I'd guess that Obama's comment is along those lines, where he wants to cut costs and improve service at the same time.
P.S. Comp Sci. Comp Eng is 50% comp sci and 50% EE, so EE+comp sci is everything comp eng can do plus more.
Learn to love Alaska
you lost me when you started talking about herbal cancer cures. what a load of shit.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Again fucking statistics used as proof. No knowledge of how chemicals interact within the body, how and why the reactions that cause cancer occur, no fucking nothing. Just the damn statistics.
Again someone who has no idea how drug development and clinical trials work shooting his mouth off.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Nicotine is a serotonine inhibitor, people with above average levels of this hormone tend to react emotionally, have trouble coping etc. (it's a known cause of at least some types of ADD). Among such people Caffeine and Nicotine addiction is incredibly common because it's effectively self-medicating. Caffeine doesn't inhibit serotonine but counteracts it a bit and helps focus, nicotine reduces it again helping focus and concentration.
This effect of course is completely zeroed out if you don't HAVE a naturally high serotonine level but there's a reason so many geeks and artists smoke and have among the lowest rates of successfully quitting. People with high serotonine are also highly creative and individualistic and thus drawn to such professions. With these legal drugs, they can balance the pro's and cons without it, they have serious difficulty adjusting and operating well - to them the "withdrawel effects" is huge. I put it in quotes because it isn't, the withdrawel is no worse than for any other person quitting, but it's massively aggravated by the fact that (probably for the first time since they were teenagers) they aren't supressing their serotonine levels.
It's easy to judge and generalize.
Personally - I rate being able to get through the day without acting irrationally, excessively emotionally and being able to concentrate on my job for the next 40 years or so rather higher than the risk of living ten years less. It's genuinely a case of - as a smoker, my quality of life is so MUCH higher, that I'll accept the side-effects. Especially since those drugs that can have the same effect tend to have too much of it (thus removing the PRO'S of my serotonine level as well) and besides, generally have side effects not much better than those of ciggies (and frankly, they happen right NOW, not 30 years down the line).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *