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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."'"
"We need to cut back on the quantity of medicine used, in order to improve efficiency." - Barak Obama last week.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Well done. I wish that bitch would die.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Shut up! These experiments were designed by high-status research doctors who made damn sure they did things the way they've always done them. You must trust them, or you hate science.
How dare you consider yourself qualified to call a result insignificant!
(Bad mood today, sorry.)
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
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.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
So this seems like a good thing to me. There is now something which, if you have a particular kind of cancer, you can take it and there is a good chance that it will stop you from dying. So in the near future people who otherwise would have died will buy this stuff and live instead. As a result, medical spending will bump up because there is now one more thing people can spend money to live longer. This component of medical spending increase seems like a good one. And that is why the often repeated, primary goal of Obamacare, to reduce medical spending, seems 100% ass-backwards to me. Medical spending increases are good. Decreases are bad. Most people want to spend more money so that they can live longer. The President wants them to spend less money and the consequence is that they will die sooner.
Obama was right; Medical spending in the U.S. is increasing. But so is iPod spending. Apple introduced the first iPod on 23 October 2001 and since has sold 220 million iPods. Between October 22 and today, there has been a massive increase in iPod spending. Yet there is no federal campaign to cap iPod sales, to urgent necessity to relieve Americans of the growing iPod spending burden. Apple is happy to sell them and for the most part the owners enjoy having them. The increasing sales represent a component of national economic growth. A national campaign to cap iPod spending makes exactly as much sense as a national campaign to cap medical spending.
In 1969 there were no microprocessors. Then intel introduced the 4004 in 1970 and today they are everywhere. It has been a revolution and most people believe a good one. But note that spending on commercial CPUs in 1969 was $0.00 and today it is umpteen bazillion gazillon dollars. But what if Reagan had declared a "CPU crisis" in the 80's when spending was heating up and enacted price controls and national spending limits on silicon? Then then in 2010 I would be posting this message to a BBS on my 80286 running MS-DOS.
Spending increases on silicon paid for the silicon revolution. The medical revolution which would have hit will be long delayed or never arrive because Obamacare limits the increases in spending which would have paid for those. Cures for spinal cord damage which leave patients paralyzed, curse for diabetes which kills, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Lupus.
What George Bush did to limit stem cell research was a disgrace. What Obama and congressional Democrats has done is horrific. Millions of Americans will die of what would have been curable diseases.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
As our understanding of the immune system and the molecular processes underlying cancer improves, we will slowly unravel a huge potential for case-by-case-based treatment of cancer. As a matter of fact, I believe a recent study I am too lazy to look up to link has shown that people whose cancer therapies relied on analyzing the biochemistry of each individual tumor resulted in about a 50% increase in 5-year survival, compared to conventional pathology-based treatments. The future is bright for oncology. Croatia Apartments
I'm guessing you believe you have 1 testicle 1 ovary and half a uterus?
Big note, when actual measurement is in conflict with theoretical understanding, reality wins and the theory is wrong.