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Drug Turns Immune System Against All Tumor Types
sciencehabit writes, quoting an article in Science: "A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a 'do not eat' signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells."
The abstract and full paper are freely available. It seems fairly promising: "In mice given human bladder cancer tumors, for example, 10 of 10 untreated mice had cancer that spread to their lymph nodes. Only one of 10 mice treated with anti-CD47 had a lymph node with signs of cancer. Moreover, the implanted tumor often got smaller after treatment — colon cancers transplanted into the mice shrank to less than one-third of their original size, on average. And in five mice with breast cancer tumors, anti-CD47 eliminated all signs of the cancer cells, and the animals remained cancer-free 4 months after the treatment stopped."
It worked even better in mice that didn't get cancer transplants!
I kid, I kid.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What about non-tumor cells, which also display this cell determinant?
That's called an auto-immune disease and that would be nothing new under the sun,
Very promising, but before we uncork the champagne, it's important to keep in mind that mice and humans are different enough that most cures don't translate 1:1 to humans.
This "The doctors are evil conspirators" crap really, really gets old...
I propose to perform the next experiment on /b/.
Then maybe we will be able to continue this thread there.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm a little over 30 now. Me getting cancer is relatively probable at some point in my life. The big question is will they cure it first?
Oh, and if cancer doesn't get me, will I have robot attendants at home when I'm old and fragile, or will they just upgrade my body? Medicine is progressing at an amazing rate, really...
.: Max Romantschuk
Or perhaps they don't want to commit to a cure for human cancers when they've just found a prelminary positive result in an animal model?
That couldn't be it, possibly?
No, must be a conspiracy. *facepalm*
I'm not sure why some people are so sure "big pharma" are disinterested in curing many diseases/conditions. After all, if you can sell a cure for cancer, you just landed in a bucket of money.
Beyond that, the need for a cure is overwhelming. Even corporate greed will often take a backseat because this issue affects us all. If it was a condition associated with a specific population, or with the poor etc then I'm sure the interest would be much less humanitarian.
Every day we get closer to a cure, every piece of research, even if it's only effective on mice takes us when step closer. I for one, appreciate every effort made in this regard.
I do not have cancer and no one close to me has it either. Perhaps just a matter of time.
IANAMD but, note it says mice, and it might substitute chronic autoimmune disease for the cancer. But combining an anti CD47 drug with a system for making alerting the immune system to the cancer, e.g. Dendrons Provenge, ought to make immune threapy a high sucessful care. Without targeting the immune system on
a particular organ, an autoimmune response, could do mass long term damage, (long term isn't something we worry about in mice). A 90% cure rate is great through, modern cancer drugs have been getting approved for 30% cure rates or lower.
Yes we've had this drug available here for...
**NO CARRIER**
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It won't fly, as antibodies are cheap and not complicated to do. Seriously, do you really believe Big Pharma is going to let it happen ? A treatment simple like this would jeopardize their business, risking billions of dollar. They'll do something to stop this treatment in its tracks. They always do. Sound paranoid ? I wish. It's more like realistic. Their purpose is not really to cure cancer, but getting a maximum profit from it.
I call bullshit. First of all you don't risk anything by finding such a "simple cure". There are a lot of people and a lot of them will get cancer at one time so there is a very large customer base and no shortage thereof in the long term. For the length of the patent you could sell this stuff at almost any price. Do you really think one company would keep an invention locked up (and risk loosing it to someone else) that would bring them truckloads of money?
Not to mention all the free PR you'd get.
Also I don't really believe in conspiracies that rely on large groups of people to keep quiet, make no mistakes and act against their own private interests.
While i can understand your concern and partly admit you are right, if you do the math, you will realize that more patients = more profit. You can only sell medicines to living patients, so keeping them alive is also in their advantage. The type of medication may shift yes, but a growing market is something the pharmaceutic industry should welcome.
I don't think they're evil but when someone's job is to cure cancer and other researchers come up with a possible cure and their reaction is "ehhh that's ok I guess..we'll see though" it comes across as resentment of the possible loss of job security not optimism mixed with some skepticism.
It was the same with the cured HIV patient. Most HIV "researchers" stated "Well that's nice I guess, but it's not applicable in most cases."
