Cancer Cured By HIV

bluefoxlucid writes "Apparently cancer has been cured, by injecting people with HIV. From the article: 'As the white cells killed the cancer cells, the patients experienced the fevers and aches and pains that one would expect when the body is fighting off an infection, but beyond that the side effects have been minimal.' Nifty. Poorly edited run-on sentence, but nifty."

Comments

Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[eldavojohn]

Two fairly important adjectives that were for some reason omitted from the summary are listed in the article:

In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.

Emphasis mine. The summary almost makes it sound like the researchers just used HIV as we know it ... it's almost humorous to think that a doctor might say "The treatment was a success, you no longer have cancer ... but ..." "BUT WHAT?" "Well, we sorta had to inject you with the HIV in order to take care of it." Obviously this is not the case.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[rockclimber]

most people with pancreatic cancer would gladly make that trade!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a modified, harmless version of HIV

Yeah, that's probably something that should be repeated pretty heavily. Given what I've seen in some alternative therapy books over the years, people don't need to be *more* confused by HIV.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Even if it were the case where HIV was the cure of cancer it seems like given our current ability to keep people alive with HIV that might be the better option. Now this sounds even better as you don't end up with what is a disease that is treatable but still not curable.

Now if I only hadn't already used my remaining mod points.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Dunbal]

Not to mention that this treatment also only applies to one very specific form of cancer, not cancer in general.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[madhatter256]

Your work here is truly dung.... good job pointing that out.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[characterZer0]

Furthermore, they did not inject the HIV, they injected previously removed white blood cells modified by HIV.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[dpilot]

"harmless" makes me think of the update about Earth that Ford Prefect made to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - "mostly harmless".

* How absolutely perfect is the process which makes the HIV harmless? This sounds like it could turn into a "yield vs escape" issue during manufacture, where one escape becomes a case of AIDS.
* How long do the modified white blood cells hang out in the body?
* The deadly flu strains generally kill when the body's own immune system overreacts. It sounds like these people may have a "guaranteed to overreact" immune system

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

We cured cancer and you're bitching about the formatting? Get some perspective!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[myurr]

Not really. It's only been trialled on a single type of cancer, but the way it works is effectively teaching the bodies own white blood cells how to target and kill the cancer cells. I am not an expert in this field by any means, but that technique should translate to most if not all types of cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

There are worse cancers to have. A friend of mine had lost her mother to rectal cancer. If you ever want to feel like a complete d-bag, talk to a person about someone dying from ass cancer, then after giggling about it, find out they were completely serious. Even more so if it was recent.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[AJH16]

Yeah, it's really more using HIV's ability to avoid detection by white blood cells to allow it to be used as an efficient means of delivering genetically engineered information to someone's white blood cells. Not exactly a completely new approach, but awesome that they have made some very promising success in the process.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[arkhan_jg]

It wasn't even denatured HIV that treated them; they used it as gene therapy to modify white blood cells to make them specifically target the lukemia cancer, and added a gene to make the white blood cells multiply like crazy. It was these 'killer' reprogrammed white blood cells that were injected, and went onto multiply heavily and attack the cancerous cells.

Gene therapies like this, using white blood cells to attack cancer have been tried before, but they only killed a small amount of cancerous cells before dying off. The new approach here is using modified HIV as the carrier, and also including a replicator gene to make the white blood cells much more effective.

That said; this is only 3 patients. We don't know how scalable this approach will be to other patients, whether it will be generally effective, and whether it actually kills the cancer or only slows it down. Presumably the same approach could be used to target other cancers, but even if it only hits this common form of leukemia, it's still a massive step forward IFF it's scalable and effective, compared to other treatments such as radiation and chemo.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

... so if you have cancer you shouldn't rush out and have lots of rough, unprotected gay sex? Whoops!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Joce640k]

Huh?

Just find a partner with AIDS ... and go at it all you want...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[DrgnDancer]

I am not an expert on this, by any means, but from reading the article and a bit of deduction I *think* the answers are straightforward:

1) The use of the modified HIV strain is outside of the body. It's used to "train" the white blood cells that have already been removed, so it's not likely to have much, if any, capability to harm the patient.

2) The new "specialized" white blood cells are just that. Once their "target" is gone, they will likely die off. There's nothing for them to fight.

3) Even if the treatment has a similar mortality rate to flu, that would be a huge and unimaginable improvement over the mortality rate for most types of aggressive cancer. The mortality rate for flu, especially if the patient is already in the hospital and everyone is prepared for it, is extremely low. The mortality rate for some of the more aggressive cancers is well over 50% even with treatment.

Honestly, there exist several forms of highly aggressive, highly lethal cancers that people would look at a 20% base mortality rate for the cure and consider it a good deal. Not that this seems to be a problem in this case.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[mmcuh]

Right. With that one partner.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[the_humeister]

if i would need to make choice between:
- being able to screw around until i die
or
- being unsafe to screw with for the rest of my life
please, i'll take two cancer portions;)

If you had pancreatic adenocarcinoma, you would most likely be dead in less than a year.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[HungryHobo]

the summary is too poorly written for words.

they didn't inject anyone with HIV.

It's like a summary saying "patient cured with cyanide" ....because one of the tools used to make the pills used cyanide in it's manufacture if you get the idea.

they used a modified retrovirus(in this case a modified harmless version of HIV) to genetically engineer a few of the patients own immune cells and then injected those cells back into the patient.

apparently the patients are still alive after almost a year so whatever the side effects they don't seem too bad.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Your work here is truly dung

Welcome to the fabulous new game on SLASHDOT called "TROLL or TYPO?". If you guess correctly, you can win one of the valuable prizes hidden behind one of these 3 doors, or a cash prize of $80,000!

Are the contestants ready? Okay! Contestant number One: TROLL or TYPO?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of wearing a rubber? Oddly enough AIDS can't seep through latex.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Grizzley9]

So what you're saying is the now patients have "3 Stooges Syndrome" ala Mr. Burns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r3M03v95i0

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in this hypothetical situation that has nothing to do with the actual article, if you had leukemia and had a matter of weeks to live before you died an agonizing death, you would prefer that option to being forced to limit your sexual partners? Here's some advice for you: www.sa.org

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[gstoddart]

most people with pancreatic cancer would gladly make that trade!

Well, there's some cancers associated with HIV/AIDS which themselves are pretty nasty.

As I recall, HIV was identified because there was a cluster of people with Kaposi's Sarcoma, which was supposed to have a much lower incidence than what they were finding.

If you've been going through cancer treatment, and already have a diminished immune system from the treatment, I'm not sure that's really a trade you'd want to be eager to make.

I'm always glad to hear about potential advances in medicine, but I wouldn't rush right out to try to use this as a cure just yet. They're likely a ways off from that.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[reeno49]

Oh, well... I don't know, AC. It's a tough one. I think I'm gonna go with... troll???

omg omg omg... don't keep me in suspense!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[geekoid]

because there is only one other person with aids?
Hint: there are whole communities.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading GP's sig line.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[The Grim Reefer2]

Not really. It's only been trialled on a single type of cancer, but the way it works is effectively teaching the bodies own white blood cells how to target and kill the cancer cells.

I would hardly call it a trial. It was used on only three patients. Two of which it appears to have been an almost unbelievable success and the third had a 70% reduction in cancer cells.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[xquercus]

Ever heard of wearing a rubber? Oddly enough AIDS can't seep through latex.

That's what those are for? Nasty!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

I mean, really?

I would imagine that the chemo, surgery, and related things would make you not feel much like it anyway. I'd definitely go for the HIV.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[arkane1234]

So basically mass orgy simply because you have an illness?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Culture20]

That's fairly irresponsible reporting. I'll bet a few cancer patients were thinking "sex with an AIDS patient beats another needle", not knowing that the strains differ. Hopefully the mainstream news doesn't make the same mistake.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Mister Whirly]

This sounds like it could turn into a "yield vs escape" issue during manufacture, where one escape becomes a case of AIDS.

HIV != AIDS
HIV can lead to full blown AIDS, but getting HIV does not mean you will necessarily get AIDS. Just ask Magic Johnson if you need further proof. He has been HIV positive since 1991 but has not contracted AIDS.

They are not actually injecting HIV virus into the patients either. They modify white blood cells with the harmless HIV strain, and then grow more blood cells from them that get put into the patirent.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Sloppy]

Sorry, but this is not nearly as hilarious as giving AIDS to cancer victims. I would prefer to make up a quotation, maybe something like:

In the Teller experiment, the researchers injected smallpox virus along with the HIV, resulting in cancer remission an additional 7% of the time. This exceeded the remission rate that had been provided by lobotomizing cancer patients (4.5% increase in remission), keeping them isolated in boxes without any human contact (3% increase in remission), and killing all their dreams (only 2% increase in remission). Experiments in combining the above treatments, on live human subjects drawn from low-income areas and racially-suppressed populations, are underway.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[TheRaven64]

I'm expecting now that if I actually read TFA, I will discover that it was using a modified form of the common cold to treat headaches. In mice.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong - multiple strains mean this is dangerous.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading GGGP's.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[RockoTDF]

To be fair, did they actually call it "ass cancer"?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If I understand it correctly what they did was engineer a gene-tweaking organic machine by assembling the subsystems from HIV that enter the target immune system cells and reverse-transcribe an RNA payload with an unrelated payload to do what they want. The subsystems don't have to be purified from live virus, risking contamination with functional HIV: Instead they can be separately produced by such techniques as inserting the each of the desired HIV genes into another lifeform, such as E. coli, producing just one "working part".

If so this is not a "modified HIV strain, nor any lifeform at all. It's some pieces of a virus with a completely unrelated (except for the "insert me" tags) hunk of nucleic acid "data tape". No program from the virus is left at all, just its cellular machinery.

Given the target and the desired transformation, HIV was the logical virus to reverse-engineer for the moving parts.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

But the cancer treatment would use just one of the strains. With the prevalence of cancer, it shouldn't be too hard to find a survivors group that all had the same strain of HIV.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I am an expert on this. The HIV was used as a transport mechanism to modify the DNA of the white blood cells. It's identical to using a computer virus to deliver a kernel patch instead of self-replicating code. Retroviral engineering is extremely common in biology. The critical point is that the virus has had all of its self-replicating machinery removed in advance. No HIV genes were transferred into the white blood cells; only a payload designed by the researchers.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell all your friends. Especially if you're friends with Taco. The amount of ignorance on Slashdot about biological concepts that are directly analogous to computer concepts is staggering.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people got AIDS by now bro...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[19061969]

I just read the article. It's actually about predicting sun-spots with artificial intelligence; but hey, this is /. where summaries are, well, a little different.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. The referred to it as a malignant poop-chute-itis.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Skarecrow77]

A friend of my sister-in-law had rectal cancer. I met him a few times. Pastor (not that I hold that against him) and semi-professional wrestler (yeah, really. interesting combination). He was a pretty cool guy. Nerd-at-heart, had a bathroom devoted to batman and everything. He held on nearly a year, through multiple treatments. it was a shame.

My Aunt had pancreatic cancer. She was diagnosed the day after thanksgiving. she was dead the week after christmas. Pancreatic cancer is NASTY. If there's a worse form of cancer, I haven't encountered it.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Biological viruses are very much like old-school computer viruses in that they have two parts:

1. inject code (genes) into programs (cells)
2. get executed by system (cells) and create copy of self that can infect more programs/cells.

In genetic engineering, using viruses as a transport mechanism is extremely common, because they're often easier to alter than affecting cells directly. They have far simpler internal states. In the case of this experiment, HIV was just used as a carrier for a genetic construct (a bunch of code) designed by the researchers. Absolutely no HIV DNA was transferred, and so there's absolutely no risk of HIV infection: after the viral DNA is inserted into the cell, you just get an empty, lifeless capsule made out of inert protein polymers. Using HIV happened to be desirable because its machinery is very good at infecting.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[lcarnevale]

BS, I just go for the HIV shot, then use that other shot that can cure nearly any virus! (http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/10/1917232/New-Drug-Could-Cure-Nearly-Any-Viral-Infection)!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[bluefoxlucid]

Two fairly important adjectives that were for some reason

Omitted for reasons of Farkism and hilarious commentary.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can do threesomes with their other partner(s).

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is that HIV is not a typical virus. It's a retrovirus. They work differently so I don't think the new wide spectrum anti-viral the work against rhino-viruses and the like would help with HIV. Be interesting to find out though.

The real problem is that they'll be keeping this out of general use until the population declines to its 500 million target set by Agenda 21.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

....and anyone else with cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[ekgringo]

It's not really that simple. There are many strains of HIV and it is generally advisable to avoid exposure to other strains if you are already HIV+. Treating one strain may be manageable, but when you have multiple strains, there are fewer treatment options and the ones that exist are less effective.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[dpilot]

Thank you for furnishing good information. In TFA I saw (or didn't read slowly enough) this line, "But the Penn researchers inserted a gene that made the white blood cells multiply by a thousand fold inside the body." and it led me to think that some of the old virus-like/HIV-like attributes were left in there. I kind of missed that fact that it was inserted behavior instead of "left in" behavior.

But I'm still not sure what "stops the therapy" when the job is done, since the white blood cells have been told to multiply.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[ciderbrew]

+1 informative.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical media sensationalism. Especially for a science-related post.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[cod3r_]

made me laugh out loud thinking of a doctor saying that to the patient..

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

For most slashdotters that would still be one more than before...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you're quite a douchebag yourself. Pretty sure you don't know what pancreatic cancer is like.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[mrops]

Drug companies would have loved that. I mean where is the money in a cure. This dude shows up, pays 10 grand and goes home happy.

Now if you can infect him with HIV on the way out, he pays for the rest of his life.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Some types of Leukemia are really nasty. Watching a close relative coughing up quantities of blood (and having to clean up the person and the mess) in their final hours is pretty traumatic for everyone, including the patient. Not the way I want to die.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

That's actually a misrepresentation in the MSNBC article. I've pored over the original paper a little bit more now, and actually the researchers didn't add anything specific to trigger multiplication. Also, they weren't macrophages, which is what most people think of when they hear 'white blood cells'—they were T cells. T cells target one specific molecule, and if they find that molecule, then the body tells that T cell to reproduce. The thousand-fold growth was actually the body's way of saying "hey, I found an infection!" and dealing with it normally. The levels subsided on their own after the cancer was gone, as with any manageable disease.

T cell receptors (the things that stick out of T cells which allow them to detect their prey) are incredible biologically because the body makes them up at semi-random when generating new T cells; it does the same for antibodies. However, we only have so many building blocks to choose from when making them, and the receptors we need to target leukaemia aren't possible. It's conceivable that a random mutation could allow someone to develop a resistance to cancer naturally, but that could potentially come at the cost of effective protection against many other diseases.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really that simple. There are many strains of HIV and it is generally advisable to avoid exposure to other strains if you are already HIV+. Treating one strain may be manageable, but when you have multiple strains, there are fewer treatment options and the ones that exist are less effective.

So, you just start up conversations with, "Hey baby, what's your strain?"

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[cayenne8]

Ever heard of wearing a rubber?

Yeah..but it make sex about as pleasurable as eating a steak with one on your tongue...absolutely NO sensation of something good going on.

I mean..why go through the effort if you can't feel anything...?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Genetically modified HIV is used to genetically modify white blood cells. That's what they are doing. They are using HIV because HIV infects Lymphocytes.

They are using HIV just like people used to use carrier pigeons - to deliver a message. HIV infects T-Cell Lymphocytes - it genetically modifies it (like all viruses modify cells). But researchers have genetically modified HIV so instead of making more of HIV, Lymphocytes recognize cancer cells as foreign objects and eat them.

The patient that didn't have 100% remission probably need another injection as the modified white blood cells died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymphocyte

And yes, this is the only way to kill cancer. To make the body kill it. That's how most of the mutations are killed in our bodies. For others, our body needs help and guidance. A side effect of this treatment could be (temporary) auto-immune disease.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what *any* expert in *any* field will think when reading comments about stuff they know about.

Biology is not unique here.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[spazdor]

There are things called "pos parties".
Like ekgringo says, it's a pretty bad plan to just stop caring as soon as you've contracted one strain of HIV. But people do it.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[blair1q]

Did they get all the HIV out?

Are they sure?

Did they nuke it from orbit, or something?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[blair1q]

Whatever.

Just hand them the next three Nobel prizes.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, that makes a bit more sense. When I read the summary the first thing that came to my mind was "We have cured the cancer that would have killed you in 5 years! But now you'll likely die from the common flu or other infection in the next couple years."

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[nschubach]

We prefer cars (or car like things) here. They took a backhoe which will do terrible damage to your yard, removed all the parts that do that damage and installed a mower deck to handle your rabbit/groundhog problem.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[phtpht]

Emphasis mine. The summary almost makes it sound like the researchers just used HIV as we know it ... it's almost humorous to think that a doctor might say "The treatment was a success, you no longer have cancer ... but ..." "BUT WHAT?" "Well, we sorta had to inject you with the HIV in order to take care of it." Obviously this is not the case.

The article also said that they used the virus as a delivery vessel to inject genes of their own choice into the white cells. So not much to do with the real HIV. And ultimately not that "HIV cancels out cancer". Using virii to change genes seems to me as a "normal" thing to do, as it has been noted in press before.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[SeeSp0tRun]

I'm not gonna lie, this is what came to mind...
Full Blown AIDS...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[tgd]

The experts in any other field discussed on here will tell you that this is not limited to biology anymore.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[sjames]

I doubt very much anyone would be exactly eager to make that trade, but these days the long term survival prospects for an AIDS patient are far batter than for some forms of cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Rich0]

T cell receptors (the things that stick out of T cells which allow them to detect their prey) are incredible biologically because the body makes them up at semi-random when generating new T cells; it does the same for antibodies. However, we only have so many building blocks to choose from when making them, and the receptors we need to target leukaemia aren't possible.

Why can't naturally-occurring T-cell receptors target leukemia? Is it because it requires some sequence that isn't possible starting from the genes immune cells work with? Or, is it a result of anti-selection during development?

I'm not an immunologist, but my understanding is that the random processes that lead to the body being able to generate antibodies against a huge number of foreign substances that it has never encountered can also lead to the body being able to generate antibodies that would lead to the destruction of its own cells. However, during early development immune cells that detect anything kill themselves, since the assumption is that the only stuff around is the embryo's own tissue. By the time a child is born, the only immune cells left contain random receptors that DON'T have an affinity for anything alive.

Ok, how about a computer analogy for slashdot. Imagine you want to build a heuristic antivirus system, that works against future unknown threats AND threat mechanisms. Instead of having one software package that tries to figure out what is bad, you instead have a software package that has a detection algorithm that consists completely of random bytes, and you create so many variants that you have hundreds of millions that actually execute. Then you run each scanner against your known-good system, and destroy any program whose detection algorithm is triggered. Then you deploy what is left for production use - any behavior that is unusual stands a chance of triggering one of the millions of antivirus programs that is running. Attempting to defeat this mechanism would be very difficult, since those programs could be looking for almost anything. The risk of course is false positives, and that happens in the human immune system also (causing stuff like allergies, poison ivy rashes, or nasty stuff like lupus).

The immune system is basically a big example of an evolutionary algorithm, and the algorithm itself is of course tuned by evolution (so, should we call it a second degree evolutionary algorithm?). There are actually many aspects of the immune system that work in this way, and not just how antibodies and receptors are formed.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Rich0]

Sorry, to bring my example full-circle, consider this situation:

1. You deploy your evolutionary anti-virus system into production.
2. Your postfix server gets stuck in a loop and starts churning out spam.

Would the antivirus be likely to pick up on the postfix problem and kill any misbehaving server processes? Even though the algorithm might pick up any random program that is behaving badly fairly easily, it could miss the postfix problem, since it is a fault in a process that it was trained to recognize as being valid. Detection code that stood a chance of targeting postfix would have been wiped out during training, and so unless the change is huge it could get missed even by millions of different detection algorithms.

This is the situation that often arises with cancer - a cancer cell is just too similar to a normal cell for the immune system to pick up on it much of the time. As with the anti-virus program, the system has been trained to ignore it. On the other hand, somebody could go in and create a detection algorithm specifically engineered to spot misbehaving postfix services and splice it into the random region of your antivirus program.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[tburkhol]

No kidding. The study used a replication incompetent, non-pathogenic retrovirus to deliver engineered genetic material to human cells. The summary makes it sound like one pain will ease another.

