Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans

John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."

Comments

Cure?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no money in a cure....

Re:Cure?

[BitZtream]

Viagra is another example of treating the symptoms and not resolving the problem.

Thats what drug companies love the most, treating the symptoms only and not doing anything to resolve the actual problem.

There is no profit in cures, just treat the symptoms and make them dependent on you.

Re:Cure?

[0100010001010011]

My dad ha(s|d) cancer.

ONE chemo bag is $18k. I think he gets 3 per month until it goes into remission.

I guarantee you there is no way in hell he'd ever spend that much on Viagra or any other drug that someone could possibly use if he lived.

Re:Cure?

[interkin3tic]

There is no money in a cure....

Skepticism is always warranted with an industry as large, corrupt, but ultimately essential as the pharmaceutical industry. Still, that goes into paranoia. No money in a cure? Perhaps you missed the very last line of TFA

[glioblastoma patient] average survival is 14 to 16 months with standard treatments.

This is not a disease that the industry is making money off stringing along patients rather than curing them. There's no stringing along. You die of it. You never become a continuous customer for the drug company. Hospitals might make a lot of money from them, and I don't know the standard treatment. I'd guess it's more surgical and pallative care with glioblastoma.

The second to last line also speaks against the idea that the cure is being suppressed: a quote by some professional suggesting that the drug would extend the lives of these patients. Not cure, extend. If you were right and they just want people to hang on to suck up more treatment, they'd be aggressively testing this, possibly in combination with a drug they -can- patent and make a bunch of money off of.

Anyway, any given research team has a huge interest in a bona-fide cure for cancer. That would probably be the quickest awarded nobel prize right there. Even if you were working for a company that had a financial interest in not actually curing cancer and you'd get fired, you wouldn't sit on it.

Re:Cure?

[sqldr]

There is no money in a cure....

That depends if you're trying to make money, or save money and more importantly fulfill your mandate to save lives, and this all depends on whether you're a drugs company or a national health service

This came up a couple of years ago in the UK when an American drugs company came up with a treatment (can't remember the name) for various types of cancers which had a 20% chance of prolonging the life or a patient for between 6 and 18 month for the paltry sum of £50000/year per patient, not to mention the rather unpleasant side-effects. They were denied the treatment on the NHS (except nobody was stopping them buying it privately except personal wealth, or digging into the inheritance funds).

The documentary cut to footage of crying relatives angrily talking about how their children missed out on another year of being able to see their grandparent because the NHS which they had paid for through national insurance all of their lives had denied them this drug ("if they'd just had the XYZ then they could have seen them for longer!"), etc.

It then cuts to an NHS funds manager talking about budget and how they have the highest level of pregnancy deaths in the country and the treatment for many of those incidents which could save the entire life of a child is much cheaper. The NHS budget is calculated according to its effect on quality of life, scored as "QUALS". These guys are the ones whom Sarah Palin refers to as the "death squads". Could have been worse.. under a private healthcare scheme, the insurance company death squads would probably have let the babies die for the sake of the 6 months of a bed-bound terminal cancer patient.

It then cuts to the manufacturers of this drug, in their massive marble-sided Chicago skyscraper, having a massive champagne-fueled banquet, handing out awards to eachother for their "life-saving" work in creating this rather ineffectual drug.

One might wonder what the first family would have thought if the reason for their children not seeing their grandparent was because it was the CHILDREN who were ill, who couldn't get treatment because the NHS had just spaffed £50000 on a drug which just made someone ill for an extra 6 months. And what about the 70 year old who is going to live for another 15 years and would love to spend those 15 years being able to walk properly after receiving an expensive hip-replacement operation? Nah.. cancer is like the poster boy of illnesses. The old "why aren't you curing cancer?" poke at the ignoble awards is getting tiresome.

So from where I stand, I've not got cancer, or MS, or Parkinsons (dementia is VERY badly funded.. all the charity money goes to breast cancer these days), or anything else.. YET, but I'm hedging my bets by saying that I hope that my national insurance money is going towards what is most likely to save me the most grief, rather than paying for more champagne and marble skyscrapers. In that respect, a CHEAP cure for cancer sounds bloody brilliant, and I hope the NHS invest heavily in it. In the long run, that will free up more money to research all the other horrible diseases we might get.

There is huge incentive for the NHS to invest in cheap drugs, because that's their job. Private healthcare doesn't really have this moral obligation.

Where the money goes

[BitZtream]

Most of the time it goes to organizations the give out grants to companies to do the research and testing. Unfortunately what happens is it gets given out to Glaxo and the like, which then uses the money to research and test ... and patent what they come up with.

Some of the money goes to universities who research it, patent it, and sell it to drug companies so they can raise their own salaries.

This would be all fine and dandy if the drug companies gave back.

They do give back, but they don't give back anything like they get. They give back just enough to say 'we give back' in little strategic bits that make for good publicity.

Re:Where the money goes

[BitZtream]

It would also put the drug companies produce the cure in a really crappy spot.

This is why medical research should be publicly funded and public property.

Re:Where the money goes

[aminorex]

Very simple: Apply penalties for crimes. Apply the death penalty liberally, where death is understood to mean a revokation of the corporate charter, and the return of funds to shareholders after outstanding liabilities are acquitted.

The problem with corporations is not so much that they are treated as persons, but that they are treated as persons who are above the law. As a society, we fear the creative destruction which is actually beneficial to all.

Re:Where else

[eln]

A lot of the big charities these days seem to be focused on "awareness" rather than "finding a cure". This basically sounds like giving money to these people so they can run more ads to get more money. At what point do we decide people are "aware" enough and start actually trying to cure these diseases? I don't care how many people are aware of breast cancer, I care how fast it takes to come up with a cure for breast cancer.

The big offenders I've seen are breast cancer awareness and autism awareness. Why do we need to give money to make people more aware of these conditions? Everyone is already as aware as they need to be! Stop spending money on awareness and start spending it on research!

Of course, once a charity reaches a certain size, its primary goal becomes self-preservation, and finding a cure for these things would threaten that goal.

Re:Where else

[BobMcD]

The big offenders I've seen are breast cancer awareness and autism awareness. Why do we need to give money to make people more aware of these conditions? Everyone is already as aware as they need to be! Stop spending money on awareness and start spending it on research!

I can't speak for breast cancer, but my youngest son is autistic. Lack of awareness leads people to assume he's retarded, or a brat, or both. My nephew has Downs and I frequently envy his parents on the simple fact that they don't really need to spend a lot of time explaining how their child is different. My own son gets a mixed result of surprise and disgust when he doesn't live up to the standards his appearance would dictate.

Thankfully he's not really all that aware of how people treat him...

But awareness isn't all bad...

Re:Viagara is an indicator for CAD

[moosesocks]

Coincidentally, this is the same exact disease that Viagra was designed to treat.

It wasn't designed to treat ED -- it just turned out to have one really noticeable side-effect. It also wasn't expected to be the blockbuster that it is, as estimates for the prevalence of ED at the time were way off, as few men were willing to admit to having it, while no practical treatment options existed.

(There's also a growing body of work suggesting that men who have sex frequently are less likely to get prostate cancer, so there's that... )

So... yeah. Shame on them for accidentally creating a successful product.

Re:Where else

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is correct: I've got a "retarded" (learning/developmental disorder) child and there's nothing more frustrating than meeting a parent whose kid has a different disability coming out with the equivalent of "at least my kid's not a retard".