Well of course it's not applicable in most cases, it was an extremely difficult procedure, but the man was actually cured of a diseases that was till then believed to be incurable, so at the very least the cure can provide a possible template for other treatments in the future, but these "researchers" said nothing of the sort and seemed to resent the disease being cured at all.
It won't fly, as antibodies are cheap and not complicated to do
What does cost to produce have to do with price, other than to set a minimum? Besides, you can get generic painkillers for 12p a box here in the UK, or you can buy the name brand stuff for £3.50; the two co-exist just fine. (Though I wonder who on earth buys the name-brand stuff...)
They'll do something to stop this treatment in its tracks. They always do.
Links or it didn't happen.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
They're not stopping the treatment. They're going to make megabucks off it.
>> Conflict of interest statement: S.J., M.P.C., R. Majeti, and I.L.W. filed U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 12/321,215 entitled “Methods for Manipulating Phagocytosis Mediated by CD47."
They've already applied for the patent for treating cancers in this way. If granted, 17 years of income for a cancer cure which they control the market on would make them a trillion dollars. Each. Although, they could just be patenting it to prevent anyone else patenting it, although naturally whomever funded the study is going to want a sizeable return on their investment and it's fair enough they get it.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
...If everything goes well. Also, how much it may cost then?
I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from seven different medical boards in New England, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn't miscarry or that their daughter doesn't bleed to death or that their mother doesn't suffer acute neural trama from postoperative shock, who do you think they're praying to? Now, go ahead and read your Bible, _Dennis_, and you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle, but if you're looking for God, he was in operating room number two on November 17, and he doesn't like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God. ~~ Dr. Jed Hill (Malice 1993)
And still, no cure for cancer. ... oh.
What is the normal function of the "do not eat" signal? Just what normal function is going to get messed up when you turn this off?
Everyone knows that cancer already has a cure, just eat these all natural leaves.
They just bury all of the evidence. And doctors kill people with their drugs. It's all a conspiracy to make money!
Decade?, more like quarter century.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I'm no expert in these things, but AFAIK the process goes something like this:
Each of these steps can take months. Some of it's political and administrative wrangling, some of it's just that the test itself will take some time before you can be sure of the results. A drug can fail at any one of these stages and it's back to the drawing board (or maybe the test tube).
The whole process takes years. Yet newspapers often start reporting about "miracle cure" drugs that have only just completed the first round of live animal trials. Which is why you hear about all sorts of miracle cures that never see the light of day.
What is the normal function of the "do not eat" signal? Just what normal function is going to get messed up when you turn this off?
I'm not sure which "do not eat" signal they're talking about. But one that I do know a little about is the one that prevents rejection of a placenta and multiple sclerosis.
The immune system apparently recognizes and avoids attacking its own body primarily by:
- Editing the sections of DNA coding for antibodies to produce a bunch of small clones of proto-antibody-producing cells that randomly react to all sorts of stuff.
- Shortly after birth (when most of mommy's random cellular components have been purged from baby's body) letting these clones take a grand tour of baby's body - and anybody who recognizes anything dies off.
- Then the survivors (who don't recognize any tissue in baby) turn themselves on and get ready to do a growth spurt if they recognize a target at the same time they're getting an "I'm being damaged" signal (i.e. histamine).
Result: A no-autoimmune immune system. Well, almost.
A significant problem is that there are a few tissues that aren't deployed yet when the baby is just born. One such tissue is the myelin sheaths of the nerves. Another, of course, is placental tissue from a pregnancy. (Unlike tribbles, humans aren't born pregnant.) If nothing were done about this, the immune system tissues would be a time-bomb, ready to go into attack mode if it happens to see a damage signal near a nerve or a placenta. This would result in multiple sclerosis or spontaneous abortion - both very big negative scores in the evolutionary game. So the immune system has a patch.
The main myelin protein has a short sequence that tells the immune system that this is a late-blooming tissue, so leave it alone. (I'm guessing this may be the "do not eat" signal they're talking about.) Placental tissue has the same sequence. There are lots of opportunities for failure, of course. (Defects in the signal molecules, disease organisms mimicing it, etc.) But when this patch is working right the nerves and a new baby are protected without significantly degrading the immune system's response to diseases.