This is cool because they've successfully modified a patient's own white blood cells recognize the leukemia cells. Most human gene therapy treatments have been pretty unsuccessful, so one that works, that might finally live up to the promises we've been told for decades, is welcome news. I really don't see why the source of the packaging vector is interesting, beyond that more people recognize "HIV" than "MMLV."

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Here's part of your answer. There are only about twenty-five million possible naturally-occurring receptors. The other part of your answer lies squarely in the journal article's abstract: the antigen targeted naturally occurs in a subset of the body's B cells, and they ended up killing those off in the process of defeating the cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

True, true—hopefully we'll fix that too!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of ignorance on Slashdot about biological concepts that are directly analogous to computer concepts is staggering.

Exactly. As a geneticist, I invariably cringe when reading many comments with +5 mods for biology- and especially genetics-related stories here on Slashdot. Makes me wonder if the same ignorance applies to topics I'm not so familiar with..

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I suppose that works too. But I think I like a gas can analogy better: "it's not an acid barrel, we emptied it and filled it with a mixture of premium unleaded fuel and engine cleaner."

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[gstoddart]

I doubt very much anyone would be exactly eager to make that trade, but these days the long term survival prospects for an AIDS patient are far batter than for some forms of cancer.

Yeah, but if your immune system has already been decimated with chemo ... that could be really bad.

Then again, they didn't cover this in detail in my comp. sci degree, so I'm completely unqualified to make authoritative statements on medical issues ... or, pretty much anything else for that matter. ;-)

So as far as the specifics of this as a treatment, well, as I understand it, they're doing it on cells in a lab so we're pretty far away from doing this to real people yet.

If someone could turn HIV on its head and use it to fight cancer, that would be awesome. I just doubt anybody with the aggressive forms of cancer in question will benefit from this.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[ManTaboo]

I understand, according the article, that they used 'a modified, harmless version of HIV.' I am curious as to how they treat the HIV afterwards though. Can they cure this strain.? Will the remaining white blood cells fight it off? Do they have to treat it forever now? But like another poster stated, it would be a better trade off for many. I am happy that they were still able perform the experiment though, in spite of the initial lack of funding. It's nice to think that potentially millions of lives can be saved from this.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Gorobei]

Congratulations, you have achieved 3 out of a possible 10 on the sexual expertise scale.

Be proud of the fact that you have a better understanding of sex fun than:

a) the zeros: what is sex?
b) the ones: sex is to make babies

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[fractoid]

I'm sorry, your lump was cancer-ass. :(

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Isn't that what insurance is for?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

The critical point is that the virus has had all of its self-replicating machinery removed in advance.

Actually the key difference with this test was that this time the self-replicating machinery was left in place. That way instead of just upgrading a few white cells that then died off (as in past trials) it kept on upgrading white cells so there would be an extended and continuous attack on the cancer cells.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[sjames]

Actually, the HIV like viral carriers re-program the patients cells outside the body. The cells are then multiplied, presumably checked for correct modification, and injected into the patient. So contracting AIDS seems unlikely.

It has been done in 3 actual patients (believed to have only weeks to live) with advanced chronic Leukemia so far. The result was two cures and one significant improvement.

As usual, the press got it bass ackwards (as did the summary) The cool part was re-programming the blood cells to order with altered genes. The whole HIV angle was tenuous (it wasn't ACTUALLY HIV and wasn't injected into the patient) and not so new.

.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Abreu]

if i would need to make choice between:
- being able to screw around until i die
or
- being unsafe to screw with for the rest of my life
please, i'll take two cancer portions;)

I can't believe no one has responded: "You are a slashdotter, you have never had sex in your life, and never will, so take the HIV option!"

Because, it's like, a meme and stuff...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Opportunist]

I was thinking the same when reading the headline, before reading the article. It's like "saving" your house on fire by blowing it up. No fire, see. And the house ain't burned down, we blew it away. Saves you cleaning up and you have a nifty new crater now too!

But after reading the article, this could possibly be a real breakthrough. Talk about misleading, sensationalist headlines... Especially when completely unnecessary, that news is interesting and important all by itself, no need to hype it up.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Opportunist]

Hand in your geek card. You prefer sex to living longer and having more time for fun and exciting experiments? Most of all, you actually HAVE sex, it's not just wanting it but actually getting it? You don't fit into the club anymore, please leave.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Opportunist]

First: That's why uncircumcised people have more fun. Ha-ha!

Second: There's more than one way to have fun with a partner than to stick something somewhere.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[asher09]

So many people here are talking about this like they actually injected the patient with HIV. They didn't! They just had to use a retrovirus to modify white blood cells' genes. It could've been any retrovirus, but HIV was apparently the choice. That's all. So there is no "trade off" between AIDS and cancer that they need to be concerned about. The only issue now is whether this approach will work with a statistically significant number of patients or not.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[jhoegl]

The use of the term HIV is more for the mass public than for anything.
I spoke to my step-father about this and even though he is in the field, he did not know of this treatment.
after the news release yesterday, a white paper/research paper was released with more information on it. I can not show it, because of copyright.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849?query=TOC is another article.
My step-father states that the form of HIV was used because of its RNA, but it was not the vector for the attack on the cancer cells.

From my step-father "the virus that was used was a lentivirus which is a group of viruses that have RNA as their genetic material.".
So the use of HIV is more of a buzz word for standard people.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[CommieLib]

I'm very glad to have an SME on this particular article. So, honestly...we see stories about "cancer cured" with an inevitable asterisk constantly, especially on Slashdot. If I'm reading all of this right, though, at least a particular manifestation of leukemia now has a treatment that's nearly as good as a cure. Can that be right? Is this as huge a breakthrough as it seems?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[_0xd0ad]

A virus has to eventually destroy its host cell to self-replicate. It can't cross the cell membrane; in order for the virus to spread, the cell has to burst. That isn't what they did.

What they did was trigger massive replication of the white blood cells, not the virus. And that was just a natural response to the infection, once the white blood cells had been programmed to detect it.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[gorzek]

Rectal cancer is not worse than (or even as bad as) pancreatic cancer.

For one thing, rectal cancer is a lot more survivable and treatable. The comedy value of calling it "ass cancer" hardly puts it in the same league as a cancer that kills almost everyone who gets it.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[slartibartfastatp]

have you ever seen a terminal cancer patient?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[slartibartfastatp]

Well, AIDS _is_ treatable. A few cancer types are. Still a good trade. However, "regular" AIDS (the kind that kill people) won't help you fight cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Alef]

[...] the body makes them up at semi-random when generating new T cells; it does the same for antibodies.

This made me wonder why autoimmune diseases aren't more common. How does the body avoid accidentally producing a receptor that responds to some useful molecule?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I was going to write an excited post about this, but further reading of the article has made me a little more sceptical. What the researchers did was create a kind of autoimmune disease, where their engineered T cells targeted and destroyed a subset of the patients' B cells. It's important to note that all of these cells were circulating in the blood, where the cancerous cells were easy to access; this technique probably would not work well against tumours, especially since it appears to wipe out the subset of non-cancerous B cells from which the cancer line had originated. If this technique were applied directly to, say, lung cancer, it would destroy all of whatever lung tissue had become cancerous. It's also left the patients with an immune deficiency.

That being said, the leukaemia they treated is extremely common amongst cancer patients, and, in this case, it would be possible to fix the immune deficiency by adding a self-destruct switch to the T cells, and reintroducing healthy B cells, so the body can be put back to normal once the cancer is definitely defeated.

Prior to this, we had no good way of treating blood leukaemia. Traditional chemotherapy relies on poisoning all fast-reproducing cells, which does huge damage to the immune system, intestinal lining, and hair follicles. Further, bone marrow transplants are often required to restore blood cell production afterwards. It looks like this technique was tried previously, but abandoned due to failures. So things are looking up—but other forms of cancer are still likely to be a part of life for a long time yet!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I get to post this link again, hooray! The randomness comes from chopping up a very long segment of DNA in a couple of arbitrarily-chosen places. There are only about 25 million possible combinations... and the body also has a bunch of mechanisms for detecting and protecting native molecules, like this thing.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a more technical summary from New England Journal of Medicine, which published the original research:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1106965

The patient's own white blood cells were genetically engineered outside the body and then injected back into the patient. The genetic engineering process used a modified, harmless form of HIV. The engineered virus is just a mechanism for putting some other genes into the white blood cells. The modified blood cells are what kills the cancer.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Alef]

Thanks for the links!

I noticed you mentioned the 25 million combinations in another post, but to me it seems 25 million is still a very large number in this context. From a statistical standpoint, I would expect the probability of none of those receptors encoding for a native molecule, while at the same time covering a reasonable portion of all possible pathogen molecules we might come across, to be almost zero.

"[A] bunch of mechanisms for detecting and protecting native molecules" seems like a key, though.

Or to put it all in a computer analogy (as per your sig): Either you can detect threats using a black list, in which case you're only able to respond to a tiny subset of all possible threats, or you can fire more broadly and have a white list to avoid hitting the good guys. Randomly generating receptors, even if it's "only" out of 25 million combinations, seems more like setting up for the white list scenario, unless there is some very systematic bias in the randomness.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

That's the idea. As it so happens, I dug up more of the article, and it looks like their custom receptor targets the kind of B cell that mutates into a diseased state in this particular form of leukaemia. In essence, they're skipping the check against the whitelist that's supposed to prevent these receptors from reaching maturity. The patients actually lost all of those B cells as a result, but by programming their custom T cells with a means of triggering self-destruction, they could easily reintroduce a healthy population. Et voilà—everything back to normal.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[martin-boundary]

I'm expecting now that if I actually read TFA, I will discover that it was using a modified form of the common cold to treat headaches. In mice.

Don't do it! The disappointment will give you cooties!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[BitZtream]

WRONG, this is entirely untrue, you can actually infect them with a different strain of aids and make it EVEN WORSE on them. You are highly unlikely to have the same exact strain, even if you got it from him/her/it. The virus mutates rather rapidly, which makes finding a treatment a fucking bitch.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[BitZtream]

Right, because when you have sex with a condom, absolutely no fluids can possibly be exchanged ...

Clearly you've never had sex, but damn, haven't you seen some videos?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[BitZtream]

So your a virgin eh? You sound like a teenage boy acting like you have a clue when you clearly do not.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[freedumb2000]

I find that an incredible success. Let's up that it scales.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an expert on this. The HIV was used as a transport mechanism to modify the DNA of the white blood cells. It's identical to using a computer virus to deliver a kernel patch instead of self-replicating code. Retroviral engineering is extremely common in biology. The critical point is that the virus has had all of its self-replicating machinery removed in advance. No HIV genes were transferred into the white blood cells; only a payload designed by the researchers.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell all your friends. Especially if you're friends with Taco. The amount of ignorance on Slashdot about biological concepts that are directly analogous to computer concepts is staggering.

Yes, it's like when I ask women if they want to interface our peripherals.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[GameMaster]

Actually, from what I understand, there are more than one strain of AIDS/HIV. It's possible to contract multiple strains and, as far as I know, it can cause additional complications and/or faster death. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't people out there willing to just not care.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[kentsex]

This is great news and during a time when budget cuts are constantly on the front page this proves positive that scientific research is an area where draconian cuts shouldn't be made. Thank God for the private foundation that funded this vital research.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Two fairly important adjectives that were for some reason omitted from the summary are listed in the article:

In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.

Emphasis mine. The summary almost makes it sound like the researchers just used HIV as we know it ... it's almost humorous to think that a doctor might say "The treatment was a success, you no longer have cancer ... but ..." "BUT WHAT?" "Well, we sorta had to inject you with the HIV in order to take care of it." Obviously this is not the case.

I have been looking for this article for over a year now and I can't find it anywhere. You are right they do infect you with the HIV Virus, but not the part that will eventually kill you, they just use the shell and put your cells into the center of it and then that goes into your body and fights what ever cancers or diseases that might be in your body. Its actually really brilliant and I wish that they would allow this to happen and do more research on it so that the ethnics board and FDA and or any other Government agency can't say no to it. I know that Pharmaceutical Companies are against this and so are the Insurance companies against this because they are not making money. Screw them I say, I am sorry but seriously is this not the job that they were originally made for to find cures for everything and then use it?? For all of those people who think that they are getting HIV and will infect others are completely stupid and need to do more research into this before coming up with that thought process. Please spend more money on this research so that we don't lose people to anymore diseases and or cancers and only lose them to accidents and or natural causes.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[mr_mischief]

It's not just modified and harmless. It's also not injected into the patient. It is not as HIV itself, anyway.

"In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients."

The HIV is used to engineer the white blood cells. The white blood cells, which the article doesn't say do or don't contain the modified, harmless HIV virus after the engineering, are what's injected into the patient.

Sure, some fragment of the engineered virus is probably in the engineered blood cell. But HIV is a complex and fragile virus, so my layman's understanding is that there's decent odds no actual complete, viable virus is within those cells when they are injected.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[justforgetme]

I am pretty sure that insurers have a different policy on people that willingly infect themselves with HIV...

But on the other hand since the article states "modified version of the virus" there might be no lasting HIV in the patient...
Also I think I have heard somewhere that HIV medication is actually quite cheap to produce. I might be getting this mixed up though.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[durrr]

Modified harmless HIV = Lentiviral gene therapy vector. Pulling HIV into the statement is similar to calling bullets modified grains of natural minerals and humans for modified chimpanzee. That is, entirely fucking retarded.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Walkingshark]

Wait, what's a B cell?

Response in Americanized Haiku form for extra points.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[crossmr]

it depends on whether or not it has spread to your lymph nodes..

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[DaVince21]

Formatting? He did just put forward a very important part of the article that was just blatantly omitted from the article description!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent synopsis.

Disclaimer: my MSc is in Molecular Biology.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to ask if we have the technology to do this kind of selective "Genetic Engineering" why is Hiv such a problem? One of the most disturbing things about HIV is not that it can be spread by having sex, but that so many people either do not want to "know" they have it, or do not want to even be tested in the first place, in some studies it is estimated that as many as 100,000 new infections are occurring in the US alone every year. This is alarming because you may "think" that your safe, but you may not be. The average age of detection is around 40 which means that you could get it, at the age of 25, and infect multiple partners over many years, before learning that you have it, that is where the problem comes in at. You might actually be safer having sex with and using protection with a partner you is hiv positive and being treated for the disease, than having unprotected sex with someone that you "think" is safe to have sex with now think about that. The biggest problem is that we have a generation of kids growing up that will have sex at the drop of a hat, with anyone they please, not once considering that they might be already infected or they might be with someone that is already infected. Testing is really the only way to "know" for sure, Protection is the only way to be as safe as you can.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

(This is some filler text to increase the average line length. Do not bother paying attention to it; Slashdot's post analytics are just too obnoxiously detailed for their own good.)

The American
haiku is so totally not
really a haiku

But it would surely
be a fool's errand to try
anything tighter

So you shall now get
more or less what you have sought
I hope it pleases.

B is for Bursa
of, specifically,
Fabricius, but:

That only exists
in birds, and perhaps pre-birds
I can't be bothered now.

In humans, B cells
mature in the bone marrow
so we pretend thus:

That we really meant
bone marrow cell all along
but everyone knows.

The B cells produce
immunoglobins, often
called antibodies.

Antibodies are
one of the body's major
active defenses

Each new B cell makes
its own new antibody
chosen at random.

The process for
doing this is really cool
but I'm late for work.

The important point
is that B cells reproduce
if their product works.

That is, if it sticks,
and the body knows it's sticking
to a foreign thing.

Next time please just go
and use Wikipedia for
this kind of query.

- Samantha.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

So IF these modified white blood cells "multiply like crazy" with the added replicator gene, why are they not injecting them back into the person infected with HIV whose lymphocyte count would be typically low to begin with?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[mcgrew]

I almost submitted this yesterday and got a screen saying several people had already submitted it; I think the screen was referring to this cancer thread, but this is from U of PA and the virus drug is from MIT. They had a cure for the common cold and most other viral infections. According to TFA they're starting animal trials and it may be ten years before it comes to market.

A potentially groundbreaking drug appears effective against a wide range of viral infections, including the common cold, flu, stomach viruses, polio and dengue fever -- at least in mice.
Click here to find out more!

The new drug is made from living cell's own defense systems and works by targeting a type of genetic material found only in those cells infected by viruses, MIT researchers explained.

"Currently there are very few antiviral treatments, and most that do exist are highly specific for individual viruses or have undesirable side effects," noted lead researcher Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist at Lincoln Laboratory's Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group, which is part of MIT.

The new drug is called DRACO (from the more unwieldy "double-stranded RNA activated caspase oligomerizers"). According to Rider, it "has the potential to safely treat or prevent a broad spectrum of viral infections."

Still, a long road awaits before humans might benefit, if ever. Clinical trials remain years away and any drug available to patients might not materialize for a decade, Rider said.

The report was published recently in the online journal PLoS One.

Maybe I'll go ahead and finish submitting the article.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[cayenne8]

Nope...been getting laid since about '80-'81.....

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Combine this with the MIT article yesterday about the super virus killer drug and we may be seeing a huge new area of medicine.

One can hope anyway. Maybe my kids will benefit from this.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

IF these modified white blood cells "multiply like crazy" once the gene has been added then why are they not injecting them back into the people infected with HIV whose lymphocyte count would be typically low to begin with?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Phoghat]

Sam, I've got some good news and some bad news...

My work is dumb

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

"up" that it scales?

How can one "typo" hope into up?!?!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[mattack2]

I'm not an immunologist, but my understanding is that the random processes that lead to the body being able to generate antibodies against a huge number of foreign substances that it has never encountered can also lead to the body being able to generate antibodies that would lead to the destruction of its own cells. However, during early development immune cells that detect anything kill themselves, since the assumption is that the only stuff around is the embryo's own tissue. By the time a child is born, the only immune cells left contain random receptors that DON'T have an affinity for anything alive.

Umm, except for a plethora of autoimmune disorders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disorder

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[freedumb2000]

Years of practice!

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure I read about that on Slashdot earlier this week.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Walkingshark]

Asking for traditional haiku would have been needlessly cruel. I actually did check wikipedia, but I must admit your sig caught my attention and I wanted to take you up on it. I had a feeling you wouldn't be able to resist my challenge. Thank you very much for the knowledge (and taking the time to share it). :)

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Sadly, the mod points will never grace it. Also, I made at least two mistakes in syllable count.

B cells, though, are pretty important in their role as immunoglobin generators. The entire adaptivity and regulation of the immune system is just incredibly nifty—and it's amusing how all proteins are essentially 'signed code'; foreign body recognition is accomplished by checking macromolecules against special templates (as I linked before): anything that doesn't fit is considered dangerous. This is a major reason as to why we never develop antibodies against, say, CD19; any B cells that develop to target them are killed to prevent autoimmune disorders. Usually.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[badkarmadayaccount]

This is OT, but I have to ask - what kind of damage does risperidone do to a 15 y.o. for 40 days, on an increasing dose starting from 0.5 mg and finishing at 1.5 mg (IIRC). This was to years ago, I just recently found out it wasn't as harmless as they made it out to me - and I'm scared to death. Please don't spare me details or terms - explain as you would to a future colleague. My specialty is physics, and I'm still in HS, but biology has been an old love of mine...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Walkingshark]

The mods always seem to miss the really good stuff. You have to post early and post often I guess.

I did a little more reading based on what you posted, and if I understand correctly, the system seems like a group of hackers trying to brute force attack everything that comes into the body. And once you've owned a system you post the login/password on the forums (as memory B cells) so that anyone can get access from then on.

Do you ever wish you could remove yourself from space-time and just sit back and watch life evolve from the very first moments until now, bit by bit adding clever little mechanisms that do useful things not through any kind of intention, but just because shit happened and it happened to work? :)

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I'm not a practising pharmacologist—or even a medical professional—so I'm afraid I can't provide you with much more than Wikipedia can. From your description, I sincerely would think that any risk of the two major syndromes associated with risperidone has already passed.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

It would probably be one of the most interesting things ever. Slow, though—especially with more primitive and ancient cells, we're pretty sure they took forever to get just about anywhere.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Walkingshark]

Yep, you'd definitely need something to sort it to just the highlight reel. Alternatively, I'm sure there'd be some great star watching while you were waiting for something to happen in the slime pools. :)

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[badkarmadayaccount]

Side question: how old are you? I know this isn't OkCupid, but... *blush*

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

For posterity, twenty-two, and we'll just... ignore that last sentence.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Anonymous Coward]

Although admittedly interesting enough, your posts on this topic have been sorely deficient of car analogies. Please remedy this.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[dpilot]

However ignorant my responses may have been, it looks like someone with a bigger voice than mine has fallen into the same trap:
https://www.xkcd.com/938/

Thank you for your informative posts.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Randall Munroe is a giant... well... Let's just say he should have kept to jokes about freshman physics.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[wootest]

Wasn't the point of the xkcd joke precisely that it was not real HIV, but that it's a hard sell regardless to pitch anything based on HIV or its way of spreading as a solution?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

Yes, but since genetic engineering using modified HIV and other dangerous viruses is common, the humour falls flat when expert knowledge is involved. It also doesn't help that xkcd repeated the "their patch added code to get the T-cells to replicate wildly and persist" nonsense. It's these kinds of did-not-do-the-research moments that make the comic hypocritical, in that it deals with geeky subjects but doesn't actually stand up to geeky scrutiny.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Alef]

It's a bit sad then that we are destroying much of it in just a couple of generations (a blink of an eye on a geological time scale)...