This, by the way, is the reason nursing on cow's milk is a risk factor for MS. Milk has a protein related to the myelin sheath protein, but with the "do not eat" signal slightly different. As a result a baby may develop an allergy to that component of cow's milk - and thus to the common stretch of the myelin protein. Result: Autoimmune reaction to the myelin sheaths.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Expressed in other terms:
How may drug company execs will let their children, their spouses, or their friends die of cancer for better shareholder returns? Not all of them. It only takes one whistle blower, or potential whistle blower, to louse up plans like this.
One drug company supposedly had a drug for an inherited, fatal condition, but was going to can development of it, as there probably wasn't enough profit. A board member, who had a friend who's child had that condition basically said, "if you can this drug, I'm going to the press with it." Fearing the backlash, the company introduced the drug and now boasts about how good they are to bring drugs for smaller markets to market.
Thank you for the information.
Probably because he's a fraud:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Burzynski
Miraculous claims require miraculous proofs. And doctors aren't just sitting on the sidelines waiting to be paid more to kill more people, despite what you might think.
I'm pretty sure this calls for a "don't feed the trolls." GP didn't even pretend to make a sound argument supporting a logically sound conclusion. Just spouting tinfoilhattery.
weinersmith
And we all know how those countries attitudes are towards optional ingredients.
Most here can easily afford brand name medicine. We are the 1%, enjoy it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It won't fly, as antibodies are cheap and not complicated to do. Seriously, do you really believe Big Pharma is going to let it happen ? A treatment simple like this would jeopardize their business, risking billions of dollar. They'll do something to stop this treatment in its tracks. They always do. Sound paranoid ? I wish. It's more like realistic. Their purpose is not really to cure cancer, but getting a maximum profit from it.
I call bullshit. First of all you don't risk anything by finding such a "simple cure". There are a lot of people and a lot of them will get cancer at one time so there is a very large customer base and no shortage thereof in the long term. For the length of the patent you could sell this stuff at almost any price. Do you really think one company would keep an invention locked up (and risk loosing it to someone else) that would bring them truckloads of money? Not to mention all the free PR you'd get. Also I don't really believe in conspiracies that rely on large groups of people to keep quiet, make no mistakes and act against their own private interests.
I suppose that if this treatment is as effective as advertised, we will soon see just how powerful Big Pharma's influence is. There is no doubt that there will always be a "customer base" of cancer patients (unless this becomes some sort of vaccine, which that will NEVER be allowed to happen), but it's rather difficult to put a price tag on a single injection and then convince your insurance company that it is something they should cover. The latter challenge is what may prove to be the most difficult for many, and therefore everyone will continue to profit from the "traditional" million-dollar treatment "packages" of surgery and chemo.
There is far more money to be made treating diseases than curing them. This mantra has held true for a very long time, and I don't see this changing that trillion-dollar industry.
It doesn't take a conspiracy, just your normal, average, seen everyday, everywhere corporate greed.
Do you not believe that corporations like to maximize their profits?
Do you not believe that corporations generally have no ethics beyond what is forced on them by law?
I can all too easily believe that a drugs company would check how much they make selling the current crop of drugs versus a cure and might very well make more money with the current crop. I can continue to all too easily believe that they would then shelve the cure and continue selling what they're selling. I could only hope that the scientists involved couldn't be bought off.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Typically the first testing in humans is done in patients which have already failed multiple therapies (relapse or resistant), eliminating the ethical quandry that they would have had a better response with conventional treatment.
Ban Engadget - moderators censor comments!
How would Big Pharma ever charge enough for a one-time treatment to cure cancer? Yes, I think this discovery will have to be...studied.... for a lonnnnnnng time, first.*
* Except for Big Pharma execs, their mistresses, and friends.
*SNIP*
I suppose that if this treatment is as effective as advertised, we will soon see just how powerful Big Pharma's influence is. There is no doubt that there will always be a "customer base" of cancer patients (unless this becomes some sort of vaccine, which that will NEVER be allowed to happen), but it's rather difficult to put a price tag on a single injection and then convince your insurance company that it is something they should cover. The latter challenge is what may prove to be the most difficult for many, and therefore everyone will continue to profit from the "traditional" million-dollar treatment "packages" of surgery and chemo.
There is far more money to be made treating diseases than curing them. This mantra has held true for a very long time, and I don't see this changing that trillion-dollar industry.
There are some forms of cancer (for example cervical cancer) which are caused by viruses - and which you can and do vaccinate against.
Test your idea in a handful of sick humans. If it works better than existing treatments, continue. (This is going to be awkward. Ethical clearance is an important part of any medical testing; there's little chance of getting ethical clearance of using this in place of existing treatments for cancer patients because if it doesn't work, you've delayed them treatment that could have worked. You could possibly use it in conjunction with, or in patients for whom existing treatments haven't worked, but then there's the question of is the treatment more/less effective when the cancer's progressed that far? Or if it's given in conjunction with existing treatments? Sure you can devise tests to deal with these issues, but they won't be as simple as "administer drug, keep a list of who's had it and what the results were".)
There are patients who refuse chemo because they prefer death to the side effects. They would gladly volunteer for an alternative treatment with less extreme side-effects. I have seen my grandmother go through chemo, and I hope I never have to make this decision, but if I were diagnosed with non-operable cancer, I'm not sure I'd opt to be treated. I suppose it would depend on survival chances. 80% survival rate, I'd probably think it's worth a try. 50% survival rate or worse? I'd probably opt to take the time I have left to enjoy life a bit instead of spending it going through the horrors of chemo. No objections to trying a treatment that would still let me enjoy that time, even if it doesn't work.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
That's good news for mice! Of course they get free health care. How many people will actually be able to afford such a drug, assuming that it works on people without having major side effects?
Come on!!! Lets get this going, get some human subjects quickly, and lets end cancer as quickly as possible....stop just rehashing stories for the last 3 years about the same thing....I sometimes think that the amount of time it takes to get this out there, is enough tie for all of them to die from the disease....!
India recently nationalized a drug under patent protection. They cut the price to a fraction of the market price and gave a percent of that back as a royalty.
If there is a drug that will save as much money in an economy as this drug could, it will not last long on the market without being cloned and made available.
Curing cancer will bring fame and a small fortune (billions in revenue - profit???) but it will not finance any empires.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
They're not stopping the treatment. They're going to make megabucks off it.
>> Conflict of interest statement: S.J., M.P.C., R. Majeti, and I.L.W. filed U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 12/321,215 entitled “Methods for Manipulating Phagocytosis Mediated by CD47."
They've already applied for the patent for treating cancers in this way. If granted, 17 years of income for a cancer cure which they control the market on would make them a trillion dollars. Each. Although, they could just be patenting it to prevent anyone else patenting it, although naturally whomever funded the study is going to want a sizeable return on their investment and it's fair enough they get it.
Most likely the study was funded through the government, as is most medical research these days. I don't have a problem with that, but since the government gets its funds from the people, then the people should get the benefit of the research without having to choose between eating or dying from cancer.
Researchers typically do work for the greater good, but also want to reap rewards for their hard work. Generally people in this situation will cash in on the royalties and such, but not make it so expensive that it will be unavailable to most people. If these treatments work out, the hardest hit financially will be the insurance companies and hospitals, not individuals.
Newest generation of consoles; same reasoning.
I suppose that if this treatment is as effective as advertised, we will soon see just how powerful Big Pharma's influence is.
You're assuming that a cure for cancer would not be in the interests of Big Pharma. I don't think that is necessarily true. Most current cancer treatments are expensive (also often expensive to produce, so not a huge profit margin) and are only sold for shortish treatment periods. Either the patient recovers or dies. A proper cure could easily see people living 20+ years longer. Old people tend to be a better market for pharmaceuticals (of the non-recreational kind, anyway) and so the profit from having people not die from cancer is likely to be greater than the loss from not selling them cancer treatments.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... be apportioned when there are 44 authors for a single paper? That's not a criticism of this paper or what is hopefully an important discovery but just the whole scientific peer-reviewed system seems in danger of breaking down if this is the norm.
If cancer is the result of an inherent flaw in the design in the human body then it can still be eradicated by eliminating whatever "flaws" exist in the human body that lead to the development of the disease.
Sure, all you need is omniscience and omnipotence.
The human body is a lot more complicated than a computer program that you can check for infinite loops. Oh, wait, you can't do that, either.
Only if one accepts that said god also provided his patients with those lovely stage 4 tumors eating their brains, lungs, etc...