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

George Carlin had a fairly good response to that concern, but to be honest he was a little simplistic. Life may survive, yes, but the changes it'll be undergoing could be pretty significant setbacks.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Alef]

Yeah, I've seen his speech. It's not life I'm concerned about, though, it's us. They way I see it, we are destroying a valuable treasure that has been given to us. In a sense, we are using the Library of Alexandria for firewood.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

I think I'm going to steal that analogy. It's a good one. Sure, it might back eventually... but it won't be the same.

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[swalve]

You recall correctly. There was a time that disease was called "gay cancer".

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[wootest]

Fair enough; I know far less about the specifics than even Randall does. I thought the main source of nonsense was the "WHAT DID THEY USE UNMODIFIED HIV WTF".

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[HungryHobo]

I know this is a bit old but I was just reading back and noticed your wonderfully informative posts.

I'm not quite clear: in this case did they actually program the T cells with an off switch/self destruct or is that just something they could potentially do? What kind of system could be used for the self destruct?

Re:Modified, Harmless HIV Used

[Samantha Wright]

That's a proposal that I just made here. No self-destruct system was included in the engineered T cells mentioned in the paper. However, it's not an uncommon concept in synthetic biology, and has been included in (for example) numerous iGEM projects. It is a fairly easy pathway to construct and implement.

The minimal mammalian self-destruct mechanism probably consists of a single gene that gets turned on in the presence of a foreign steroid hormone not normally present in the body, but doesn't cause an immune response. Steroid hormones are convenient in that they can pass through cellular membranes without transport, and can directly effect the activation of genes designed to respond to them (although another gene might be required to create an appropriate DNA-binding cofactor; I don't remember my endocrine lectures that well.) This single gene can then direct the cell to produce a protein, such as the peptide described in this paper, which causes T cells to perform self-lysis (to kill themselves, typically for the good of the body.) However, more blunt instruments can be used; directing a cell to very aggressively use up all of its metabolic energy producing something useless is a common mistake often made by inexperienced genetic engineers, and usually causes the cell to die due to resource exhaustion. Thus, adding this foreign hormone would trigger self-destruction of the engineered T cells.

There are other methods, too; one could, for example, make the engineered T cells look like invaders (by introducing an adapter protein that fuses with the original receptor and turns it into a foreign epitope.) The body would then eliminate these T cells just as they originally eliminated the cancerous B cells. This has the advantage of being applicable to the original test patient (since it doesn't require genetic engineering), but requires a lot of tricky pharmaceutical engineering to prevent the adapter drug from getting destroyed before it's bound.

And after the cancer is cured

[Anonymous Coward]

When wintertime rolls around, the AIDS-eating gorillas simply freeze to death.

Re:And after the cancer is cured

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody has aids ..... aids aids aids!

Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[elrous0]

Lots of men experiment at bathhouses, Jenny! That doesn't make me gay.

Re:Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does.

Re:Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does.

i agree it does make him gay.

Re:Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[elrous0]

It was the 80's. Things were different then, okay.

Re:Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

Re:Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[TheRaven64]

Only if he enjoyed it...

Re:Finally, an excuse to shut my wife up

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else read this in Forrest Gump's voice?

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Dynamoo]

Simon Singh has another opinion.

The obvious question

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until we never hear about this again?

Or, how long until big medicine gets their hands on it and makes it too expensive for the average cancer patient?

Re:The obvious question

[Quiet_Desperation]

(dramatic music)

Dah dah daaaaaaaaaaaah!

House

[scuzzlebutt]

This sounds like an episode of House. Didn't he treat cancer by infecting a patient with Malaria on a dare, or some such thing?

Re:House

[flimflammer]

I loved that episode.

Please read the final paragraph of TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is important to emphasize that there still have been only three patients. Over the past century, many attempts to harness the bodyâ(TM)s immune system to fight cancer have shown initial success and subsequent failure. So much research remains to be done to prove just how good this treatment is. But it should begin soon, with great vigor."

Could the title and summary be more exaggerated?

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you got from that article is "cancer has been cured by injecting people with HIV", please abstain from posting any more summaries.

Not so fast

[softwaredoug]

FTA

It is important to emphasize that there still have been only three patients. Over the past century, many attempts to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer have shown initial success and subsequent failure.

Still a better prognosis?

[Nidi62]

Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US. This is compared to what, 6 months-5 years for some of the worst forms of cancer? I think in many cases, people would very willingly make that trade. IN many cases it would allow people to live to almost a full average lifespan anyway.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Zaatxe]

Your point is compelling, but some people might think that lifeSpan != life.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some nasty side effects of HIV though.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Nidi62]

Your point is compelling, but some people might think that lifeSpan != life.

You might get to live to see your son graduate college, or your daughter get married, or your grandchildren born. It could give you time to go visit Paris, Rome, and Venice. You can hike the Appalachian Trail like you've always wanted. I think that is a trade off most people would choose.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Talderas]

Is quality of life with HIV worse than that with cancer?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore. Treatment today is down to 1 or 2 pills a day, for a few bucks.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

As compared to leukemia?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[frosty_tsm]

Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US. This is compared to what, 6 months-5 years for some of the worst forms of cancer? I think in many cases, people would very willingly make that trade. IN many cases it would allow people to live to almost a full average lifespan anyway.

Yes, but try to explain that one to a spouse or girlfriend.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[geekoid]

So, 'slowly' dying in 6 months, mostly alone with a small group of friends is 'life' and living for the rest of your natural life capable of doing everything you can now isn't life?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[LWATCDR]

"Even if it did use real HIV" They don't and if they would never try that because it wouldn't pass the medical ethics board for human testing if for no other reason than the risk of retransmission to a healthy person.
All the rest of this discussion of if HIV or cancer is useless since it has no valid application to this discussion.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancer can't be transmitted sexually so..

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[hedwards]

I wonder how this treatment would work for the rare individuals that are immune to HIV or for the more common individuals that just have a natural resistance to it.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US. This is compared to what, 6 months-5 years for some of the worst forms of cancer? I think in many cases, people would very willingly make that trade. IN many cases it would allow people to live to almost a full average lifespan anyway.

Yes, but try to explain that one to a spouse or girlfriend.

Say hello to miss Palmer.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[arkane1234]

Notice the GP did not say anything about the number of pills.
Quality of life != lowest number of pills, quality of life == not having to stay dormant for long periods of time because of issues, etc.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[bamberg]

You cure the cancer with HIV, cure the HIV with Ebola and then cure the Ebola with decapitation. It's easy!

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[kimvette]

Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US.

Even so, if this "harmless form of HIV" does mutate back into the AIDS-causing variant and gives you the average 24 years to live after you've beat the cancer, you're cured of cancer but can't be intimate with your wife or husband or domesti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H (fuck political correctness, let's just say SO) without infecting them. Is it really worth the cure?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Nursie]

Ummm, yeah, yeah it is.

No sex (or having to start a new relationship) is infinitely preferable to death.

Is that not the case in your mind?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[hamburgler007]

Even so, if this "harmless form of HIV" does mutate back into the AIDS-causing variant and gives you the average 24 years to live after you've beat the cancer, you're cured of cancer but can't be intimate with your wife or husband or domesti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H (fuck political correctness, let's just say SO) without infecting them. Is it really worth the cure?

That is a drawback. If only there was some device, resembling a balloon, that could be placed over a man's penis during intercourse to help prevent the transmission of STDs.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[19061969]

For most slashdotters, a life without sex is pretty much situation normal.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cervical cancer is caused by HPV, which is transmitted sexually.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except there's the issue of introducing more HIV carriers into the general population. I doubt this would be a good idea. Either way, like the article stated, it was a harmless form of HIV anyways.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

No. But slowly dying in 6 months with a steady stream of hookers and whiskey paid for by the Make a Wish foundation and various charities? That's life baby!

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[yodleboy]

"Yes, but try to explain that one to a spouse or girlfriend."

trying to understand this one... there is something called safe sex, you know. condoms are effective at stopping HIV transmission. and there's in-vitro fertilization for those that want to have kids. Does it mean a little extra precaution? Sure, but i'd like to think most spouses would rather see you alive and using condoms than dead. dunno about girlfriends, different level of commitment there.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Yamioni]

Didn't RTFA did you?

In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.

They aren't injecting people with HIV. They are genetically engineering human white blood cells using the specific genes from HIV that cause it to only target specific types of cells. They use the genes to teach the specialized white blood cells to attack and kill cancer cells only. Then those white blood cells are injected into the patient that then go and kill the cancer. At no point is a whole, functioning version of HIV ever anywhere outside of a laboratory, let alone near the patient being treated. The risk of some form of 'regressive mutation' that you are suggesting, is all but impossible. Only in some bizarre fringe case where the sample HIV was actually alive and reproducing inside the laboratory without a human host, then sure, it might happen. But even then the HIV would be constrained to the lab and no threat to anyone (assuming the lab techs know what the hell they're doing.) Trust me, if HIV somehow starts magically reproducing without a host organism to support it, we have far greater concerns on our hands than cancer.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, having sex would be a lot harder with HIV. For the people who don't use Slashdot.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[ciderbrew]

I think you get the first generation of x-men.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember, "Hike the Appalachian Trail" is a euphemism for "have an affair" in South Carolina after our last governor.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Volante3192]

You can hike the Appalachian Trail like you've always wanted.

But if you've got HIV/AIDS, isn't it a felony to pass it along knowin...oh, you mean that OTHER Appalachian Trail!

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that, you know, real HIV won't have this curing effect.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

In places like India, where I am doing volunteering for last one year, many (educated) people still think HIV = AIDS = Sudden Death.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[slackbheep]

I'm just confused as to what point the owls are brought in?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[pluther]

1. You can still be intimate, via methods many posters have pointed out already.

2. Do you honestly think that someone undergoing cancer treatment is going to be having a lot of sex during that time? When it gets to end of life care, and you're in a good hospice program, whiskey and hookers really aren't on the list of what you're going to want/be capable of enjoying.

3. Life isn't like D&D. You're not actually just fine as long as you have one hit point left.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymus]

It's a moot point anyway, since it doesn't use normal HIV, but I don't really understand what you mean.

"Honey, I'm going to get HIV and live a relatively normal life for the next 20 years or so. We'll have to start using condoms though."
vs.
"Honey, I'm going to die over the next year or so in agonizing torture. What? Sex? I haven't felt like doing that since chemo started and in a few more months I'll barely have the energy to piss myself."

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are horribly misinformed on the current state-of-the-art on HIV therapies. Today to keep the HIV virus at undetectable levels within the blood-stream it only requires a once a day pill. As long as the person remains on this regime their life expectancy is only about 2-3 years less than someone who is not HIV positive. In other words having diabetes or heart disease is probably a greater risk factor in the long run.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell modded the parent up? This might be true for someone who is not treated, but life expectancy for a person who takes the latest once-a-day treatment has undetectable levels of the HIV virus in the blood and can expect to live longer than the average slashdotter with diabetes or who is at risk for heart disease.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[jeff4747]

HIV was used to insert genes into cells in a test tube. The patients were not (directly) infected with the modified virus.

So immunity to HIV doesn't matter, because the modified virus's job is done before you are injected with the treatment.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Coren22]

Just to be clear for any who reads this ^ and don't know. Any cancer that has gotten to the point where it travels in the blood CAN be passed through sexual contact.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[JordanL]

There are certain conditions, such as certain kinds of cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. which are much less preferable to ANY of the places HIV infection could take you.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Coren22]

You've never had a condom break?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[JordanL]

That would force us to reexamine our definition of what a virus is, as one of the core characteristics of all viruses we know of is the inability to have normal lifecycles outside of host cells.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[nbetcher]

Actually, now days with modern HIV medications when the virus is caught within a few years of infection and the patient takes medications continuously, the life-span of an HIV-infected individual is no different than an HIV- individual.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[rjstanford]

Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US.

Even so, if this "harmless form of HIV" does mutate back into the AIDS-causing variant and gives you the average 24 years to live after you've beat the cancer, you're cured of cancer but can't be intimate with your wife or husband or domesti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H (fuck political correctness, let's just say SO) without infecting them. Is it really worth the cure?

It turns out that, for most couples at least, not only can you not be intimate with your wife after you're dead, she can't be intimate with you either. So I'd say that the cure's affect on your sex life is, basically, irrelevant to this discussion.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[ravenshrike]

Or how the Underpants Gnomes profit.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Opportunist]

Well, if I got that right, it's the patient's cell that are "infected", so technically, yes, I think being immune to HIV might have an impact.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[jeff4747]

Only if their immunity was caused by HIV not being able to enter the cells.

That's not gonna be the source of the immunity. HIV uses a protein that is necessary for healthy cells in order to infect.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can hike the Appalachian Trail..."

Is that code?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention dying in 6 months doesn't leave a heck of a lot of time for a cure to be discovered. If you are dying of something that will kill you after 24 years, there is a much greater chance that eventually you will not be dying of it at all.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the GP might be referring to a preoccupation with sex...

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[slartibartfastatp]

Health professionals and the industry consider you "cured" if you're alive 5 year after cancer diagnosis.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not your damn decision to make, nor is it anoyone's, except for the patient.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[artor3]

And what, you think 50 year old cancer patients spend their evenings clubbing?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[yodleboy]

yeah actually. use one and one of those internal female condoms. whatever. there are plenty of couples out there with one HIV person that manage to stay together and have sex and minimize the risks of transmission. the point is HIV doesn't mean they have to give up sex forever.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[nurb432]

So you go to a different country with less stringent requirements.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[BitZtream]

Condoms ARE NOT TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF STDs. YOU STILL EXCHANGE FLUIDS EVEN WHEN USING A CONDOM.

You exchange FAR less, but it still happens. Condoms also break.

Again, say it with me this time CONDOMS ARE NOT TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF STDs, they aren't really all that effective at it.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[BitZtream]

Latex on Latex (male condom and female condom) tend to just rip themselves apart, not the brightest of ideas.

Perhaps you should read the instructions on the box next time you fill them up with mayo and through them off the roof.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[BitZtream]

No, you're considered in remission, once you have cancer, no one in health care will ever consider you 'cured', hence why you can never donate blood again in your life.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[beckett]

Condoms ARE NOT TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF STDs.

Citation please?

To say what you are saying is to spread potentially fatal misinformation. Please provide your citation and we'll know who to blame. This is cut from the same cloth as the anti-vaccinators.

For those willing to look past this poster's crypto-fundamentalist agenda, the Centre for Disease Control states on page 2 of the Fact Sheet for Medical Personnel: Male Latex Condoms and Sexually Transmitted Diseases,

Sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In addition, correct and consistent use of latex condoms can reduce the risk of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including discharge and genital ulcer diseases.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Grishnakh]

You're both right. Condoms are not a sure-fire way of preventing the spread of STDs. Sure, they're "highly effective", but then again, condoms fail 20% of the time from what I've read, so using one with a partner you know has an STD means you're making a 1-in-5 bet that you'll catch it too. Sorry, but that doesn't sound like great odds to me.

Of course, the reason the failure rate is so high is probably because many people don't use them correctly, but that doesn't change the end result, that they fail 20% of the time.

If you want to avoid catching an STD, the only truly effective method is abstinence from sex with known-infected individuals (it also helps to avoid individuals you don't know well enough to be reasonably sure they're clean too, such as your spouse or long-term partner). No, you can't 100% guarantee that's safe either, since they might cheat on you, but it's still far, far better odds than having sex with someone that you know is infected.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[adolf]

I find your idea to be very compelling, but I think it may have a flaw:

What happens when you pick up HIV from the hookers and accidentally wind up living for a extra quarter-century?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even if it did use real HIV" They don't and if they would never try that because it wouldn't pass the medical ethics board for human testing if for no other reason than the risk of retransmission to a healthy person.
All the rest of this discussion of if HIV or cancer is useless since it has no valid application to this discussion.

I'll bet Dr. House could get Cuddy to approve it!

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Tymst]

20 % ? You should stop buying recycled paper condoms. Most often I've seen failure rate between 1 and 5 %, which seems more realistic but still too much to handle. In fact, if I'm going to have a long-term, multi-decades relationship with someone, I'm not going to accept anything higher that 0%. The idea that I'm gambling my live everytime I'm having sex, even if the individual intercourse risks are fairly low, would ruin sex for me.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Grishnakh]

Googling for "condom failure rate" seems to yield a lot of different statistics. On here, they say the failure rate is 15%, but that's per year, i.e. if a couple uses a male condom for regular sex for a year, there's a 15% chance of pregnancy. Now remember, a single condom failure doesn't mean automatic pregnancy with a woman, since she's only fertile a small percentage of the time anyway. I think I read somewhere that using no birth control at all is 70% effective in preventing pregnancy, which of course is due to this fact. So if this organization's numbers are to be believed, the actual condom failure rate is higher than that number would indicate, it's just that over 50% of the time, that failure doesn't lead to pregnancy because of the woman's biology. This wouldn't be the case with STD transmission.

Your numbers are probably correct too, on a per-use basis, since the yearly statistic above would have to average the number of sexual encounters for partners in whatever study they used to get that number: some couples might only have sex weekly or even monthly, while others might do it daily.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Yamioni]

What I would think would happen is we would create a new sub-catagory of viruses. Exo-Virii or some such, if you will. On the face of it, it doesn't seem like such a complex matter for a virus to survive prolonged periods without a host. They are scraps of RNA encased in a protein shell. It doesn't seem that preposterous to imagine a protein shell that can last and protect the RNA payload for a long period of time. Luckily for us, viruses are not alive in the conventional sense, and thus do not evolve under environmental stresses. They are forced to mutate through copy-errors in order to propagate into new variants. So the likelihood of getting an Exo-Virus of any kind is statistically low.

What I would like to see the scientists do next, once they have this cancer thing nailed down, is use the tech to reprogram HIV so it attacks other HIV viruses. I'm not sure if that would work mechanically (as in, if the HIV would be capable of breaking the shell on another virus) but if so it would be revolutionary. Imagine everyone on the planet immune to HIV thanks to these little wonders of engineering. What would be even better is if they could expand it to attack all forms of viruses. Bye-bye common cold. Bye-bye influenza. It would be a truly great win for humanity.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Citation? Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Go away with your CDC, and your science, and all your learning. Amazing, people can land on the moon, but the're too stupid to know that Popes are experts on condoms.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Female condoms are polyurethane, AFAIK.

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[swalve]

This is a meme I've seen a couple of times, only recently. Are there people who are immune to the HIV?

Re:Still a better prognosis?

[swalve]

Gotcha. The only way to reduce the risk is to make abortions illegal and creationism mandatory.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Anonymous Coward]

you heartless, despicable scum. you know chiropractic has no real-world benefits and you're trying to exploit desperate and suffering people. shame on you! i almost wish there was a hell so you could burn in it. get off my slashdot you cunt

Incredible.

[sbrown123]

This is...so incredible. The application of modified white cells and using HIV as a carrier has use beyond just cancer. It is too bad the drug companies and big cancer foundations didn't back this from the start. Hopefully the money will come pouring in now.

Re:Incredible.

[Idarubicin]

This is...so incredible. The application of modified white cells and using HIV as a carrier has use beyond just cancer. It is too bad the drug companies and big cancer foundations didn't back this from the start. Hopefully the money will come pouring in now.

The use of retroviral vectors for gene therapy (and for basic biological science research, too) has been an active area of extensive research pretty much since we first figured out how these viruses worked. I would be shocked if there were any substantial cancer research institutes anywhere that didn't have at least a couple of projects that used retroviral methods.

Gene therapy techniques of any kind are conceptually easy but can be technically very finicky. If this is the one project in a thousand that actually works effectively and cleanly (and it may just be) then that's wonderful -- but the absence of other success stories isn't because of a lack of funding for research in this area.