You left out the part about how cancer treatments actually GIVE you cancer, that's why you feel fine, doctors tell you you have "cancer", they give you chemo, NOW you feel sick and start dying, so they tell you you need to buy more chemo! Come on, were you not paying attention in Cancer Conspiracy Theory 101? ;)
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Okay.
THIS THERAPY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
And the American Cancer Society, several prominent, qualified (and non-controversial) scientists working in that area, Cancer Research UK, the National Cancer Institute, the British Medical Journal, and several patients and organisations who've sued him for saying such things (some while dying of cancer) WITHOUT REPRODUCIBLE PROOF would probably agree with me.
I can find you a mother that claims unicorns and crystals helped heal her cancerous son. Just because she's thick and stubborn doesn't mean she's correct, or that we should be certifying faith healers or sourcing Unicorn droppings.
When you can reproduce the results and a SINGLE independent and well-known cancer research organisation gets behind the research with their own scientists, then you can get bolshy and claim he's an outcast.
At the moment, he's an outcast because he's a fecking idiot that's encouraging people to try an unlicensed treatment that REPEATEDLY and VERIFIABLY DOES NOT WORK. Not for any other reason.
-- Person living with someone who has spent their life researching leukaemia and other cancers
I agree. Assigning evil status to big pharma is a favorite past time of many. However, reasonable people know that plenty of stock holders and insiders in the biotech industries get cancer, too. Unless you're the most sociopathic type, watching your child die to cancer generally is not a common choice people would desire.
Exactly. Imagine you ran the company that found the cure to cancer, the magic bullet that stopped all cancer dead in its tracks. Even if you didn't make a dime off of the cure itself, your new company slogan would be "We Cured Cancer!" Every commercial from then on out would say "From the people who cured cancer comes a radical new treatment for XYZ." Heck, even any regulations the government tried to saddle them with could be spun as "The government takes action against the cancer curers! OMG HORROR!" Any pharmaceutical company would kill (or save lives as the case may be) for this PR.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Lots of articles like this come and go. As far as I am concerned it is vaporware until doctors begin prescribing it. Lets hope it does turn out to be all that.
"Gerson's therapy has not been independently tested or subjected to randomized controlled trials"
"Evidence for the effectiveness of the Budwig diet is limited as most research has only been done on cell culture studies and experiments on rats and mice with inconsistent results"
"Cellect has not been studied in clinical trials and there is no evidence that it can be used to prevent or treat any diseases in humans. We do not support using this product as a cancer treatment." (By the report LINKED TO on the Cellect page that they then try to spin positively!)
The other two examples, I can't find nice quotes for because they ONLY come up on cancer-cure-crank sites that provide absolutely no medical trial information at all.
They are also both things that we would notice having an effect in the SIMPLEST of trials, if true. People who ate apricot seeds (or maybe even just lots of apricots!) would have a lovely, positive reaction above placebo. And pancreatin is a naturally occurring substance in the body anyway, so we'd notice portions of the population who were more or less likely to develop cancer just because of their naturally high/low levels of pancreatin. We don't.
Just because something is sidelined and condemned doesn't mean it ISN'T just a waste of time. A conspiracy is easier to believe than the fact that these people (and the websites that promote these items) ARE JUST LYING TO YOU in order to make money. They have no idea what they can or can't do, or how effective they are and they CERTAINLY have zero proof that would convince even a small minority of independent and reliable cancer charities / scientists.
There are plenty of examples of cancer-fighting products that just never made it through certification even WITH proven effectiveness, too. It's not like there aren't hundreds put through certification and trials EVERY SINGLE YEAR. The problem is, the people certifiying and trialling them are NOT the people who "discovered", "invented" or stand to gain financially from them - so they have no impetus to push something through or not and the smallest paper from the smallest post-grad researcher with dubious reproducibility can kill an active trial or a product reaching approval.
Just because someone is a Dr, PhD, etc. DOES NOT MEAN they aren't lying to you. Otherwise we'd all be having free energy by now, and cold-fusion, and no diseases, and we'd all lose weight just by eating the right diet.
Ah, an emotional appeal. A sure sign that your argument is flawed.
If you're in science just for the credit, you shouldn't be.