Re:Incredible.

[erroneus]

This isn't "new news" so much as it is a follow-up on old news. We have actually discussed using a modified virus to "instruct" white cells to kill cancer before. And as the article indicates, the test occurred over a year ago.

Re:Incredible.

[geekoid]

The idea isn't new, and has been worked on. They 'just' managed to get it to last longer then a few days. so far 6 moths and still going. This is the kind of finding you get with government funded research. However, Tea baggers want it to stop. I hate to get political with such great science news, but it's important to note there are people that call this kind or research a 'waste of money'.

Re:Incredible.

[emt377]

This isn't "new news" so much as it is a follow-up on old news.

No, it's new news. While some parts of the trial started as much as a year ago, the result of the trial were presented yesterday (8/10): http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/95/95ra73.abstract

While the "idea" obviously isn't new, just having ideas isn't worth squat. This is the first time T cells have been effectively primed (including memory T cell production) to completely wipe out all traces of cancer. And not only a tiny amount, in a dish, or in a mouse; the human tumor masses were measured in pounds. This makes it big news. Someone realizing something completely new and reporting on it, is infinitely more interesting than yet another daydreamer having an idea that turns out impossible even before it leaves the napkin.

I'm not part of your system!

[TheVidiot]

I'm in the hospital with my so-called doctor,

and takes his syringe and says

"This is a cure for cancer!"

And I said "Maaaaan this isn't a cancer cure, it's HIV!"

So I took it and I threw it on the ground!

Someone's on the line for you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kaposi's sarcoma called, and laughed at your announcement.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Nidi62]

You are just as bad a homeopathic advocates. You know damn well there is nothing related to nerves or anything similar when it comes to cancer. It is a problem with the genes inside the cells. You aren't just giving people false hope spewing lies and propaganda like this, you are killing them.

It'll never make it through FDA trials

[DarthBart]

FTA: Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research.

Of course they did. If you cure cancer with one shot, the cash cow of chemo drugs dries up for Big Pharma and the cash cow of donations dries up for the American Cancer Society and other 'non-profit' organization.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[characterZer0]

The eradication of polio did not mean the end of the March of Dimes. The NCI would simply need a name change and slight focus adjustment.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[backslashdot]

No, because they can charge 5 years worth of chemo fees for that one shot !!

The insurance companies and cancer patients would gladly take the loans and pay up.

Think about it .. hundreds of millions of people have cancer .. that means whoever finds a one shot cure will instantly be a trillionaire .. they can take their money and buy and island and retire. Or invest in a one shot cure for AIDS.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[MozeeToby]

To be fair, similar techniques have been tried without success in the past. What this team did different was perform a second modification to the patient's white blood cells encouraging them to multiply rapidly once they were put back into the patient's body. No one really knew what that would do, it's entirely possible that it could have killed the patient outright, which is probably why this first study was so small (only three, highly terminal cases).

The story of the guy who was told he had 3 weeks to live, got this treatment, watched 5 lbs of cancer melt away over the course of the next month, and has been living happily ever after ever since is amazing though. This is the first time in a long time that I've actually had hope for a general cancer cure, hopefully they can generalize it to other cancers and make it cheap and simple enough for your average oncologist to perform.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Octorian]

This is actually something I've often wondered about, more about the ACA than big pharma. We have all these big "societies" that have grown up around major medical conditions. And any sufficiently large organization tends to want to perpetuate. If the thing they stand for is suddenly a solved problem, what motive do they have to continue to exist?

(That being said, given that cancer is really a whole family of related conditions, I doubt its something that can be "cured" in one fell swoop anyways.)

But seriously, if the "tried and true" methods aren't making more than minor incremental progress, what's so bad about trying radial new high-risk/high-payoff things? For the DoD, we have a whole agency (DARPA) dedicated to funding just that.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

They make useless new standards. Look at xhtml and html5. Solutions in search of problems.

Eh, ok. So, different situations, but the same situation.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[BKX]

This argument is bullshit. Pure bullshit. If any "Big Pharma" company invented a cure for cancer tomorrow, you can bet your ass that they'd be all over it in a heartbeat. Why? Because, then that company would forever be known as the company that cured cancer. Every new product they make would be a pot of gold. Every ad they put out would be "Muhdikard, a new treatment for erectile dysfunction, from Drugco. We cured cancer.". Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill for that kind of marketing, not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure.

Now, of course, "cure for cancer" is a worthless phrase as well, since cancer is a type of disease, and not a single disease, and therefore, it's extremely unlikely that one cure will work for more than one cancer let alone all of them.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm now modding any comment down that uses the phrase "big pharma" or "big" anything. The lack of any rational thought that went into this comment makes baby jebus cry.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Thelasko]

Polio has not been eradicated. Smallpox and Rinderpest are the only diseases to be eradicated globally.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[h4rr4r]

Like hunger the problems of eradicating Polio are largely political. When you have people preventing UNICEF from delivering food to starving kids what makes anyone think they would allow these kids to get vaccinations?

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[cyberchondriac]

/\ This.
Any big pharma company would leap at the chance if it was a good bet. Same thing goes for a cure for baldness.
This strain of HIV was detoothed, but maybe someone high up in the companies was worried the strain would mutate and become dangerous again (whether scientifically feasible or not). In any case, it's likely that mere mention of "HIV injection" made their lawyers not want to touch this with a 10 foot pole.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[rabtech]

People who work at drug companies die of cancer. Or have relatives, wives, husbands, and children that die of cancer.

If you think they would honestly ignore a potential cure, you're insane. The money is immaterial... you can just charge $50,000 for the one-time cure shot if you develop it.

The idea that there is some sort of massive conspiracy to only research lifestyle drugs is just pure idiocy. Indeed the example people love to throw around - Viagra - was designed as a heart medication. The ED effects were an accidental side-effect but one they happily exploited.

There is a lot of complain about with "big pharma" but there is no conspiracy. The #1 problem is the fact that we allow drug marketing... that was a huge mistake (thanks de-regulating republicans!) But you know what? "big pharma" has bought out most of the major supplement makers so your "homeopathy" hocus-pocus placebo is made by the same companies. Enjoy.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research.

Of course they did. If you cure cancer with one shot, the cash cow of chemo drugs dries up for Big Pharma and the cash cow of donations dries up for the American Cancer Society and other 'non-profit' organization.

Not to mention radiation therapy...

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[geekoid]

One of the worse things b about spending 5 years studying the industry is that when I read a post like yours I get extremely angry.

You're reasoning is wrong, as is you concept of what 'Big Pharma' does.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[DrgnDancer]

Now, of course, "cure for cancer" is a worthless phrase as well, since cancer is a type of disease, and not a single disease, and therefore, it's extremely unlikely that one cure will work for more than one cancer let alone all of them.

This has the capability to be effective, if not for every cancer, at least for a wide swath of them. Just change the signature that the hunter-killer cells are well, hunting, and presto. It's way to early to even call this a "cure" for leukemia, but if the theory proves sound and it doesn't kill more people than it saves in testing, this could be the key to curing just about every cancer. It's like anything else, you have to prototype out the theory before you attempt the general case.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[geekoid]

Organization either go away, take on a new fight, or lie.

And this treatment does look like to could cure a whole lot of cancers, if not all of them; however difference groups of cancer will need slightly different kinds of gene therapy.

" making more than minor incremental progress, "
Just like all other science.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[hedwards]

Even if this was cheap, it would still be profitable for pharmaceutical companies to sell it at a reasonable price. Every individual that dies from cancer is one less potential customer for quite a few other medications that they'd be taking. What's worse, the real money making medications tend not to be of much use in younger people.

That being said, some medications are just really expensive to produce once you factor in the cost of production, testing and getting FDA approval. And in some cases the ingredients themselves are really expensive even without gouging.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[kevinNCSU]

I think you'll find most research proposals are turned down for grant money before they're approved by someone. Especially something that sounds like you're injecting someone with HIV. Next thing you know you'd be on here shouting about "Big Pharma injecting live humans with HIV in pursuit of profits!"

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[geekoid]

Actually, there is nor reason to think this technique won't kill many, if not all, types of cancer.
The problem they solved was getting the cells to live for more then a few days to attack cancers. The idea of using this to attack varies cancer cells has been done, but with such a short life span that wasn't very useful.
And at this point it not only looks like it cures cancer , but will prevent it from coming back.

All that said, it was 3 patients. 2 of which where cured, and one who was 'mostly cured. These patient only had a short time to live, and other treatments didn't work.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. They declined to pay for it because the drug Rituxan already is on the market and accomplishes what this therapy does, except that you can stop dosing Rituxan and the person's normal B-cells can grow back, while this approach keeps the patients immunocompromised indefinitely. See the actual research article:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849?query=featured_home

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[brainzach]

The majority of childhood leukemia is cured by using chemotherapy alone. Chemotherapy is an effective treatment for the majority of cancers but it doesn't mean that it will cure all types of cancer. There are many types of cancer and each one has its specialized treatment with varying degrees of success.

This new treatment has the potential to help cure more people with more cancer, but it is extremely unlikely that it can be a universal cancer cure all.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[quintus_horatius]

Why would Big Pharma cure cancer if they could convert it from a deadly disease into a chronic condition (and profit from selling you the treatment) instead?

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[SuseLover]

Uuuh, what cash cow? Last week my wife could not get her full dose of 5FU because it is in short supply due to the fact only one or two pharm. companies make it since it is so unprofitable.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Rinikusu]

Meh. The market is fickle. What have you done for me lately? is a common mantra.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[camperdave]

Think about it .. hundreds of millions of people have cancer .. that means whoever finds a one shot cure will instantly be a trillionaire

... and this is exactly why the pharmaceutical companies have no hope of suppressing a cancer cure. They can't take the chance that another drug maker won't get there first. They can't prevent some random lab tech from walking out the door with samples, and heading to a rival organization.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument is bullshit. Pure bullshit.

Technically it would come down to whoever makes the decision to fund, or not fund, this research.

Money vs. reputation. Whether to cut funding and improve this quarter's profit and get a big bonus or fund this research and, maybe, improve profitability in the long term.

Sadly, you know there are people who would chose the bonus this quarter.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Idarubicin]

FTA: Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research.

Of course they did. If you cure cancer with one shot, the cash cow of chemo drugs dries up for Big Pharma and the cash cow of donations dries up for the American Cancer Society and other 'non-profit' organization.

Paranoia is not required here. The success rate for grant applications to the National Cancer Institute in 2010 was just 17%. Roughly five out of every six NCI grant applications failed to receive funding. The margin between proposals that receive funding and those which do not is razor thin. Probably the top two-thirds to one-half of NCI proposals contain solid science that is worth doing and ought to be funded. Since the pool of government money is limited, two out of three worthwhile projects won't get funded--mostly through factors that boil down to bad luck.

This treatment is one of many, many, many gene therapy approaches in various stages of development and testing. Most such therapies haven't lived up to their promise, and so it is difficult to get additional funding in this area. I'm thrilled that these guys have managed to hit on the one-in-a-million combination of disease and therapeutic approach that finally (seems to) work, but I'm also not totally surprised that they've had some difficulty acquiring big-money funding.

I'll also note in passing that your conspiracy theory about the American Cancer Society (and other charitable organizations which fund research) is idiotic. Even if we grant the silly assumption that they're just money-grubbing, self-perpetuating bureaucracies interested only in maintaining their own longevity at the expense of cancer patients, this particular treatment is applicable to well under 1% of total cancers and well under 1% of total cancer deaths. Despite falling under a single umbrella name, cancer isn't one disease; it's hundreds of different diseases. This cancer (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) is particularly and specifically vulnerable to the type of therapy used in this study because it is a cancer of the blood (with easily-accessible-to-therapy circulating cells, unlike in any sort of solid tumor), it is relatively slow growing, and the cells involved are a very homogeneous population (easy to specifically target, at least for cancer cells). If I were an evil genius then this is exactly the sort of work I would encourage, because it looks good but will only ultimately help a very small fraction of the population.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

This is somewhat anecdotal, as it's hearing from someone who works for someone else. I personally know someone who works for a man who has a few medical patents. He's developed a few drugs to cure a few conditions, however, he readily admits to not releasing these. Instead, he's "watered down" the drugs, so that they keep the condition at bay but not eradicate it, and in 5 years or so, he'll "cure" the disease after he makes money off the temporary fix. I find this pretty damn vile. Unfortunately, the person I know who works for him agrees with this method, and wants to start her own company doing the same thing. There are a lot of noble people out there working towards the greater good, but there are a lot of greedy scumbags as well. Posting as AC because, well, I can't back up these statements, and legally, I'm not sure if I'd be getting them in trouble if I could.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Samantha Wright]

The amount of money that goes into cancer research, and pet projects pork-barrelled as cancer research, greatly overshadows all other medical and biological research budgets. I used to work on a lab that did neurodevelopmental studies in itty-bitty worms called C. elegans. It was, in large part, funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute. The end of cancer research funding would utterly destroy fundamental research in molecular biology and biochemistry.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

While a drug company may like that kind of advertising, what about side effects from the cancer cure? I know people who thought there were on the road to a cure for cancer. After completing a couple million in research they got to the point where if they went any further they would be obligated to release the results of their research. While it would help most people, a larger enough percentage (~20%) would have side effects and could sue, such that ultimately the company would lose money. Thus they pulled the plug on the research.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[tibit]

Someone going by radagast posted the below in the msnbc.com comment section on TFA. It's very well said, so I'll just cite it to preserve it in case msnbc ever wipes their old comments (that wouldn't be the first time):

Nowhere in the health care bill does the government "takeover" healthcare. They simply mandate that everyone be covered. The health care you would buy under the plan will still be administered by private, competing companies. Our system will not be a "socialized" version of Canada, nor will there be government employees administering your plan.

Holy @!$%#, holy @!$%#. It's been two years and still this misinformed tripe continues to bubble up as "knowledge." Why don't some of you who hate progressives do something to better America? The only ones who seem willing to try are the progressives. Slandering what they do only defeats your own self interest.

Drug companies do not develop cell therapies, they develop small molecule drugs. You might as well blame Ford Motor Co. when the crops fail. Cancer is a collection of thousands of different diseases which present differently in nearly all patients. It is one of the most intellectually and technically challenging problems in human history. Millions of people are working on it. Many cancers are curable right now. Many drugs are effective (despite your widely held belief that there are no cures). Other forms can be managed, while still other forms remain a death sentence.

If you want cures - THEN ALLOW THE GOVERNMENT TO SPEND MONEY ON BASIC RESEARCH. Cutting government funding cuts basic science, which keeps scientists from advancing in a great many fields - cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, the list is exceptionally long. Putting academic scientists (the average scientist in academia makes ~ $30-40,000) out of work seems to be what some of you want. These men and women who have sacrificed much of their lives and money to solving these problems are starving for funding. There will be only one result. The quality of research will deteriorate. People will be forced to cut corners and make mistakes as they claw for the scraps from Congress.

Even so, drug companies play their part because they have some of the best private funding and funding derived from their profits. The notion that they won't research cures or that they don't want cures because they will lose money is personally insulting to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who perform some of the most advanced research in these fields. Research that would put your simple minds to shame by its depth and breadth of ingenuity and know-how. When there is a cure it is gotten to market as fast as possible and gotten into the hands of doctors as fast as possible. There are endless examples of this.

Do you really think that these private sector workers don't have family members who have died? Do you think that they don't read the same headlines? They know the challenge better than any of you and they know the face of the disease better than you. If there really was any validity to the notion that drug companies are standing in the way of cures, then the people who would be complaining the loudest would be those who work in them. They would be complaining very loudly that their work is not getting out because of the company's supposed policies. How many of those people do we hear from?

NONE.

You people who traffic in nonsense and politically motivated tripe are the reason our Congress is the way it is. Look at yourselves and the ignorance you spread as fact. Shame. Nothing but rumor mongers, denialists, and idiots. Our Congress is a reflection of the American people and the American people continue to prove they are shamelessly and willfully ignorant, belligerant, and infantile. If you can't handle the internet like adults maybe we should take it away from you.

Grow the @!$%# up and get a clue. All of you.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

The eradication of polio did not mean the end of the March of Dimes. The NCI would simply need a name change and slight focus adjustment.

Polio is still around.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

Hunger problems are political, social, and economic. If we feed and water a large portion of the world regularly, they become comfortable. Then we have expensive pets.

It's sad, but we really need the fear of suffering and death to move people. Greed destroys capitalism, laziness destroys socialism. Unfortunately, that means we need jobs for these people: we need to make them labor, and if they're useless then what?

At the same time, waste labor just exacerbates the problem. Destruction is not profit, after all. There may simply be too many people.

What abhors me is the complete waste of food on this planet. Stores throw out day-old bread, bagels, packaged expired foods, the like... some people willfully live by recovering this food from the trash for consumption, which I WTF at. Temperature test the meats, grab day-old bagels from the trash in bagel shops, bags of rice that get thrown out for some god damn reason, the works. This is completely wasteful and we could easily use this to feed the hungry.

Unfortunately, improving the efficiency of food production and distribution would eliminate this excess food waste. By doing so, we would eliminate the ability to support the hungry people of the world. Excess food production is wasteful, and supporting people who have no use (there is no labor for them, thus they are of no use) is very wasteful.

You see the problem, yes? On one side, we are being wasteful with a thing we should be making heavy use of, because it is needed. On the other, we are still being wasteful if we feed the hungry in the world; and if we correct that, we can no longer feed them. We need work for these people--real work, not "public works" that create an imaginary market out of a need for jobs but no need for the actual product of that market.

America should be able to support most of its own; Egypt or Ethiopia less so only because of development. I don't mean to say they should pave the desert and build high-rise buildings; I mean to say they need to develop an economy, even if it's of sheep traders and carpenters. That's where the real improvement is to be made: providing a working society that can support a culture, such that people can earn their way and produce something they may barter for their livelihood. Then we won't have to help them because they will have something we want, and we will have something they need.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[SleazyRidr]

+1

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[c6gunner]

Why would Big Pharma cure cancer if they could convert it from a deadly disease into a chronic condition (and profit from selling you the treatment) instead?

Because they realize they can make almost as much money by curing it, PLUS they can generate a whole lot of good publicity?
Because they realize that SOMEONE is going to do it sooner or later, and they'd rather it not be their competition?
Because scientists and, yes, even CEOs have freinds and family they care about?
Because their stockholders have friends and family they care about?
Because most people really do care about the human race, and are willing to take a small cut in profits if it means doing something really really awesome?

In other words, because not everyone is like you.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

It's BECAUSE of this they don't want anything to do with it. Just as easy they can get fame for it they could get infamy for using such a strange technique and failing. Regardless how you look at it, this only works if the treatments are actually successful, and by that I mean available to the general populace not for the top 2% in the first world countries.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

Wait, what? This is unethical. LEGALLY unethical. It gets your MD license REVOKED.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[whiteboy86]

Isn't this conclusion sickening? A few leeches that live on cancer donations in "American Cancer Society" will stop this because it can dry up their beggarly money stream ?! This is madness. Hopefully somewhere in India or China somebody can copycat this project... facepalm..

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. And if you can find a doctor with so little ego that he/she would shy away from finding a cure that would make him/her world famous for thousands of years, then you've actually done something almost as hard as curing cancer.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Samantha Wright]

It's not a few leeches; it's widespread. Hiding under the label of cancer research is how the biological sciences protected themselves from budget cuts. A lot of really vital and scientifically significant research is still being done, even though the politicians think the money is going solely to problems that directly relate to cancer. The lines are extremely blurry, as it so happens, because the corruptions of the cell reproductive cycle that lead to cancer are so fantastically complex.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[blair1q]

Not "any."

Given the cost of cancer treatments, it's possible for certain companies to come to the conclusion that their current position in the provision of drugs and equipment for those treatments is more profitable than providing an outright cure for the disease.

When money makes your decisions it's a recipe for evil.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Please re-read the parent post. It's just implying that the lack of funding is out of a material interest in continuing to use expensive, ineffective treatments rather than seeking a cure. To say that pharmaceutical companies would ignore a cure in front of them is a different argument. But honestly, why would they seek out cures for long-term illnesses like HIV and cancer, at great expense and high risk of losing ROI, while their competitors sit back and get rich on expensive, ineffective, patchwork treatments?

Any pharmaceutical company which changed its focus so strongly to focus on curing major diseases rather than treating them, would simply be eradicated by the capitalist market (unless it could guarantee ROI).