If you're in science to provide breakthroughs and build and rely on others work, with the assistance of similar people, then having 44 authors on a paper gives it approximately 44 times more weight than a single name. And you *can* still say "I worked on Project X" when you want to use it as a job-seeking tool. The people who care about that will find out exactly what you did on the project, I assure you.
So much science, nowadays, CANNOT be done by a lone crank working out of a hermit-like existence, especially where it concerns medical trials and sharing information.
In maths, yes, 44 names on a paper would reek of "Put my name on that because I helped you changed the font size", but in medicine? I don't think I'd believe anything without a significant trial and, thus, weight of names behind a paper. But WHO those 44 are matters infinitely more than how many there are.
What is the normal function of the "do not eat" signal? Just what normal function is going to get messed up when you turn this off?
The more important question: how long before manipulating the "do not eat" signal becomes the latest diet drug?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/11/29/0410239/aging-reversed-in-mice Not so long ago, Slashdot saw this story on how scientists were able to prevent the splicing of telomeres from chromosomes in mice in order to allow not only prevention of aging, but de-aging. The only problem was that these mice inevitably died from becoming riddled with cancerous tumors. So now that this development has occurred, are we one step closer to having mice that cannot die of natural causes?
Sir David Attenborough (a famous naturalist, and someone whom I admire) basically says the same.
Whenever asked if he believes in God, the answer is vehemently not. His usual anecdote is about seeing a child in Africa with a worm that was slowly burrowing into their eye and blinding them:
"Are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball?"
It's a similar argument. If God is wonderful and created everything, he created rapists, murderers, child molestors, pain, suffering, and every disease we see. Deliberately. Knowingly. And seeing all that they would do.
And if you think you're divinely favoured, and such things (e.g. AIDS, HIV, etc.) are targeted only at "sinners" (e.g. homosexuals, drug-users, deviants, etc. and that's NOT my definition but some Christian groups!), then I suggest you go kiss their wounds and bleeding sores in the spirit of Christian easing of their suffering and see how long he favours you, too.
That, or you don't understand how experimental treatments work. This has been "proved" in 10 mice. That's all. There are a host of potential problems that could easily be discovered with this treatment in the process of bringing it to wide-spread human use. Many of those problems could involve unacceptable side effects, or even simply failing to have the same benefit in humans.
This is how science works, man. You don't jump to "hooray, we cured cancer" on the basis of one promising test.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
until our computer systems are sophisticated enough to *accurately* model the effects on humans, we're going to continue to do animal testing. that's just the reality we live in.
Mark Anthony Collins
I was still using dialup in 2002, you insensitive clod!
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Great, now all those social programs that are dependent on most people dying off in their 70s will be even more effed.
Apparently the brand name stuff works better because the patient thinks it is better. It's a form of the placebo effect but it is true. Now it may not be true for you as you don't expect the expensive stuff to be better but for the people who buy it it probably makes sense.
Ben Goldacre has a section about this brand effect in his book Bad Science
Now can we cure stupidity?
Furries make the internet go.
What will Fark do? They'll have to stop using that "... still no cure for cancer" meme. Wonder what'll take its place.
So I guess chemoterapy and radioterapy fail at step 4 or 5.
As a former cancer researcher at a big biotech pharma company, I also call bullshit. First of all, claiming that "antibodies are cheap and not complicated" just shows your ignorance of the science. The concept may be simple, but the actual production of pharmaceutical quality antibodies is VERY complicated and requires a massive infrastructure. And the average cost to bring a biologic drug to market is about 750 million dollars. As far as paranoid delusions of some company hiding the cure for cancer, I'm also a cancer survivor. Do you think if I was working on something that was "a cure for cancer" I would allow it be buried ? Do you think the entire company could be convinced to hide such a discovery ? Every nearly practical development in biotech seems to end up generating two or three spin-off companies. How are they going to be silenced ?
I have Psioritic Arthritis; my understanding is it's caused by the immune system thinking my skin are joints are cancerous, and so attacking them; that's why the newest treatments are 'tnf' (tumor necrosis factor) blockers, that reduce the immune systems cancer fighting tags.
So, if you have auto-immune disease, these drugs could make your body tear itself apart from the inside, or maybe trigger auto-immune disease where none existed.
But it you're gonna die from cancer otherwise, bring it on.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -Epicurus
bah.
I'll try to resume some data in this message.
Vitamin D supplementation was found in years-long, randomized interventional trials, to slash cancer incidence - by, for example, 77%. ( http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/6/1586.short [ajcn.org] , http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/7/451.short [oxfordjournals.org] ) Even mechanisms of action are known ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076010001822 [sciencedirect.com] , http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.24762/full [wiley.com] , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20936945 [nih.gov] ), althought not all are fully understood.
Vitamin D RDA was 200 IU, which is a joke, almost the same thing as nothing. Specially if we consider the human body will produce 10.000 IU in a 15-minute tropical noon-day sun full-body exposure ( http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/3a0/1e8/00e/Cannell-Vitamin-D-study.pdf [nccdn.net] The FDA was faced with this new Vitamin D pleiotropic effects, and given that the RDA was old and obviusly innadequate, it asked the IOM (Institute of Medicine) to review it. They dismissed a Vitamin-D -cancer connection in a completely biased, and non-scientific report, cherry picked some articles, ignored many articles. It shocked the vitamin-D research community, as this link is more than clear. ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.328/full [wiley.com] , http://brn.sagepub.com/content/13/2/117 [sagepub.com] ). The committee had conflicts of interest, and deliberately suppressed the favourable studies ( http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8225367 [cambridge.org] , http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/today-the-food-and-nutrition-board-has-failed-millions-111112159.html [prnewswire.com])
It's interesting to note that people in the committee were hand-picked to have conclicts of interest and are developing vitamin D analogs (that work the same way, but are patenteable), so their best interest is to keep natural vitamin D the lowest level possible. Like Glenville Jones, from Cytachroma, developing CTAP101, a medicine to treat vitamin D insufficiency. Or Hector F. DeLuca, that has 101 patents of vitamin D analogs. Or J. Christopher Gallagher, working for GlaxoSmithKline, that develops Sirilux, a vitamin D analog to treat psoryasis. There are other to cite, but you got the point.
They turn of the ability for the cell to wave its hand and say, "This is not the cell you are looking for."
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Scientists have been able to cure any and all kind of cancer *in mice* since the two statin combo (that was going to cure all cancer) in the late 90s. So tired of these worthless cancer (and whatever else disease) research stories that never go anywhere. There's DRACO for all viruses....yup, cures them all IF you're a mouse. If you're a lab rat, they can help you. You'll see that nothing will come of this and it'll be forgotten in a few months. If the stuff actually worked, they'd supress it or claim the manufacture isn't feasable. Seriously, as long as there's more money in chronic illness and as long as we've got a for profit health care industry, forget any cures...duh.
Why would it obviate the need for chemo? It doesn't say this eliminates all cancers, just that it shrinks them. And he also says that 'real' cancer is a more complex picture than implanted cancer.
It's a great result, but it needs to be replicated and then adapted and tested in humans before we should start to get over-excited about it. Potential cancer cures with promising results crop up frequently. Many lead to useful treatments. It would be flat out wrong to jump around crowing about the cure for all cancer right now.
This is a fine and solid theory, except you assume that the cheap stuff is still the pure stuff, and not some chalk dust from some hole in the ground on the other hemisphere.
You're an idiot. Let me explain:
There are several pharmacological companies. The compete with each other.
The people who run those companies, the Board, CEO, CFO, ETC get money based on stock performance.
If company A develops a cure for cancers, especial a cure for most/all cancers, there stocks will skyrocket, their competitors stock will drop.
The C*O get bonuses worth 10s of million, if not 100's of millions of dollars. The stock holders and board members all become far more richer then they where.
THINK about what you are proposing. THINK about the current technical and communication environment
If company A develops this, then Companies B,C,D, etc aren't far behind.
Are you seriously proposing the the C*O and board member sit around while other companies make billions over night? Let it sit in drawer so the next generation can make billions?
When you use ad homs like Big Pharma, it tells the world that you aren't actually thinking.
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except discovering a cure for cancer will increase your stock value, considerable.
So even if it was solely about money, they would still release it.
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My insurance company would cover it. Why wouldn't they?
"There is far more money to be made treating diseases than curing them."