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Rich0]

Why would Big Pharma cure cancer if they could convert it from a deadly disease into a chronic condition (and profit from selling you the treatment) instead?

Big Pharma doesn't have a working chronic treatment for cancer, so you're asking why would a big company choose to make a boatload of money now, instead of making no money now but maybe hypothetically in the future they could make less money for a longer time.

The answer is simple - the executive gets his bonus based on this quarter's sales, not the product sales ten years from now. Sure, all things being equal the company is going to pursue the most profitable product, but they're not going to avoid making money if the opportunity is there.

This is blue-sky research. Blue sky research is important because it has the potential to change everything, even though most of the time it is just a money sink. A typical company isn't going to invest much in blue sky research, since it could instead invest the money in something more likely to lead to a near-term return. So, big pharma isn't likely to discover the cure for cancer for the same reason that they would be the first to market one if it were found - short-sightedness.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[benhattman]

You got to the right result, but for the wrong reasons. If any big pharma had a cure for cancer, they would be shouting it from the rooftops because it would harm cashflow to their competitors. This would give them an opportunity to greatly expand market share.

Getting good buzz out of it is bonus, but pharma doesn't advertise the company by name when they sell drugs, they advertise the drug. That way, when some miracle cure turns out to kill people, they can just end that drug without it destroying the public perception of the brand.

It's worth pointing out, however, that the relative value for a cure for cancer to corporations is much less than it is for the population at large. So, we shouldn't depend on them to be doing any of this basic research, because they probably won't.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[danlip]

Since not curing cancer results in the death of the patient, the drug companies don't have an incentive to avoid the cure. You can make that accusation for other diseases but it makes no sense for cancer. Plus there is a steady stream of new cancer patients. They might avoid some sort of preventative treatment, but if you did invent a preventative cancer vaccine you could probably sell billions of doses and there is a new stream of people being born everyday to sell to, so there is still lots of profit to e made there.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the name of that drug 'Mycoxafloppin'?

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to put their money to good use.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[jeff4747]

For your idea to work, you'd have to be dumb enough to think your competitors won't find the same cure. Either through your research, or your frustrated researchers walking across the street with it.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what? This is unethical. LEGALLY unethical. It gets your MD license REVOKED.

Perhaps it would if they were an MD (Medical Doctor).

I don't think Phds in Biochemistry (or whatever specialty does medical research) have licenses to revoke.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill ...

Oh, they do. They already do.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[cdrguru]

At some point you have to realize that there simply is no need for at least half of the population in the US isn't needed for any sort of labor. In the last 50 years or so we have gone from an economy where everyone that could work had a job waiting for them to an economy where now there simply are no jobs available. Automation and improved processes have eliminated the need, as have the complete removal of most manufacturing from the US.

The idea seems to be that everyone that used to work in a factory can now be retrained to be a "knowledge worker" or some such. There are a couple of problems with that idea so it really isn't going to work out that way, but no matter what, there simply aren't any job openings. The end result is that the US as a country can either push the unemployed to the street or the government can support them. Maybe with make-work jobs (one group digs holes, the next group fills them in), maybe with just a check so they can sit at home and watch the Home Shopping Channel.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[catmistake]

same thing happened with diabetes and insulin. Over 5 years ago, a Toronto lab found the cure for both types of diabetes... (basically, a shock to the pancreas resets it similarly to the way a shock to the heart resets the heart). But the treatment is so simple and inexpensive, and it is a cure, so no further maintenance required. Big Pharm will never allow governments to approve the treatment because the sale of insulin would be reduced to a trickle.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

The end result is that the US as a country can either push the unemployed to the street or the government can support them. Maybe with make-work jobs (one group digs holes, the next group fills them in), maybe with just a check so they can sit at home and watch the Home Shopping Channel.

War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself.

Whence we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: "Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed;" and we must assent to a maxim which will make the hair of protectionists stand on end—To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labour; or, more briefly, "destruction is not profit."

What will you say, Moniteur Industriel—what will you say, disciples of good M. F. Chamans, who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild?

I adhere as strongly as I can to such principles. In practice, I like to create a surplus of wealth such that the market looks for a way to waste it. Servants, pool boys, gardeners, the like ... to pay people to dig holes and fill them in again, we must tax the people or print money. In the case of printing money, inflation occurs; this is similar to taxation, as we are denying people wealth (by devaluing their dollars rather than taking them away).

Therefor I say that a society which can support useless government supplied jobs has a surplus of wealth; and a society in which the middle class does not have the money to hire maids, mechanics, landscapers, and the like to tend their yards and clean their houses can no more afford to have their money wrested from their hands or devalued to pay for holes to be dug and filled at no value to themselves. At least wasting my money paying some poor bastard to mow my lawn gets me a mowed lawn and an hour that I can do something else instead of mow my own lawn; paying that money in taxes for someone to dig and fill a hole gets me nothing but less money.

I also point out that, upon suddenly finding itself wealthy, a society becomes a hoarding society. It takes time before people go, "Damn I have too much money... I should spend this money. I'm going to pay this guy to mow my lawn, because screw this." I also point out that businesses will find a way to take advantage of excess money, both to sell products of more marginal value to consumers (why do I want to buy a pool noodle? Oh, because I had money for a pool, and still have money now after buying a pool...) and to produce jobs in support of ventures to find other markets to extract the wealth from society and bring it to themselves.

Effectively, human greed is generating economic activity in this model. I want government to watch, and to impede businesses where they become abusive and powerful (by incentive and regulation, not by heavy taxation), as well as to bait consumers (by tax credits and incentives, mainly; less by taxes i.e. cigarette tax) into more economic behaviors. A very light touch is key, but bring both the carrot and the stick for use against both businesses and consumers as needed; sometimes a little bait is needed, and sometimes you need to hand out a beating.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

"big pharma" is ok, save your mod points for downrating anything that then goes on to say something along the lines of "...will suppress it"

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[jafac]

The eradication of polio did not mean the end of the March of Dimes.

Note the irony: Salk gave away the discovery of his vaccine for FREE (ie. what we today, call "Open Source" or maybe "Creative Commons")

  - in today's patent environment, he would have been funded by a consortium of pharmaceutical companies, and they would have patented it; with or without his approval. Actual fielding of the vaccine would have probably been left up to an accountant after a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the vaccine, or ongoing treatments for polio sufferers yielded better profits for the company.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[BitZtream]

These are exactly the types of treatments I was expecting soon after the genome was mapped.

The genome hasn't really been 'mapped' any more than we've mapped the asteroid belt.

Sure, we've learned a lot about the structure, but how it works and how to use it for something useful, not so much.

It'll be mapped when you can tell me what ever base pair does and what else it effects, we're not where near even thinking about getting to that point in the next 50 years.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[BitZtream]

not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure.

Selling chemo and radiological drugs, and all the drugs given to patients to deal side effects of the chemo and radiation over the course of several years is FAR FAR more profitable than a cure would be, they simply can't charge enough for a cure without being clearly money grabbing douche bags.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[BitZtream]

They can find it tomorrow and it won't change anything ... because they too make more money TREATING CANCER than they EVER COULD from a cure.

They don't want to find it either, it means the same loss of profit for everyone.

Do you guys have no clue what a cartel is?

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[BitZtream]

Because they realize they can make almost as much money by curing it

Your thought pattern failed right here. They make MILLIONS AND MILLIONS treating a SINGLE cancer patient over the course of several years. In order for them to charge enough for the cure to make up for the lack of profits from treating it, they would have to charge so much money that it would be clear as day that they were not just ripping you off, but bending you over and driving a forklift up your ass without even a little lube.

No one else is going to do it because only a few companies CAN do all the FDA related bits really. None of those companies want to end their revenue stream, they aren't stupid.

India on the other hand, getting their hands on the technics used, would be happy to tell the drug companies to go fuck themselves and produce the cure themselves at $1 pill for their own people. Not just India (they've been known to do it however), plenty of other countries where greed isn't the only ruling factor in the government.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

You're off by an order of magnitude or two there.

A QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year) is basically one good year of life. The current price* for adding one QALY is up to about $100,000.

Allowing a 20yo kid afflicted by terminal cancer to live a normal life is worth $6 million or so.

*This is the level our government will fund drugs at.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[jeff4747]

And the drug companies that don't have a highly-profitable cancer treating drug are gonna sit on the highly profitable cure instead of making a gigantic fortune on it.

Given the massive financial collapse we've had recently, clearly it's people like you running businesses these days.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[c6gunner]

They make MILLIONS AND MILLIONS treating a SINGLE cancer patient over the course of several years.

Your thought pattern failed right here. Even the most expensive drugs in existence might go for $120,000 a year. For your "several years", that would be $360,000 to $720,000 tops. In what universe does less than a million equal "MILLIONS AND MILLIONS"?

Again, that's the most expensive drugs on the market, taken every day for 3-6 years (ridiculous). In reality, the costs are much lower. For example, total treatment costs for the average Lung Cancer patient in the first year run around $40,000, only a small fraction of which is the cost of drugs. Even if we assume that 25% of that is the cost of drugs (it's not) we're left with $10k per year, at which speed your EEEEVIL Big Pharma would have to keep treating the patient for 100 years before they sold $1 million worth of medicine (that's total product sold; if they had a really high profit margin they might see $300k profit).

You know why you're getting all confused? Because you see things in the newspaper like "Anti-Cancer drug Zevalin costs $24,000 A DOSE!!!" and you think "oh, wow, those bastards are just rolling in the dough!". You don't stop long enough to do a bit of research, and figure out that Zevalin is a SINGLE TREATMENT DRUG. It's only be given once. And, by the way, how exactly does that stack up against your claim that "they don't want to endanger their revenue stream", huh? Those evil bastards are so stupid, they can't even figure out how to be evil properly! Maybe you should go teach them.

In other words, you're full of shit. So it doesn't surprise me that you finish your rant off by talking about "greed". Ignoramuses are always going on and on about greed, primarily because they can't do math (liberal arts majors) and they don't understand economics. But I hope you've been able to learn something here today, and I hope you'll do a bit more research and stop spreading numbers that you've pulled out of your ass.

You take care now.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[ryzynforce]

Of course not. That just goes to prove that real advances and cures only come about when there is a substantial amount of money to be made. Curing cancer is a waste of time to these companies. The logic (oversimplified of course), sounds a lot like this:

"What?! someone's found a way to cure cancer?!"

"Yup."

"Can we make money on this?"

"Well we could for a few years... Then it goes the way of the common cold"

"Clearly for the good of the people... We should make sure that this gets NO FRIGGIN FUNDING AT ALL!"

"Well I guess we could do the ol' -- 'Reefer Madness' game on this... It seemed to work last time"

"OK... Sounds good! But make sure we get some really good marketing on this one!"

Yeah that sounds about right... Kind of hard to argue against that logic when there is no attempt to really hide the facts.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[zzyzyx]

The end of cancer research funding would utterly destroy fundamental research in molecular biology and biochemistry.

I highly doubt it. The amount of funding would remain the same but would be redirected to other medical problems, like AIDS, or Alzheimer's.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Samantha Wright]

Probably true, but those are both diseases that are somewhat harder to pork-barrel fundamental research under.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[mr_mischief]

Thankfully there's no injection of HIV. The summary was wrong. TFA says that a modified, harmless HIV was used to genetically engineer blood cells. The blood cells were what was injected. Also, what made the HIV harmless was that it only causes what the genetic engineers want to be transcribed. It doesn't replicate itself at all.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[makomk]

Of course, given that Osama bin Laden was killed partly due to him allowing CIA spies posing as vaccination workers into his house, blocking vaccinations is at least somewhat rational from a political perspective now if it wasn't already.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[caywen]

The T cells they engineered targeted CD19, which exists on leukemia cancer cells. Apparently, they also engineered versions that would work against lung, pancreatic, and brain cancers. Cancer may be a type of disease, but keep in mind that this therapy is a type of treatment.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't handle the internet like adults maybe we should take it away from you.
Grow the @!$%# up

Something to keep in mind when you're wondering why a comment or post looks like it was written by a child... it very well may have been. And you might have to wait a decade before the person does grow up.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[CommieLib]

This whole line of argumentation is silly. It's not like you can segment off projects in advance and say "this will lead to a cure, but this will only lead to a treatment". Don't you think every project starts out hoping that it will be a "cure"? How do you think we got all of our treatments? Don't you think that chemo and radiation therapies were first started thinking that they would cure cancer? Get over yourself (not you, parent poster).

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

politicians are usually middle aged, watch how interested they become in Alzheimer's when cancer fatalities drop until they realise that it(or other protein clumping dementias) will be how most of them die!

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Rakarra]

They can find it tomorrow and it won't change anything ... because they too make more money TREATING CANCER than they EVER COULD from a cure.

They don't want to find it either, it means the same loss of profit for everyone.

Do you guys have no clue what a cartel is?

The problem with these conspiracy theories is that they would require EVERYONE involved to maintain perfect silence, and that never happens in large organizations.

The instant that some source leaked proof to the media that Drugco had a cure for cancer that they sat on because it was more profitable to keep cancer active in the population, every executive would have his ass hauled in front of a very irate Congress immediately.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, corporations are motivated purely by profit margins, not a sense of compassion towards employees or their families, public health, or public utility. If for a single second you believe anything to the contrary, you will never cease to be disappointed. Let's suppose, hypothetically, that a researcher at BigPharmaCo discovers that baking soda is the cure for cancer. You can rest assured that that information would never see the light of day. They have no incentive nor any obligation to provide it. Capitalism is a double-edged sword.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[makomk]

5FU is out of patent. The cash cows are newer patented cancer drugs. Many of them aren't even that effective (which is why the NHS here in the UK tries to refuse to pay for them, usually with little success due to media pressure) but so long as they can convince people the drugs might extend their lives by a few months...

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[badkarmadayaccount]

Cut down working hours, increase minimum wage, increase resource efficiency via government pressure, and open up the borders. Done.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

Disastrous. Price-wage push occurs on a normal increase in minimum wage; reducing work hours and increasing wage will result in flat out shrinking businesses or an incredible price inflation. How do you imagine businesses running on 3% operating profits are going to handle suddenly doubling their operating costs?

Stupid liberals are even nuttier than stupid Republicans (trying to call themselves "Conservatives" bah, they're only less liberal and more authoritarian). On top of it, nobody in office understands shit about economics anymore.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Iamthecheese]

Efficient use of resources is in itself what's caused the "problem" we now face of there not being enough work to go around. Resources for products are now being widely extracted by machine. Products are now widely manufactured by machine. Only transportation and coordination still actually require human intervention and we're rapidly solving both of those difficulties.

On the service side it's not the middle class who have the extra money to spend. The middle class have severely repressed wages because machines are doing all the work. Since most service jobs are now in said classes of coordinating efforts of machines they have no extra money to pay bus boys.

All production (real wealth) is now controlled by the top 1% of society who control the people who control the machines who actually produce things. You could point at third world countries where people still produce a lot but that argument's usefulness diminishes every year the Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian economies mechanize.

Without intervention the only way today's capitalist society will find itself wealthy is in the form of much more wealth all at the top.

That leaves the middle class without busboys and the lower class unemployed entirely.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

Efficient use of resources is in itself what's caused the "problem" we now face of there not being enough work to go around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

The real problem is too much risk aversion. The spiraling economy is causing even worse risk aversion. We need businesses willing to try out new ventures, but do you see that shit happening? Where is the next XM, or the next Amazon, or Microsoft? The ground-breakers that did something new, or at least pushed something small and niche into the consumer market thinking "I can totally sell this to the masses." Anyone who isn't Power Balance.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Iamthecheese]

The economy isn't spiraling. The rich are getting richer even faster. The reason they're not investing in hiring people is hiring people is no longer a good investment.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[badkarmadayaccount]

I didn't clarify - increase per hour wage proportionally - same work to money ratio for the business, just spread out across the population. Sure, the median income will go down, though today's inefficient consumer culture and traditional living beyond means would guarantee that the median income will still be more than enough to live comfortable, if you spend smart. Resource efficiency is a must, because the are the economic bottleneck.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

"The Rich are getting Richer" "Not hiring" ... you do realize that there's a difference between personal wealth and businesses, right? Everyone muddles these, then they want to tax "The Rich" and that means they want Microsoft and Apple and Exxon to pay all the bills--a horrible idea. As opposed to Warren Buffet and Donald Trump, people with private fortunes. Two different entities.

That ... is only a sobering statement. It has no bearing on the remainder of this post.

Goldman Sachs and other big-ass bankers, the auto industry, and so on are engaged in the industry of "Getting Lots of Money." The Auto industry not so much as a holdings--banks hold money--but Sachs and the Motrgage industry especially. Sachs causes economic collapse and draws money to itself, most recently by selling CDOs laced with toxic debt, as well as by getting exceptions for themselves and 14 others to bid on food and oil futures (this is where the price of oil and food go through the roof: too many speculators; oil is around $35/barrel, the $87 figure you see is the commodities version of the stock market, as solid goods are being played like stocks). Auto manufacturers rely on you wearing your car out and buying a brand new car.

These processes do things to the economy. Overall, the economy becomes more poor. There is less money--less WEALTH, monetary wealth--to go around. Sure, more dollars... more worthless dollars. But you know what? Sachs has 800 billion more worthless dollars, worth 600 billion in last-decade's dollars. The economy has less wealth, dollars are worth less--but most of the remainder went to Goldman Sachs, therefor they came out richer even though everyone else AND the whole god damn system INCLUDING them came out poorer. There is less, but they have more of what's left.

The same goes for food speculation. The same goes for driving an expensive (i.e. $15000) car and putting more miles on it when you could drive a cheap motorcycle ($4000) or a scooter ($1000) or ride a bicycle with a much lower operating cost--in part to its lower purchase price, in smaller part due to maintenance and/or fuel use. If you biked 1/3 of your driving (say... because it's all stuff that's about 3-5 miles away... maybe you eliminated your work commute), the car company would get less money--you'd buy a new car every 10 or 15 years instead of every 6-8 years--but you would have more money, you could pad your emergency fund, climb out of debt, buy more crap... more resources to spend on everything else. With that spending, you buy things of value to you--and as you still have efficient transportation that's of no inconvenience to you, you're adding value to your life without destroying other value. That means wealth.

The rich are getting rich, big businesses are drawing in more revenue, and the economy is losing wealth because of it. Investors are becoming risk-averse, so they won't invest money into small businesses and ventures that are risky because they may lose it. Small businesses are more risky because fewer people have jobs and there is less money at the bottom, so fewer people will buy into novelty. This means that, yes, the Investment Bankers drive this country... and THEY are becoming risk averse, protecting their monetary wealth, and squeezing down wealth out of the country further because the economy is already sick and novelty is too risky to invest in.

Spiraling economy. The economy is supposed to encourage the fabulously wealthy to become like Sir Richard Branson (of Virgin Group), edging their way into all sorts of new and interesting ventures on a bet they won't lose money in the long run. It's failing that, and thus there are no new ventures popping up to supply new jobs. Take it out from there. The fabulously wealthy individuals are afraid their businesses will collapse and their salaries will be endangered if they invest in too much stuff, so they aren't investing in new businesses, and thus aren't creating jobs.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

You seem to be aiming but still missing. The solutions are non-trivial, and nothing insanely simple works. Nothing actually is correct, nor will you ever find a quick fix. You're thinking, though ... think more. Find the holes, break your own models.

I pit everything against everything else to strike balance. Human greed is the biggest motivator, and that's ... actually probably the luckiest break we have. It's very easy to control, because it's the only thing you need to bait. Money leads to power, confidence, and sex for most people, and is therefor extremely salient.

I'm very economics focused, but I spend a LOT of time thinking about this stuff. I solve social problems in similar ways. My views on gun control, for example, are that we must require permits for CCW or OCW, requiring licensing by taking a battery of classes--firearms self defense, home defense, firearms maintenance, and even marksmanship (I don't want stray bullets flying around). If you can use it and you're not a convicted felon, you can have it; if you're a hick trying to put a gun under your pillow in case someone breaks into your house ... I dislike this. I feel that's a balanced way to handle things.

It goes further than that, though. On one hand, you have the looming problem that everyone might have a gun; that anyone who legally carries a firearm damn well knows how to use it properly; and that firearms attract attention, and people will come find you if you shoot someone. On the other, I don't believe that guns are the final solution to everything, and I don't believe in giving everyone a gun and assuming we're now balanced. Women carry pepper spray to defend themselves and I consider them to have absolutely no protection; I feel the same way about a gun, for the most part.

So I am a proponent of martial arts training. For everyone. In school. Start off with basic stuff to learn to break holds (tae kwan do), move into soft arts (Judo, Aikido). In middle school we should start giving students options, to take a weapon--including fists (mandate a hard art like Muay Thai must be taken in that case). You can play with a few--bokken, jo, bo, nunchaku, three sectioned staff--and decide what you like; there will be a primary focus.

So, after all this, what do we have?

Well, in the current society, what I see is people who are taught that "violence is bad." They are afraid of everything. They "don't want to get involved" in anything. They'll ignore people getting raped or beaten to death, just keep their distance, often not even call the police. The bystander effect is disgusting. At the same time, you have a few people playing the role of overgrown school yard bullies--everyone is weak, threaten them and they will give you everything. Rape and mugging is an easy career; the police are ineffective at stopping a crime in progress, and can only find and arrest people they can actually identify, locate, and catch.

With what I've described, I change the game a little. Martial arts training serves to give people both confidence and fear. You wouldn't attack someone if 6 other people in the room were ready to kick your ass for it. For that matter, when it's one on one, maybe you can win this fight... bleeding, bruised, possibly with a broken arm. How do you think rape goes when the rapist gets his arm broken, but still "wins"? Less attractive prospect? And of course, when you see something you feel is wrong... you also don't feel defenseless; more people would be ready to step in where they're needed.

Yeah, it's still a violent world ... and you need social constraints--society needs its moral compass. You need to keep this society from degrading into mob rule and thug society, which is easier than you think (civil society is a natural progression because it's more secure than a collection of gangs and thugs). But I feel this is a -less- violent world and--more importantly--a less unfortuna

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you possibly work for a drug company?

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[badkarmadayaccount]

A little tweak to your marshal art edu system - all students are put on intensive counseling so they are able to use their skills - my ego is way to crushed (thanks dad) to be able to react in any way in a violent situation - I'm probably not the only one.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

Can't make anything perfect you know. Ideally, people around you would be virtuous enough to come to your aid if you can't protect yourself; in reality we know this isn't going to happen, so we try to raise the individual likelihood (to a still unfortunately low level) and broaden the scope (i.e. EVERYONE) to load the dice. 'cause that's how I roll.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[badkarmadayaccount]

My point was that many students would have such a need - todays culture makes for sucky parents.

Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials

[bluefoxlucid]

Yes, of course. Too much entitlement, too much nanny state, too much incapable of accepting the risk of death of 0.1% of children and so instating policy that ensures the death of 0.5% in teenage years and leaves 50% or more completely unprepared for life.

Demolition Man

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, you have to send a maniac to catch a maniac. Or AIDs to catch cancer.
-www.awkwardengineer.com

Re:Proof of God

[Anonymous Coward]

sooooo, God wants us to have gay sex to cure cancer?

Re:Proof of God

[Issarlk]

I'm sorry but such a level of irony - treating cancer with HIV - is the proof that God is a woman and named Eris.
Nowhere in the Bible did I see a lot of "Ahah, just kidding" coming from the christian God.

Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[kvvbassboy]

And for one of them, it only removed 70% of the cancerous tissues. This is hardly a significant number to confirm the efficacy of the treatment. Also from TFA:

"Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration."

Both the guesses as BS, considering the impact that this treatment could result in. I get the feeling that the article is hiding certain aspects of the treatment that may put it in a negative light.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Baloroth]

The funding would have to be allocated before any trials actually took place. In other words, the scientists go to the foundation, say "we have this idea which we think might work but is completely untried, will you give us money", and hope they are interested. So, the funders would have no idea if the treatment has any chance of success prior to funding it. Lots of potentially good research goes untried because no one is willing/able to fund it.

In short, the fact it wasn't able to get good funding tells us absolutely nothing about how well it actually works, only how well some people in positions of power, who may or may not even be scientists (in the case of pharma companies are more likely bean counters), thought it might work. And 2 out of 3, with 70% remission on the 3rd is quite impressive. Especially when one of them was weeks from dying.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[MozeeToby]

70% removal of cancerous tissues from a terminal patient with no significant side effects (they mention flu like symptoms but I assure you compared to chemo or radiation that isn't even worth mentioning).

Similar treatments have been ineffective. The modifications this team made to the treatment had the potential to be high risk to the patient and had never been attempted before. Trying to modify white blood cells to reproduce much more rapidly than is natural, but not so rapidly as to cause harm to the patient, is a delicate balancing act. One has to wonder how they accomplished it so well on their first try.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[h4rr4r]

Probably Zombie-ism.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Neville, is that you?

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[medv4380]

It's not hiding anything. The negative light that you are looking for is they used a modified version of HIV. Who in their right mind would want to fund anything that is about using HIV in anything other then eradication of it. Just imagine how the proposal would read.

"We want to take out white blood cells from a patent. Inject this Modified HIV into those cells. Then put them back into the patient and they should kill Cancer cells and not give the patient AIDS"

That alone shouldn't just get funding rejected but also trigger an ethics investigation.

And for one of them, it only removed 70% of the cancerous tissues. This is hardly a significant number to confirm the efficacy of the treatment.

You're wrong. It's that there were only 3 test subjects due to the limited amount of funding they were able to get. What they did proved that they were able to modify the Immune system to kill cancer, and that alone is enough to justify the news coverage and additional funding.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Better article:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232581.php

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

And for one of them, it only removed 70% of the cancerous tissues. This is hardly a significant number to confirm the efficacy of the treatment. Also from TFA:

"Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration."

Both the guesses as BS, considering the impact that this treatment could result in. I get the feeling that the article is hiding certain aspects of the treatment that may put it in a negative light.

If you read the article, it states that the initial idea didn't get funding, but after the initial trials that money is going to come pouring in from all types of sources.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

They were declined before the experiments were performed on the test subjects. If you clicked on the link that was attached to the article you could read the original story that stated this information. Now that the tests have proven very positive they should receive funding from all over.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[pz]

Although there are specific programs for what is called high-risk high-impact research, the bulk of the funding that gets doled out by the NIH (the umbrella organization that includes the National Cancer Institute) is for relatively conservative, somewhat plodding research. In some cases the burden of certainty is so high that the researcher must have essentially already done what they are proposing in a grant application. I'm speaking having successfully competed for both high-risk/high-impact and also traditional research grants from the NIH. If this work had been proposed under a normal R01 mechanism (where the vast majority of the funds are granted) it would not be surprising if the application had not been considered at all, as it could have been viewed as too risky.

It is also entirely possible that their application was not funded by the NCI because the NIH grant evaluation process is rife with random influences and noise in the decision making process despite their best efforts. When the pay lines are down in the single digits (meaning less than 10% of applications get funding) it is extremely difficult to avoid this effect.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[schwnj]

Funding agencies are very concerned with making sure that whatever experiment you propose will work. As a research professor, I have to spend a ridiculous amount of effort in a grant application convincing the agency that my research will produce the expected results. In this case, I 100% buy into the fact that the funding agencies didn't want to pay for such a risky study. Another article I read about this said that the researchers now have money being thrown at them from many different agencies (including NIH/NCI), so I'm guessing the results are strong enough to warrant a much bigger trial.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Idarubicin]

70% removal of cancerous tissues from a terminal patient with no significant side effects (they mention flu like symptoms but I assure you compared to chemo or radiation that isn't even worth mentioning).

Speaking generally about cancer therapies, 70% reduction in tumor burden is interesting, but almost totally irrelevant from the standpoint of 'cure'. If you successfully kill off 70% of malignant cells, and the remaining cells divide once per week (not uncommon in malignant tumors), then you'll be back to your original tumor burden in less than two weeks--and often, the remaining cells will be resistant to the original therapy.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how the decision to decline to spend money research something is due to a lack of research. One more reason that the US healthcare system is broken. Companies will only research medicines if they can make a profit off of them, regardless of whether or not it actually helps people.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's not as tight a balancing act as everyone thought?

If the modified white cells are just like their natural counterparts but more prolific and they eat cancer, than maybe it doesn't actually mater so much if you have more of them than you're supposed to.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[bluefoxlucid]

The modifications this team made to the treatment had the potential to be high risk to the patient

... so?

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Pulzar]

70% removal of cancerous tissues from a terminal patient with no significant side effects

Other articles on this test indicate severe side-effects that I, admittedly, don't fully understand. They said that the B cells stop being produced almost altogether in the body, causing a severe chronic toxicity in the body.

Some articles have comments from the researchers saying something along the lines of "it's only been a year, let's see what their lives are in two or five years".

The linked article is definitely a little too skewed on the side of optimism.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Saysys]

http://www.kvia.com/news/28836239/detail.html
"A year after the therapy, two of the patients had complete remission of leukemia and one had a partial response to the therapy."


looks like 2 out of 3 people are in full remission... doesn't sound like being only 70% of cancerous tissues removed to me.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Rich0]

Think of it this way:

I'd like to test whether taping copper pennies to ones feet can cure cancer. I'd like to have a million dollars to do controlled randomized drug trials. If successful I could revolutionize the practice of medicine for literally a cost of pennies.

Do you think I'm likely to get funded, even though the treatment is clearly "high impact?" There are all kinds of ideas out there like this one, and none have worked yet. This one might or might not actually pan out, though it clearly would be wonderful if it did.

I don't think they were snubbed - they just weren't lucky. Stab-in-the-dark research doesn't tend to get a lot of funding, except perhaps in start-ups.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[PJ6]

No, too risky as an excuse sounds about right for investors in an uncertain climate. This is the whole reason for publicly-funded research. Too risky? Duh, yeah we need to go there. Risky, "novel" territory is where all the breakthroughs come from. DARPA understands this. But tell that to people who want to tear down public funding for everything.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as a lottery where the average return is huge but many tickets are duds (unlike a real lottery where many tickets will give you a little money but the average return is negative). Much research goes nowhere, but sometimes you get a huge return. Suppose Adam looks at a lottery ticket and choose not to buy it. Then Bob does choose to buy it, and he wins a billion dollars from a 100$ investment. Now it comes down to speculating about why Adam didn't buy the ticket. Your argument amounts to saying: "Adam turned down a billion dollars, so there must be something wrong with that ticket. I conclude that the ticket is cursed." A more reasonable conclusion is that Adam had no way to know that it was a winning ticket and that's why he turned it down.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if someone came to you with an incendiary device they claimed would protect your computer from a fall at heights up to 30,000 feet by detonating at the last second before impact. Would you give them money and let them borrow your computer? What if (and as I gathered from the article) they told you someone had tried this before, failed for the most part, and only succeeded at heights of 3 feet? What then?

There is so much at stake for a large company. Sure, they may have hit big on a big risk, but, big as they are, they can't afford the risk. Look how crazy everyone on /. went on the comments because the line referenced injecting someone with AIDS. Extrapolate that to the less tech/science-savvy general public and what do you get? And that's not even mentioning the red-tape and insurance required for human trials.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[BitZtream]

And theres the problem.

Killing cancer and AIDS is simple as shit. Unfortunately, drinking bleach also tends to kill the host. Just because they figured out a way to kill it, doesn't mean its a viable treatment ... BUT ... it is a step in the right direction.

Re:Experiments performed only on 3 test subjects

[BitZtream]

Well, part of the problem is that you completely fail to understand what they did.

The people reading the grant proposals due understand that they aren't ACTUALLY using in the host, and the HIV cells can't replicate.

As far as the ethics violation, again, you don't have any understanding at all of what they are doing, otherwise you'd know what it was no issue.

You simply see HIV and think OMFG THEY ARE GIVING THEM AIDS! When reality is nothing of the sort.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[X0563511]

That post was so bad it gave me cancer!

Though maybe the cancer really came from that neck crick I got from smashing my head into my desk...

Anyone else think of I Am Legend?

[Anonymous Coward]

specifically Will Smith's version where they used a modified virus to cure cancer, which turned everyone into zombie/vamp whatevers..

MOD THE PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who both read and comprehended the article. If I mod points I would totally mod your comment up.

There was an old lady...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
perhaps she'll die.

More funding required?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lemme guess, they need more funding to do more research and tests? Three successful subjects a cure does not make!

Herpes Next!

[MoldySpore]

Herpes, the new arch nemesis of Heart Disease?

And then they turn into vampires

[Anonymous Coward]

Read I am Legend. It's true!

No problem

[gr8_phk]

To get rid of the injected HIV you just do a marrow transplant from one of the people who are immune. So it's only a 50% survival rate, what's the big deal ;-)

Joking aside, is the modified HIV virus live, replicating and infectious? I don't think unleashing live viruses that have no known cure is a good idea no mater how modified they are.

Re:No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understood it they used the virus to modify white blood cells in a laboratory, then injected the white blood cells back into the patient (not the virus). The HIV virus is pretty good at injecting genes into white blood cells so that's probably why they used that. But the virus is only

Re:No problem

[wed128]

I'm worried that the AC may have died while writing that...

Shame on the NCI and big pharma...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos to The Alliance For Cancer Gene Therapy for funding the limited trial.

False Summary and Title

[Edge00]

No where in the article was it reported that HIV was injected into a patient. They used the retroviral nature of HIV to insert genes into white blood cells in vitro and then injected these modified cells back into the patient.

This is Cold Fusion huge.

[MarkvW]

They jacked up the T-Cells to make leukemia go away. They destroyed tumors!

If there was ever a time to support government-funded science, this is the time. This technology should belong to the people. Not just a subset of the people protected by patent walls.

Re:This is Cold Fusion huge.

[Anonymous Coward]

It does "belong to the people" - there's nothing preventing you from manufacturing patented technology for personal use. Knock yourself out.

Re:This is Cold Fusion huge.

[Anonymous Coward]

For profit medicine must DIE.

Re:This is Cold Fusion huge.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a book called "Distress" by Greg Egan that you might love.

Re:This is Cold Fusion huge.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just supported these guys with a donation of 7 bitcoins.

I urge the rest of you to donate at least one bitcoin to the cure for cancer!

Re:This is Cold Fusion huge.

[BitZtream]

Wow, you no nothing about how this stuff works eh?

Most government funded research ends up patented and owned by a big company, NIH money gets this treatment almost exclusively.

As much as it SHOULD be, Government funded science does not mean public domain science. It doesn't belong to the people, the people just pay for it to become reality so the drug companies can make larger profits.

For reference, my wife is a doctor who's dealt with just this exact sort of thing at a Big Pharma company. The don't play by the same rules because they have bigger lobbiest than you and I have.

Re:This is Cold Fusion huge.

[MarkvW]

Thanks for your post. It was very informative. It was worth wading through the insulting language.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[the_humeister]

What do you expect from /. when troll headlines make it through the editors untouched? A much better headline would be "CLL, a type of leukemia, cured by modified HIV virus" but that's not sexy enough. This still doesn't help those unfortunate people with pancreatic adenocarcinoma or grade IV astrocytoma.

Zombies

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome the zombie apocalypse that will come from the mutation of treatment once it becomes main stream.

Re:Proof of God

[Anonymous Coward]

The story of abraham and issac shows us god tests our faith daily.

Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

Can we also address the CAUSES? We know certain things cause cancer. We also suspect a great many more but we have problems in getting the proof recognized which can only be described as "political and/or political reasons." We need to get over these reasons, determine the substances and then ban them from consumption by people.

I know... logical and to-the-point. It will never work because there is too much money being made in poisoning people all over the world with "whatever causes [malady]" and that happens all over the world, not just here in the U.S. Lead based paint, mercury, and a long list of other things...

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[i kan reed]

No, we can't, because cancer is caused by any mutagen. Including the sun. It's likliehood is increased by decreasing telomere length, so unless you have a means to prevent solar radiation or aging, there's always going to be at least some cancer.

"Determine these substances and ban them" is the dumbest idea ever. You are hereby prohibited from eating: Fish, grains, red meat, white meat, vegtables, and fruits. Those all have trivial ammounts of carceniogens(including bacteria and viruses). You shouldn't eat them. Take up bretharianism.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[geekoid]

It is not logical and to the point, and shows your complete ignorance on the subject.

Setting aside the many, many reasons why it's nonsense, Your answer would be like making all cars go 10 miles an hour in order to prevent car accident fatality's. The secondary issues from the would be mind boggling.

Yes, some substance should be banned, but thinking only man made substance cause cancer is myopic, at best.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[cHiphead]

From what I've noticed, just about EVERYTHING causes cancer.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[Lifyre]

You really shouldn't poke the Hippy. Next thing you know he'll be mounting a successful political campaign to ban dihydrogen monoxide.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[CommieLib]

There is one absolute way to prevent aging. But it's hardly better than cancer. Agreed with peer - don't poke the hippie.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

Bacteria and viruses are not all bad and some are absolutely vital to human existence. I think you are presuming I don't understand what I am talking about.

Exposure to the sun is not going to cause lung cancer. And people who feel at risk can and often do wear sunblock.

As for needless chemical additives in foods, many countries other than the US ban many of them and have enjoyed national reductions in maladies which typically result from their consumption.

"Banning poison" is not a dumb idea let alone not the dumbest. If you want to get at what's dumb, there is a list of associated "dumb ideas" on this topic and among them is presuming I mean "ban the sun" or other impractical ad absurdum notions. But let's test your response with some of my own "ad absurdum" shall we? Let's remove the bans on all manner of poisons which have been discovered to be bad and let business start using them again. Sound like a good idea?

The fact, is, banning poisons has worked and is working today. The problem we have lately is in getting research approved and recognized and solutions implemented. Those problems are invariably rooted in business/politics.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[LWATCDR]

Life causes cancer. Actually mutated genes cause cancer. Things that can cause mutated genes?
Oxygen. Look up free radicals.
Sunlight.
Radiation. From the sun, from rocks, from deep space.
even Viruses. In other words it is all natural.
The thing is that those things also cause evolution. Life causes cancer. There was cancer long before the industrial revolution. The longer you live the better then chance you will get cancer. If fact they say every man if he lives long enough will get prostate cancer.
We live longer we get more cancer. I am sure that there are some man made issues that contribute to cancer in some cases but over all it is just part of life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#History as you can see it has been with us for a very long time.
Oh and since both alcohol and tobacco are known to contribute just see what happens if you try and ban those.
 

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

Who said ANYTHING about automobile safety?

You are not addressing any perceived problems with what I said. Instead you are extracting some absurd larger message and then ridiculing that absurdity you created yourself. There are words for it, but I'll just use my own for now.

Stick with what I have actually said and then show me where I am wrong. History says there is nothing new about my ideas and many substances have been banned in the past for the very reason I indicated -- they were proven to be unsafe and the cause of health problems. Or perhaps you think DDT should be returned to the store shelves?

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

That would be an absurd exaggeration and an inaccurate conclusion. There are LOTS of things we use today that have impacts on our health, but certainly not everything and certain amounts can, are and should be considered safe until proven otherwise. Simply saying "everything causes cancer" and then walking away makes you about as smart as a Christian who explains everything with "god did it."

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[TheRaven64]

I agree. The unlicensed fusion reactor that someone is operating - for half the day! - within sight of my house must be shut down immediately. It's already given cancer to millions of people, and that number is going to keep increasing until something is done!

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[hedwards]

I got chewed out for saying this a while back, but it bears repeating. Any exposure to a carcinogen no matter how small the amount could conceivably cause a cell to get mutated in a way that leads to cancer. It's unlikely that you're going to end up like that with only a few molecules of exposure, but it definitely is possible for one cosmic ray to happen to hit the right spot in a cell to do that.

That being said, it is worth looking to elimintate substantial risks, but you're not going to prevent all cases of cancer with any technology that we've got. Probably the only way would be to have something go into the individuals cells and elongate the telomeres and manually repair the DNA. Which is definitely not going to happen in the near future, if it ever does.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

... and yet, there are additional things that can result in a higher likelihood of getting cancer. Identifying and proving those things, especially those which are of high commercial value, is pretty tough. But since you seem to feel everything has an equal weight in contributing to cancer, let's just do an experiment by injecting you with some of the substances which are known to result in cancer. Would you care to volunteer for such an experiment?

Let's just conclude that I highly doubt you would volunteer for something like that. Any why not? Because you know some things are more risky than others. And what I am driving at is giving more to researching and identifying the things that are of higher risk... and then banning them. And yes, I would be in favor of banning tobacco but would instead accept people who smoke being excluded from any healthcare programs.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

The body has ways of fighting cancer on its own in certain amounts. And you rightly point out that different things offer different levels of risk as it is impossible, even in the most sterile of conditions, to remove 100% the possibility of cancerous mutations. And people for more than 100 years agree with the notion that it is rational to look into, identify and control substances which offer more risk than should be allowed.

On the other hand, we see various industries fighting and "contributing" for the right to pollute and to poison.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well, if you ask the state of California, just about everything that ever existed is known to potentially cause cancer. So, I guess we should just get rid of everything that exists? At least in California?

P.S. For those who don't get this joke, go look up Prop 65.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[squizzar]

In some areas the eradication of DDT lead to increased harm because it's really good at killing off mosquitoes. Things are rarely black and white. As an example you mention lung cancer in another post. Excepting smoking the most likely cause I presume is air pollution. So should we remove all sources of air pollution that may cause lung cancer? Turn off all our fossil-fuelled power plants, industry and scrap our cars?

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[ColdWetDog]

Who said ANYTHING about automobile safety?

This is Slashdot. In fact, I'm rather surprised the argument managed to go as far as it did before wandering into a car analogy.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[ColdWetDog]

I agree. The unlicensed fusion reactor that someone is operating - for half the day! - within sight of my house must be shut down immediately. It's already given cancer to millions of people, and that number is going to keep increasing until something is done!

I had imagined that you folks in the UK thought the sun was mostly a fairy tale, useful for scaring kids and the like but not to be taken seriously.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[Anonymous Coward]

For most substances, the dose makes the poison. I.e., many substances are harmless or even beneficial (think medicines) in small doses but toxic in large doses. Even water is toxic if you drink too much at once. Ban poisons, really?

And beware of uninteded consequences. Consider the ban on DDT and the rise of malaria. (And, as above, antimalarial drugs are "poison".)

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[LWATCDR]

No but then I don't smoke or drink.
But how many millions of people do every day. They are already do. I notice you say would would ban tobacco but didn't touch the idea of banning alcohol. http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/healthissues/1109728149.html
Alcohol does increase your risk for cancer? Do you drink? If so then you are doing that experiment on yourself that you state is oh so foolish. Maybe you think that risk is worth the benefits? Humm........
Yes It is good that we restrict things like benzene which is a known cancer causing chemical. Outright banning it? There a lot of very dangerous chemicals that are very useful. Before it was known how dangerous benzene was you could buy it everywhere. It was a common and frankly very good fuel additive if you over look that whole causing cancer thing. Racing aircraft would often use large amounts of it. It is still used and will be for a long time because it is useful. You can no longer buy it at the local hardware store and they don't put it in aftershave anymore which are both good things. Yes there is a lot of stuff can kill you if you don't use it correctly you ban castor plants because they can kill you? I am all for safety but things are as far from a simple "big corps are greedy and don't care if you die of cancer".

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[TheRaven64]

We have sun here, it's just that there are quite a few days of the year when you can be outside for an hour and end up both sunburned and drenched.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[i kan reed]

DDT is not banned in North Africa where malaria is a serious problem. The only impact the US ban includes(and I've researched this before because someone brought up the same stupid point in some unrelated discussion) is that the US state department will not provide direct funds for the purchase of DDT. Regardless, the DDT resistance rates in mosquito populations is much higher than you think.

People who are actually concerned with diminishing malaria don't consider DDT a viable option(at least deployed en masse). Take a look at the efforts by the Gates foundation to deal with the issue.

While it is important to be aware of the unintended consequences of legislation, your example is a poor one.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

Re: Benzene -- Yes, banning it for consumption by humans, animals and things in our food supply. That was my original statement. "...and then ban them from consumption by people." Benzene does not belong in food and it should be controlled as a dangerous substance to prevent it from getting into the food (or water) supplies. How is that not common sense?

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[jeff4747]

We know what causes cancer. Life causes cancer. If nothing else kills you, you will eventually die of cancer.

As such, finding an environmental cause isn't a large benefit. If it turns out lead-based paint gives you cancer 20 years earlier, you will still get cancer 20 years later.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[LWATCDR]

I notice you didn't answer do you drink alcohol which is known to increase you risk of cancer. I take it that you would rather avoid that subject since it makes you uncomfortable.
It isn't banned because our detection abilities are too good. Some you can find benzene in coal ash, wood, and tobacco and some liquors at very low levels "probably toasted oak barrels. It is dangerous stuff which is why the EPA sets the level of it on water at 5ppb. Yes on part for billion. They do have a goal set at zero. So in effect it is banned but not set at zero.

Yes I am all for setting levels and sticking to them. I would not object to more testing and lower levels when needed but to ban them is impractical and impossible since some of them are more valuable than dangerous. Potassium is a good example it is natural needed for life but also radioactive. It will cause cancer but is in all our food. Again a blanket statement that one must ban all mutagens and carcinogens is impossible. Limiting exposure and curing and or treating the cancer that is just part of life is the only path open.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[BitZtream]

Uhm, pretty much everything DOES cause cancer in significant quantities over a long enough time.

You're only an idiot if you let that dictate your life or in your case if you make retarded jokes about religious people as if you're any less of an ignorant fuck than they are.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[BitZtream]

Oxygen causes cancer as well.

NOW what are you going to do, you just don't count it because its already part of the baseline.

EVERYTHING CAUSES CANCER, there are just certain things we ignore as part of the baseline, that doesn't make it any less of a cause, it just makes it something we ignore.

Re:Okay, a cure is good

[erroneus]

Actually, I'm not against banning alcohol, but the rest of the world is and we know how that would end up. That said, alcohol is a "controlled substance" already which is almost good enough... almost. I would still be very in favor of excluding people from healthcare systems for alcohol related disease just the same as I would for tobacco related disease... or drug abuse related disease for that matter.

We like to pretend in our adult society we are responsible for our actions and yet at every turn we refuse to hold people to account for their own bodies and their own actions. Obesity is mostly preventable and yet it goes on to limit the health of a vast majority in the U.S. and is connected to a huge portion of the healthcare industry profits. Tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are likewise "voluntary" by their very nature and if something bad happens to someone who consumes them, it is their fault as these things are widely known to cause the problems they experience.

I skipped alcohol simply because it seemed obvious to me and didn't warrant mention -- my position is the same for tobacco which was already stated previously... you responded to it.

What will the prescription look like?

[zbharucha]

Doctor: Well, you've got cancer. But don't worry, the cure is simple. Just sleep with the most disgusting whore you can find.

Re:What will the prescription look like?

[geekoid]

Me: What's your mom doing tonight?

Re:There are other treatments available!

[jellomizer]

I went threw Chiropractor a few times and they worked... But not for cancer. I did it for fixing a stiff neck, and some nerve issues.
Chiropractic treatments are not all homeopathic mumbo jumbo. But they are for things that happen to people that are not spine and nerve related. The same thing with Acupuncture, it treats some things but not as much as they claim.

  But for Cancer you can be paralyzed from the neck down and still get cancer or not have cancer. And a lot of the times kids actually are able to fight of cancer by themselves.

Nifty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Run-on sentences are bad. Sentence fragments are bad, too.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[jellomizer]

But that is what gets people to read it. They are all ready and have have protest signs made up, after reading the summer then they click on the link right before the big protest so they can have a source to give to the media so they don't seem like raving nuts.

Could make a good joke

[Quiet_Desperation]

And then the doctor said, "I have some good news and some bad news..."

and so on.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[glorybe]

I have a couple of guys in the building that seem to be attempting the cure by direct injection, nightly.

Actual Articles

[Anonymous Coward]

The first seems to be a link to a case study of one of the patients of the 3 person trial. The second seems to be a summary of the trials, I think. Only read the first one as most of the medical talk goes over my head.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849#t=articleTop
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/95/95ra73.abstract

The only major issue I saw from reading the first one was some kidney issues that may have been related to dehydration.

"I'm more closer"

[Uhhhh oh ya!]

Just because he survived doesn't give him the right to kill the English language.

Re:Proof of God

[h4rr4r]

No it shows that your kind would kill their own children for their imaginary friend.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[DrgnDancer]

Actually, if you read the article, it's pretty clear that while this particular experiment was leukemia based the theory should work on nearly any cancer. Basically, they used a modified HIV virus as a carrier to modify the DNA of some of the patients white blood cells (outside of the body). The modified cells are made to specifically target the cancer in question (and replicate, a lot). If trials continue to be successful, there is no reason to think that the "signature" of any cancer couldn't be substituted for the leukemia.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to mod this +5 troll, but I can't do it alone.

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/11p19/

when you think about it it is kinda funny...

The next step

[decep]

The next step is to cure the HIV with Ebola.

Really good summary

[TheCreeep]

Don't you just love how much stuff the guy got wrong in the summary?

It reminds me about a joke I hear once in a while:
In Soviet Russia, one day the radio announces "Today, the president won a car."
The next day, they say "Some facts may have been erroneous yesterday. It was not the president who won the car, but a teenager from Sankt Petersburg. And it wasn't a car but a bike. And he didn't win it, it was stolen from him."


So the summary basically said:
"Cancer cured by injecting patients with HIV".
Only it isn't normal HIV, it's modified, harmless HIV.
And it didn't actually cure cancer, but 70% of the tissue.
And it wasn't injected in the patients, but into some of their blood cells.

Re:Really good summary

[magusxxx]

And Billy has more hope he'll get to go to one more ball game with his father...Priceless.

Re:Really good summary

[Samantha Wright]

You seem like the sort of person who might appreciate the explanation for how HIV was actually involved, so have some superfluous, unsolicited education.

There are two major kinds of molecules inside of cells that have functional value: enzymes and nucleic acids (including DNA). Enzymes are little machines that can perform almost any task if they're built properly, and nucleic acids contain blueprints for building enzymes (and other molecules.) Viruses like HIV work by injecting new blueprints into the cell, and tricking the cell into building the enzymes that those nucleic acids describe. Usually, this payload just consists of "make more copies of the virus", and the cell is forced to run those instructions until it explodes or dies due to poor self-maintenance.

Viruses have been used in biology for a long time. At first, before we could read DNA directly, we used dysfunctional viruses to copy random bacterial genes in a shotgun approach to try and find out which genes were next to each other. Later, when we had more control over viruses, we started removing the nucleic acids from them completely, and loading them up with new blueprints. It's very hard to get DNA into mature animal cells; they've evolved extensively with the explicit aim of preventing it. Viruses are kind of like network worms, in that respect: they find a means of breaking into the cell, exploit it, and then make the cell run a program to spread. But a single viral particle can only infect one cell, once. After the blueprints have been ejected from it, it's an empty husk.

In genetic engineering, though, we remove all of the material required for duplication. The cell is never told to produce new copies of the virus, because the payload never contained any instructions to do so—only some other blueprints cooked up by the researchers.

In this case, HIV was chosen simply because it's well-studied and very effective at breaking into immune system cells. At no point were the patients ever in danger, and under no circumstances could the virus ever have reproduced, because, in this case, it was just a container for their gene construct.

Re:Proof of God

[DrgnDancer]

One could, with a bit of twisting and turning, make an argument that such a thing might be evidence for *a* benevolent God; but I fail to see how it could be evidence for your particular belief system. Nearly every religion on Earth postulates the existence of a benevolent God, how is this evidence that your particular theory is correct rather than one of the others?

Just like in that episode of Forever Night?

[Theovon]

Some vampires were getting sick, and the cure was to infect them with HIV.

(Of course, I realize that the summary here is crap, but still, life can parallel fiction.)

Cure vs human nature

[JustNiz]

>> Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research.

Its disgusting, but of course not.

The pharma companies only want to keep selling symptom suppressants instead of actual cures. They don't want to actually cure people of anything as that means diminishing their customer base.

The National Cancer Institute wont fund this because they, like any other government body, are full of bureaucratic leeches on fatcat salaries that put their own continued employment above anything else, even solving the problem they were tasked to address.

Re:Cure vs human nature

[bussdriver]

NO it is because the USA has gone all corporatist and National laboratories have been nearly ruined as a result. Government employees who want to keep their job or be able to get another job are hesitant to make too many waves or be a whistle blower -- not a whole lot of employers want to hire somebody who will tattle on them if something is wrong.

Have you talked with some old time national lab people? they have to beg for grants many of which are private related either directly or indirectly so besides the usual spin to convince people to fund something (like highlight some minor aspect as if it was the biggest part of the project) they have to cater to special interests as well. Gone are the days when the government handed them money with a general goal to solve and then give away the discoveries for the benefit of man.

Most government workers are not on fatcat salaries and I've met few "leeches" in my dealings; my uncle at the state dept, he saw a lot of leeches-- the higher up you go; but the lower levels were just fine. More loyal employees exist - understandably because its far easier to be patriotic or nationalistic about your government job than it is being a loyal drone for walmart or some private corp. Sounds like incompetent management was more accepted inside government. As for salaries-- that is BS; they set those for slightly lower than the industry jobs but with more stability and benefits and it was like this since FDR days until about Reagan (but started during Nixon.) Private jobs have gone DOWN so while they gradually suck more every year the government ones remained about the same and naturally lag behind (going up or down) but in addition, they still had union protection which made going down more difficult--- like other private industries which unions, they too were slower to decline. The result of all this wasn't to get private jobs back up to par but somehow they lowered "par" in the public's minds so that they resented union people who were hurt less and government people who were hurt less. Instead of realizing that they were GOING DOWN they thought the others were going up! What is amazing is just how gullible Americans are today.

I have a part time government job so you could say I'm biased; but then I could say you are ignorant (which is worse.) I resent my yearly 5+% paycuts -- it is not my fault you all fucked everything up; we are doing out jobs well. Hell, I put in tons of extra time-- they get a good deal; I'm helping society with my work -- its not some meaningless job like most the private sector is. But then the lack of competence of the voters probably should be reflected in government services. Bad management afterall...

Re:Cure vs human nature

[raddan]

That's NOT the way a pharmaceutical company works. See this post above. I'm a cynical person, but your attitude isn't cynical, it's paranoia.

Having recently written an NSF grant proposal (for computer science), and with the details fresh in mind, here's how it works: you write about your great idea. It goes to a committee. The committee is often composed from your peers. That committee is responsible for allocating a large, but finite, amount of money to some of the proposals they receive. Your chances are substantially improved if you're a good writer. Your chances are substantially improved if someone on your team has received funding before and published good work from that funding. Your chances are substantially improved if you've done some preliminary work that shows your idea might really work. In the end, they fund about 20% of the applications that come in, so the odds are stacked against you from the start, but especially if your idea is risky. Injecting someone with HIV to cure cancer? Pretty much the definition of risky.

Furthermore, it is sometimes impossible to know ahead of time whether an idea will actually pan out or not. The story of Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays is illuminating. He discovered them because he had left a barium-painted piece of cardboard across the room when setting up an experiment. He notice a strange light out of the corner of his eye. It turns out that his experiment, which emitted X-rays, was causing the paint on the cardboard to fluoresce. "That's strange," he thought, "no light should be coming out of this..." Covering up the source of the light did not stop the paint from fluorescing. When he put his hand in front of the light source and saw the bones in his hand, he immediately locked himself in his laboratory for weeks to determine what was happening. Until he showed his wife the same trick, and he knew that someone else had seen it (she was convinced he had summoned some kind of demon), he had concluded that he had lost his mind. And this is the guy who was doing the experiment. Now, imagine the guy reading a proposal to study a "light that showed the inner workings of your body projected on a screen." Sounds crazy, especially since nobody at the time could offer and explanation for how such a light would work.

Science is a messy process, but we do our best with what we have. Sometimes people don't discover things that they could. That's just the way the world works.

Re:Cure vs human nature

[JustNiz]

>>> it is not my fault you all fucked everything up; we are doing out jobs well...But then the lack of competence of the voters probably should be reflected in government services. Bad management afterall...

Wait... you work in government and blame the private sector workers for the mess the country is in ? wow that's some screwed up logic. Does it not occur to you that its actually the government who we fund with our taxes that is (supposed to be) in control of the country and economy?

Are you really so naive to think that because the majority voted the wrong way to your opinion, that the state the country is no longer the governments responsibility?

The very clear truth is that the sort of person that wants to be a politician is already the wrong person for the job. All politicians (i.e. all political parties) are as self-serving, corrupt and incompetent as each other, so voting is at best a sham that simply amounts to choosing who w'ed rather get fucked by.

Re:Cure vs human nature

[BitZtream]

Having recently written an NSF grant proposal

Injecting someone with HIV to cure cancer? Pretty much the definition of risky.

So I'm guessing that you're proposal got rejected? I can safely say that since you somehow managed to get 'injected someone with hiv' out of it. No where, not even in the summary does it make such a statement.

Re:Cure vs human nature

[bussdriver]

I'm only part time, some of the time - provides some insight; which you lack.

That doesn't change what I'm saying, it doesn't matter who states the fact that a (arguably former) democratic government is the responsibility of its citizens. It is their government and what it does is their responsibility. If you vote for some corrupt jerk who purposely screws up your government services and makes it a place nobody wants to work there just so somebody else can profit from the mess-- it is your fault and even more foolish to re-elect them. I have seen this happen locally. Yet this happens over and over... times have been better.

I realize that to some Americans its too hard to take responsibility for their actions especially if it involves thinking beyond literal direct actions. You are raised to think government is some foreign entity that has nothing to do with you and that you are powerless to do anything about it. It is a self fulfilling prophecy; you types are contributing to the problem.

No, not better than a majority of people - the majority DOES NOT VOTE AT ALL (well, ok then, since at least I participate.) There are good people who run for office; they almost never get in and rarely get affiliated with a major party since the party system is designed to filter out good people.

Actually your logic is screwed up because as things have been getting worse and instead of realizing this people hold a grudge against those who have stayed the same or protected their well being. You ever do some reading along these lines? its not that difficult to figure out.
The economic mess we have today as well as most the other problems are caused by the private sector-- or did you forget the banks? or the fraudulent ratings that S&P gave those securities? (yes, same people who lowered US credit rating.) So its government's fault for not regulating and enforcing protections against super fraud due to corruption coming from the bankers??? It is your job to prevent these non-government forces from corrupting the government --- this government was created by and for the people at a big cost -- and nobody is willing anymore to put in a fraction of those efforts today. So, we collectively deserve what we get.

Re:Cure vs human nature

[JustNiz]

Yes of course its the governments fault for not legislating against banks and allowing them to get too powerful, and then for choosing to bale them out when they fail. It wasn't me or anyone I know that gave the banks billions or even agreed with the idea but it happened anyway.

Your whole argument presumes that an individual citizen might have any say at all let alone win a significant battle against corruption of a powerful megacorp or government. I don't believe that can ever happen. They already have all the guns, resources, power and laws of a whole country on their side.

You keep coming back to the voting thing... The US is and always was a capitalist society. The US isn't and never was a democracy, and has never even claimed it was a democracy. Voting is just a feelgood sham.

The existing US system ensures that only people that are fundamentally corruptable self-serving A-holes with connections even get a chance to run for any government positions,. The majority of people don't vote because they realize it clearly won't make any difference who wins, as they all act the same.

Crabs

[Oswald McWeany]

So HIV cures cancer? That's nothing- Crabs cure hunger.

Re:Crabs

[Msdose]

Actually, it's carbs cure hunger. Unfortunately, nothing can be done for dyslexia.

Re:Crabs

[Oswald McWeany]

Not unless Carbs are an STD. Which, depending on your partner they potentially could be.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[LWATCDR]

Slashdot really does to often drop to the Midnight Star level of integrity these days. Really you don't think a treatment for cancer would get enough clicks without adding a flashy lie to it?

Re:Proof of God

[Amouth]

i wish i had mod points today

Come on /. - read and understand before commenting

[PHCOSci]

HIV is being used here in a way similar to how lentiviruses are used to routinely introduce synthetic DNA constructs to human cell cultures. In summation it is a version of HIV where the actual viral DNA has been gutted and replaced with the chimeric construct providing these white blood cells with the ability to both rapidly divide and DETECT CANCER inside LIVING PATIENTS. The individuals citing their low patient count as "statistically insignificant" do not have a firm grasp on the field of oncology. The results published in the PRIMARY RESEARCH ARTICLE are astounding. The volume of highly specific cell death observed therein is unprecedented. Chemotherapy, radiation, and all other cancer treatments are non-specific. They kill healthy cells and tumorgenic cells alike. This is the first SUCCESSFUL application of an innate immune system targeting strategy for sustained destruction of cancer cells. It's revolutionary. It was a gutsy, bold move by the researchers. Their executed project combined some of the most advanced approaches in virology, cell biology, and biochemistry. I mean, give credit where credit is due. These guys just hit the nail on the head and you're all blabbering about nonsense.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Anonymous Coward]

shut the fuck up you pompous anus licking schlong sucker.

Also

[Smigh]

In related news, cancer has been found to cure HIV.

Re:Proof of God

[TheRaven64]

No, that one just shows that God is a bit of a dick.

Cancer Cure Plan

[jameskojiro]

1. Open Cancer Center
2. Hire cheap Hookers who are HIV Positive
3. ?????????
4. Profit

Re:Proof of God

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. I was only trolling and now I'm tired.

already is

[Ungrounded Lightning]

How long until we never hear about this again?

Or, how long until big medicine gets their hands on it and makes it too expensive for the average cancer patient?

It's ALREADY too expensive for the average cancer patient. New treatments ALWAYS are. The trick is to get "big medicine" to invest in making it CHEAP ENOUGH for the average patient.

Most of the cost is convincing the FDA to let the new treatment be used. Much of that cost is doing enough research to convince bureaucrats that you haven't discovered a new Thalidomide. (They get dinged for flipper babies but not for millions of dead UNtreated patients.)

Re:already is

[bluefoxlucid]

Exactly why I have posted this on Slashdot ... just in case it actually works, there's now non-critical awareness. 60 million views on Fox News would produce a better effect...

Re:Come on /. - read and understand before comment

[Edge00]

The more interesting part of this story is how they got the cells to proliferate and detect (with high specificity) cancer cells. The HIV portion of the story is just sensationalism.

Re:Proof of God

[Anonymous Coward]

In the story, he wasn't imaginary. He was talking directly to every party involved.

Is being a retarded troll a requirement for atheism these days, or just that just how 'your kind' behaves when they get on the internet?

Also, I'm Agnostic, so don't respond to me with the usual drivel 'your kind' is known for. Feel free to run back to reddit first to stoke your ego if you need to.

Actually, don't respond at all, I don't have the time or patience to deal with 'your kind'. There are people with whom I am willing to debate the philosophical implications of the presence (or lack thereof) of a benevolent (or not) God, but 'your kind' and them are a disjoint set.

duh

[alienzed]

you can't have cancer if you're dead!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Does "gene therapy" have such a bad name...

[sveinb]

... that HIV sounds better?

Re:Does "gene therapy" have such a bad name...

[Samantha Wright]

It does on Slashdot.

Fight fire with fire.

[hacksoncode]

On the one hand, turning your own white blood cells into cancerous killing machines has a certain justice to it. On the other hand...

What could possibly go wrong with programming T-cells to multiply by a factor of 1000 upon reentering your body?

Re:Fight fire with fire.

[PHCOSci]

In general, during infections, the T-cell count spikes within your body. Your immune system is engineered to manufacture the ones successful at fighting a given infection. This is why white blood cell count is a good marker of latent infections. The technique applied by these researchers simulates that propagation- though artificially, driving production of T-cells that they have designed to be good fighters of your "cancer infection". Additionally, while multiplied by 1000, the amount originally injected into the patients is fairly low with respect to the total number of T-cells in your body. As the patients are surviving a year after treatment, and the levels of these particular modified T-cells are maintained, not exponentially accumulating out of control, I think they've shown this is a reasonably safe move.

I am Legend

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't the female doctor in the beginning of I am Legend try this? I don't remember that ending well.

Re:Come on /. - read and understand before comment

[PHCOSci]

I concur. I'm dissapointed with the title of this summary. Retroviral expression of genetic therapy is novel, but not the highlight. I think a more appropriate title might have been "Novel cancer therapy gives life to two terminal leukemia patients, 1 year into remission". The data is remarkable. The tissue sample images are just amazing, never seen anything work that effectively without damaging surrounding tissue.

wtf???

[mark-t]

So cure cancer by injecting with HIV???

And never be able to have sex again for as long as you live?

I'll take the cancer, thanks.

Given a choice between dying younger and dying alone, I'd take dying young any day.

Re:wtf???

[PHCOSci]

You don't understand what you're talking about. Read the actual articles. No one is being infected with HIV.

Re:wtf???

[Pentium100]

As pointed out multiple times, not the real HIV.

Also, this would give you choice. Even after the cure, you can still kill yourself if/when you think life without sex is worthless.

Re:wtf???

[mark-t]

Life without love is worthless.

Sexual intimacy is a not wholly insignificant part of that.

Re:wtf???

[Pentium100]

And still maybe other people would choose differently. For example, if my grandfather was given the option I think he would have chosen to be infected with the real HIV instead of dying from cancer.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, if you read the article, it's pretty clear that while this particular experiment was leukemia based the theory should work on nearly any cancer. Basically, they used a modified HIV virus as a carrier to modify the DNA of some of the patients white blood cells (outside of the body). The modified cells are made to specifically target the cancer in question (and replicate, a lot). If trials continue to be successful, there is no reason to think that the "signature" of any cancer couldn't be substituted for the leukemia.

Incorrect. It may work on a significant fraction of some cancers (especially leukemias, cancers of the blood) but it is unlikely to be a generic cure of most or all cancers. (TL;DR of the link which is annoying technical - it's a cool new twist on a general class of cancer fighting strategies that up until now have had limited success. It may well prove to be useful, but it is in the very, very early stages of research and there are some reasons why this general class of treatment would be expected not to work on many different cancers.)

And kudos to MSNBC for actually providing a link to the original literature.

How many of the powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of the powerful? You know, the ones that greenlight a product.

After all, there are people STILL working at cigarette packing plants, despite knowing that you get cancer from it.

All you need to do is look for a TREATMENT, not a CURE.

A treatment is like a WoW subscription, or a DRM'd game with DLC.

A cure is like selling your program with the source code and binaries.

Re:Proof of God

[Anonymous Coward]

Books say lots of things.....

Still waiting for historical evidence of Jesus.

accelerated white cell reproduction...

[Lead Butthead]

... a second modification to the patient's white blood cells encouraging them to multiply rapidly once they were put back into the patient's body

Wasn't that called... leukemia... that would kill you dead too?

Re:accelerated white cell reproduction...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, these patients were CURED of leukemia, specifically.

Stupid Headlines, Stupid Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

One day, cancer will be cured and someone will post it to Slashdot and no one will believe it because fucking editors keep posting completely stupid and idiotic headlines and summaries.

Re:Proof of God

[h4rr4r]

I have lots of fiction books, are those not imaginary?

This is not trolling it is a statement of fact. No different than saying unicorns are not something you should kill people over.

Your kind being ACs are generally not who I waste my time on.

That's no run-on sentence.

[asdbffg]

That's no run-on sentence. It's a space station.

However, there IS incorrect comma usage in the first sentence of the summary, and the last two are fragments. Yay, pedantry!!

Grammar Cop

[Anonymous Coward]

"As the white cells killed the cancer cells, the patients experienced the fevers and aches and pains that one would expect when the body is fighting off an infection, but beyond that the side effects have been minimal." This is not a run on sentence. Here is an example of a run on sentence: My Porsche 911 is out of gas we cannot reach town before dark. From Wikipedia: The mere fact that a sentence is long does not make it a run-on sentence; sentences are run-ons only when they contain more than one complete idea. A run-on sentence can be as short as four words—for instance: I drive she walks. In this case there are two complete ideas (independent clauses): two subjects paired with two (intransitive) verbs. So as long as clauses are punctuated appropriately, a writer can assemble multiple independent clauses in a single sentence; in fact, a properly constructed sentence can be extended indefinitely.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Man Eating Duck]

I went threw Chiropractor a few times and they worked... But not for cancer. I did it for fixing a stiff neck, and some nerve issues.

If you went to a modernly educated one they are definitely not quacks. What they can do just by manipulating joints and muscles is close to magic, but it stems from a general knowledge of anathomy that's more detailed than pretty much anything you can find among physicians (even specialists), and lots of practice. Of course they can only fix physiological symptoms, they're something like glorified physical therapists, but damn good ones :)

Disclaimer: my brother is one. The modern education is called clinical biomechanics in many places in order to separate its practitioners from the quacks. It's got nothing to do with any woo-woo, vaccine denial or anything like that. If they suspect that you're ill or that your problems are due to pathological stress or anxiety they'll pass you on to a regular physician.

Run-on sentence?

[Anonymous Coward]

The following is NOT a run-on sentence:

"As the white cells killed the cancer cells, the patients experienced the fevers and aches and pains that one would expect when the body is fighting off an infection, but beyond that the side effects have been minimal."

It contains THREE dependent clauses: "As the white cells killed the cancer cells," "that one would expect," and "when the body is fighting off an infection."

However, the number of independent clauses is only TWO, which makes it NOT A RUN ON. There is no limit to the number of dependent clauses in an English sentence.

big tobacco is going to like this

[cod3r_]

I can see it now. Big tobacco funds the entire project from here on out.

But can it work both ways?

[Narcocide]

Now we just need a modified strain of cancer that can cure HIV and we'll be freaking invincible!

Re:There are other treatments available!

[smelch]

People wasted mod points on your serious response to an obvious troll? How can you read what he says and not realize that he is a troll? Actually, I tend to think of him as a hilarious satire of a chiropractor. Just look at his posting history. Some of it is pretty funny.

Re:Proof of God

[smelch]

The actor in the story is not willing to kill his son for an imaginary friend, he's willing to kill his son for a real presence speaking directly to him. Do the fictional works of any author that make a philosophical point all equate to imaginary friends dictating philosophy? No, no they do not. Use some logic when attacking religion, isn't it the only thing you can claim you have over it? Well... logic and fun.

You think that's impressive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check this out!
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html

Research related to this has been covered.

[What'sInAName]

From 2005:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/02/14/1519212/The-Cure-for-Cancer-Might-be-HIV

I thought the subject of this story sounded familiar. Seems like they've made progress! Let's hope it stands up to further studies. Many, many promising treatments turn out to be fools' gold.

Re:Research related to this has been covered.

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to early diagnosis of breast cancer, more women are today surviving breast cancer than ever before. Symptoms of breast cancer are hardly noticeable when it first develops but as the cancer grows, it can cause changes that women should watch for - the most common being the abnormal lump or swelling in the breast, amongst other symptoms.

Florastor Isocort

Re:There are other treatments available!

[MachineShedFred]

Someone cracking your back isn't going to stop rampant uncontrolled cell division, you god damn idiot.

Go hand out some bent pens at a mall, and leave the real cures to actual researchers.

Zombification

[Anonymous Coward]

This could the first step to Zombification of the human race ...

Elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, the percentage of unprotected sex has skyrocketed among those suffering with cancer.

just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad died 2 years ago from the most aggressive form of brain cancer at the age of 54. We would have gladly tried this over the hell of two brain surgeries, radiation, chemo, rehab and paralysis and seizures he went through.

No one ever thinks about brain cancer, but it's right there next to pancreatic for how awful it is. It gets almost no research funding compared to other cancers and remains one of the deadliest diagnosed cancers.

Any cancer breakthrough that can be applied to brain cancer is welcome, IMO. I'd rather live with HIV (harmless or not, temporary or not) than go through what is spelled out by a Stage 4 Glioblastoma.

Wonder

[Msdose]

I always wondered why they let HIV spread uncontrollably when they could have ended it in the beginning by quarantining the contagious victims. Hundreds of millions of people (mostly Africans) will die because of this policy. Now I see that they need a pool of HIV-positive donors to cure smokers and meat-eaters of their cancers.

S.T.C???

[Illpalazzo]

So if the cure is based off a modified STD. Will that mean the cure is transferred the same way? Will pharmaceutical companies finally be out of work?

Re:Come on /. - read and understand before comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the first by 10 years
http://www.oncolyticsbiotech.com/
and others as well. NCI has supported this research as well. Don't know why they declined the one under discussion.

Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

I showed this to my doctor and his head exploded.

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether or not one has some kind of religious view, that's humans at their best: fighting our common enemies instead of killing ourselves in wars.

Disappointing use of article.

[Anonymous Coward]

The WebMD article went into better detail here. http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20110810/gene-therapy-cures-adult-leukemia
The OP article leaves out that the modified white blood cells may persist in the body. That means it could keep fighting any sort of remission. It also leaves out a potential downside. A bit of background, the cancer they treated is that of the B cells, a part of the immune system. The treatment targets something only B cells have. That means normal B cells STILL get destroyed. Still it's an improvement over the traditional methods which do much more collateral damage. Of course the whole persistence thing means it could be compared to permanent chemotherapy to a degree.

Re:What about 7 Days?

[zootie]

It reminded me of an episode of 7 Days in which a researcher develops a vaccine for cancer that mutates and kills everybody, and a future incarnation of the org makes a long jump (7+ years?) to stop her from developing the vaccine (kind of a Hitler dilemma with an innocent perpetrator). It also reminded me of I Am Legend.

True.

[gaeran]

I have personal knowledge on this story. The father of a very close friend was one of the first people to receive this treatment during the trials - he was diagnosed with leukemia, and was given a very short time to live. His health declined quickly, and no one really expected him to last long. However, today he is completely healthy, and has no signs of cancer in his body whatsoever. He's not in remission - he's cured. Spread the word on this research if you can, this is the real deal and can seriously save a ton of lives if it gets the funding it needs.

Couple this with DRACOs

[Culture20]

Inject Modified HIV, kill the cancer, then use DRACOs to clean up the virus. Easy peasy.

Now...

[brkello]

If we can only give HIV cancer, we will be all set.

Classic Carson

[superdave80]

Reminds me of the old Johnny Carson quip on Letterman's show during a rash of natural disasters in the L.A. area: Letterman: "How are things going out there in California"? Carson: "Pretty good. The mudslides are putting out the fires".

Re:Proof of God

[BitZtream]

Shrug, plenty of people would do the same sort of stupid shit based on the religion they worship known as science.

You can call religious people lots of names, but thats almost certainly because you're an ignorant fuck who worships a different 'God'.

You're both the same type of stupid, you just think you're smarter because you can point it out in someone else ... but your too stupid to see that you're no different.

I've yet to meet an atheist that wasn't just a ignorant as some of the most ignorant religious fucks I've ever met.

How do I know it applies to you? You went out of your way to make a snarky comment about a religious comment. You try so hard to pretend you're different that you make it obvious your exactly the same.

Re:There are other treatments available!

[couchslug]

He is good at discrediting chiropractors, and if anyone on Slashdot actually believes his posts they need to be cleansed from the gene pool.

cancer vaccine?

[smitty128]

Doesn't this mean that you can immunize people against cancer?

Re:There are other treatments available!

[Trogre]

/\ This.

It's quacks like "Dr" Bob (the GGGP or something) that give legitimate Chiropractic practice a bad name.

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[mr_mischief]

A much better head line that that would be "Three patients in trial cured of leukemia by genetically modified T-cells".

this will piss off some people

[cavebison]

[...] several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. [Reasons may be] the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration.

Too risky to profit margins that is.

Dr has healed

[Anonymous Coward]

" Patient, I have some good news.. your cured of cancer." - Doc
" What, really thats fantastic.." - Patient
" Oh I forgot to mention, you've now got AIDS " - Doc
"Damn." - Patient

Friday

[Citizen of Earth]

So, today they cured cancer and yesterday they cured viruses. I guess bacteria is on deck for Friday.

Zombies, anyone?

[molafish]

Isn't this the premise of I Am Legend? Where was this experiment conducted again? I'll make sure to avoid that route next time I drive through...

Re:Could the title and summary be more exaggerated

[Shadowmist]

Taco probably made a deliberate choice of framing his article that way in order to grab your attention. If you're reading this, it worked.

I AM LEGEND

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Dr. Alice Krippen thought the same from the film in my subject-line... that's in regards to your statement I am quoting here:

"Absolutely no HIV DNA was transferred, and so there's absolutely no risk of HIV infection: after the viral DNA is inserted into the cell" - by Samantha Wright (1324923) on Thursday August 11, @12:49PM (#37058534) Homepage

I'm just being "facetious" &/or sarcastic with the film reference though, but the possibility is there... this, to myself @ least, DOES seem a "touch risky", but then again, I have not read the actual parent article yet, I have to say this in fairness.

NOW - From the sounds of it, this sounds like a form of "retroviral gene therapy" (i.e.-> Using viruses to deliver 'payloads' into the enemy via the cellular mountpoints that viruses attach to, & inject nuclear material from).

* Typically, that DOES introduce DNA/nuclear material into a cell though... and, your quote I used even seems to state that same pretty much.

APK

P.S.=> However - From what I have been reading here via others' commentary (which I usually do 1st, & then scan the parent/source articles afterwards)?

Yes, it seems they're actually using white cells modded by HIV infestations to combat cancer here (disclaimer - I have NOT read the article itself YET though, just got up & am having coffee this a.m. only scanning this (this is important stuff I feel is why)).

Some new NEWS/NewsFlash: I've also heard of successes vs. cancer using a compound called INOSITOL (apparently if you eat a lot of rice especially, OR vegetable material in general which is naturally produced in your intestines as a reaction by-product afterwards) completely KILLING LUNG CANCERS IN FOLKS:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%22INOSITOL%22+and+%22lung+cancer%22&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=

Which like this article, seems to be good news also (& doesn't sound 1/10th as risky either).

(That's some "FYI" 4U, & IF you were NOT aware of it)...

... apk

repost?

[hesaigo999ca]

This is an old story at least 5 years old...what's up? I am sure looking it up on /., you would find it here before...why the renewed interest???

Re:repost?

[gomiam]

For a 5 year old story, it is interesting to notice the treatment and at least some of the techniques developed date to 2009. But that requires RTFS which the TFA provided.

Re:Proof of God

[Rakarra]

I'm sorry but such a level of irony - treating cancer with HIV - is the proof that God is a woman and named Eris.

Nowhere in the Bible did I see a lot of "Ahah, just kidding" coming from the christian God.

I thought that was the whole point of the story of Job (and Abraham).

Re:Proof of God

[Rakarra]

The actor in the story is not willing to kill his son for an imaginary friend, he's willing to kill his son for a real presence speaking directly to him. Do the fictional works of any author that make a philosophical point all equate to imaginary friends dictating philosophy? No, no they do not. Use some logic when attacking religion, isn't it the only thing you can claim you have over it? Well... logic and fun.

The lines are blurred when you're talking to people who claim that the events of this book are not exaggerated, are not made up, and happened exactly as they are written. At that point you're not talking about book characters but real people and real situations. I can understand your point when talking about works described as fiction, and the disconnect comes when one group thinks of it as fiction and the other as total fact.

Re:Come on /. - read and understand before comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for your comment, it perfectly reflects the real point of this finding. The delivery method and having measurable accuracy is amazing.
Talk about an counter intuitive approach is a understatement.
Whats next?
  LSD used in an Alzheimer's treatment.
Ambein can cause 'Transient Awakenings' With Sleeping Pill
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2947406&page=1
MRSA Infection used to stop Antibiotic poisoning
Komodo Dragon urine dissolves kidney stones.(and Kidney)
Standard & Poor's Rates Fox news as the most accurate and responsible news agency, then HarperCollins books publishes A book about it.
JP lottery win more that 50 million stops Depression Dead in it's tracks.
PMI insurance pays off house and home owner gets to keep it free and clear. Instead of the bank. Why, because court rules premium was paid by home owner.
Thanks for helping get all this off my chest. Now where did I put my Botox?

Is there already a videogame ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't usually play videogames, but a GPL shoot-them up where you are a modified T-cell and navigate veins to infiltrate bone marrow, kill leukemic cells respecting others and reproduce would be worth trying... Action, navigation, (local organism) violence, sci-fi, and a worthy goal, wow!. it could even turn into an MMORPG (RPG?) since they say they shoot 150000 T-cells for patient kg, so that's about 7500000 - 15000000 players for a single match, around WoW's size (that would be the treatment of a 50 - 100 kg patient)...

But as usual with software I guess someone has already coded that and everyone but me knows about it .

Not Perfect != Not Useful

[sirwired]

Tylenol IS NOT TO PREVENT THE FEELING OF PAIN. YOU STILL HURT EVEN WHEN TAKING TYLENOL.

You hurt FAR less, but you still hurt. Tylenol also doesn't always work.

Again, say it with me this time TYLENOL IS NOT TO PREVENT THE FEELING OF PAIN, it isn't all that effective at it. ......
or: SEAT BELTS ARE NOT TO PREVENT DYING IN A CAR ACCIDENT

or: QUITTING SMOKING IS NOT TO PREVENT LUNG CANCER

or: CPR IS NOT FOR THE PREVENTION OF DEATH DUE TO CARDIAC ARREST

etc. ..........

If you are going to go for a proverbial Roll in the Hay anyway (and history has shown that this is usually the case), using a condom is approx. infinity more effective in preventing STDs than crossing your fingers.