A mantra that shows the person who spouts it has no fucking clue about how large corporations work. It's all about the stock value THIS FUCKING QUARTER. not: will this keep are stock value flat for the next decade.
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Then you are stupid.
The stock value would skyrocket, and they would get more value. THAT is what it is about in large corporations.
The CURRENT round of executives will get FUCKING MONSTER BONUSES.
It's the VERY SAME QUARTER TO QUARTER GREED maximization you talk about that would be the reason for releasing a cure.
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Which would they make more money off of- 6 months of chemo drugs, or 40 years of lipitor/viagra/bladder control/whatever*100 other drugs? The dead are not consumers. Maybe they could make more money off of chemo drugs than an anti-body cancer cure, but at the cost of a huge amount of future sales of other products. It's in the best interest of "Big Pharma" to keep you alive, and consuming, as long as possible.
wrong. Vitamin supplementation for people who where deficient in vitamins showed that.More then that is, literally, pissed away.
200 iu was fine because that was a number for food intake. The vast majority if Vitamin D is being out during the day.
The Supplementation industry made a stink, ignored the actual facts and created a marketing campaighn.
Just so you have a chance to not look like a fool: MOST supplementation companies are OWNED by pharmaceutical companies.
So stop make a false dichotomy.
And next time, site ACTUAL FUCKING STUDIES. Try pubmed.
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It is BS,. I can look back 15 years and see akll the advances that show you are wrong.
"There is far more money to be made by treating symptoms then curing people." If there was only 1 company, controlled by one person that owned all the research capabilities, and their growth was determined by how much profit that had you would be correct.
But none of that is true. Stock values determines how well a company is doing. Stock price determine bonuses, stock price determine the mood of the board.
If you half a fucking clue about business, you would know that.
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Anecdote:
I ahve watch sone go througbh cancer several time in my life.
Twice in the 1970s
You have cancer, 6 months later dead.
Once in the 80s. Treamentr with horrible side effects. nasty, nasty side effects. Survived for 4 years.
twice again in the 90s:
bad side effects, one died 4 years later, the other is still alive.
My mother in 2010.
Treatment was nasty, but cause early enough and she is still alive. Her cancer is a cancer that only 5% of peopel who get cancer get.
The anecdote is just that, and anecdote, however it does coincide with the constant betterment of treatments. Less harsh, more specific, less amount of time.
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Thus far, they've been funded by public grants. That SHOULD count for something, but it won't.
Yes, since the promising cure has never even been introduced into a human body before, that is really all he can fairly say about it.
Anecdote: I ahve watch sone go througbh cancer several time in my life.
Twice in the 1970s You have cancer, 6 months later dead.
Once in the 80s. Treamentr with horrible side effects. nasty, nasty side effects. Survived for 4 years.
twice again in the 90s: bad side effects, one died 4 years later, the other is still alive. My mother in 2010. Treatment was nasty, but cause early enough and she is still alive. Her cancer is a cancer that only 5% of peopel who get cancer get.
The anecdote is just that, and anecdote, however it does coincide with the constant betterment of treatments. Less harsh, more specific, less amount of time.
You're absolutely right, surviving cancer today is far more likely than even ten years ago, and it's only getting better. Chemo is still a bitch. My grandmother went through it in the late 90's, and did not survive.
I'm glad your mother made it through. The one thing I learned from my experience watching my grandmother is that the people who choose to fight have to be strong and courageous. Going back for another treatment in a week after they've experienced what the first one did to them? Takes a very strong desire to live to make yourself do that. I did not in any way mean to imply people shouldn't choose to fight, or that a cancer diagnosis is a death sentence. Just that the path to becoming a cancer survivor is a tough one, and I'm not sure if I'm personally that tough. Depending on the situation, I might just give up right away and enjoy the time I've got left as much as possible. That said, nothing makes me happier than knowing there are people like your mother out there, who fight it out and beat that damned disease, and I hope the number of survivors keeps going up.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
You're right; I don't know much about the Amish. If their shunning of certain kinds of tech doesn't diminish the carcinogen exposure risk associated with modern life, go ahead and correct me; I won't mind.
My concern isn't with how well businesses are doing. It's with how well the patients are being taken care of and at what cost. When it's You laying on the table you'll find you're not too worried about stock values.
Your ideas are valid. You could post them without being an offensive asshole though.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial