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If We Can't Kill Cancer, Can We Control It?
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The New Yorker:
In April, [Dr. Eytan Stein] presented his findings to a packed auditorium at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in San Diego. It was the first public airing of the results of AG-221; patients with progressive [acute myelogenous leukemia] had never improved so quickly and definitively. ... The breakthrough is notable in part for the unconventional manner in which the drug attacks its target. There are many kinds of cancer, but treatments have typically combated them in one way only: by attempting to destroy the cancerous cells. Surgery aims to remove the entire growth from the body; chemotherapy drugs are toxic to the cancer cells; radiation generates toxic molecules that break up the cancer cells' DNA and proteins, causing their demise. A more recent approach, immunotherapy, co-opts the body's immune system into attacking and eradicating the tumor. The Agios drug, instead of killing the leukemic cells — immature blood cells gone haywire — coaxes them into maturing into functioning blood cells. Cancerous cells traditionally have been viewed as a lost cause, fit only for destruction. The emerging research on A.M.L. suggests that at least some cancer cells might be redeemable: they still carry their original programming and can be pressed back onto a pathway to health.
My wife just died of breast cancer this week -- she did not live to be 40 -- so articles and research like this give me hope that, when our child grows up, cancer will not be something that takes people's lives away from them so quickly and so young. This is a site for geeks, so I am sure a lot of people know about the brilliant nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, and how his wife Arline Greenbaum died of tuberculosis in the 1940s.
Today of course, tuberculosis is no longer a death sentence the way it was in the mid-20th century, and I think, well before end of this century, cancer will no longer become a death sentence either.
Anti-CD47 is just entering the first human trials at Stanford, and shows a lot of promise. We really should start seeing declining deaths rates and better quality of life.
I feel medical publishing needs to move away from the current paradigm even more than the open-access journals that have been discussed so widely. The company that made this advance, Agios doesn't seem to be a typical "big pharma" company: They are running lean on market cap (350 million in outstanding shares) and big dreams. Imagine a world with a hundred more companies like this could be creating equally innovative solutions. Then realize that the biggest drug company has a market cap that could be funding over 500 Agios's.
Given advertising costs that number is a little deceptive. Nevertheless we are talking about human trials in the US, an enormously expensive process. It's popular to be conservative about medicine, especially in the US and there's a good reason for that but there's a line between looking for more likely results and wasting money on almost exclusive focus on incremental improvements. We've crossed that line.
Medicine is science and science is moving faster all the time. As a society we need to keep up by focusing capital on smaller, more agile companies, not only to prevent the tragedy of unaddressed new problems but to move the state of the art forward as fast as possible. There are lives to be saved.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I have two objections on the "big pharma fighting the truth about cancer" point of view... maybe you can give this some thought and comment on them:
1) how can the pharma have a PERFECT bureaucracy that wins EVERY time a new alternative cure comes along? A lot of people say that big pharma has a big cover up operation in place and no cure will ever be publicised or made viable unless it suits big pharma. However, when articles about alternative cures come along, they are always revolutionary and obviously simple. If that's the case, why don't we see something as simple as gathering 100 or 1000 cancer patients, treat them, document the success and only then release the findings on Youtube/P2P/whatever?
2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?
you are full of shit. As a cancer victim I can say that it is down to risk, if the numbers are against you, age, over weight, lack of exercise, genetics, environment exposure, then you'll be more likely to get some form of cancer. These may go undetected for years, at which point it is too well established to be totally eradicated. Early detection is very important, survival is dependant on early detection and the effectiveness of treatment, sadly the cost of drugs is high and people are not always able to afford them, even in 1st world countries. As for the conspiracy theory, improvements are there, but the thoughts that there are magic bullets out there, being suppressed, is crap. If you want to survive, do the right things, loose weight, build fitness, eat better, look out for body changes, get regular check ups. You can't live forever.
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When you have lost loved ones to cancer - and watched them suffer horrendously and miserably after receiving chemotherapy "treatments" - only to have their last days on earth be an agonzing, living hell for them - you start to question the validity of these treatments and begin open yourself up to the possibility that others who have had a very measurable success with unorthodox treatments may very well be onto something very real and special.
Of course, naysayers will always naysay.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Bullshit. I've seen lots of friends die of AIDS in the early 90s. Now HIV/AIDS is under control. It's now a chronical disease that people can live long productive lives with, as long as they take their drugs. When treated early, most infected people will be asymptomatic except for the (relatively mild) side effects of the drugs. I wish we could say that for most cancers.
Of course unlike cancer, HIV is communicable. And unlike Ebola, it killed many rich white men. These factors might have contributed to the success story of its treatment.
Please don't diffuse complete nonsense. The pH of the body is regulated within very strict limits, generally 7.35-7.45, and a therapeutic window ie a dose of drug X, in occurrence any alkaline agent, that does not kill the patient while killing the disease does not exist. You either don't kill any cancer cells or die with them by taking too much soda.
It would be extremely easy for any individual researcher to publish this research and become instantly famous. Hell, I could do it tomorrow since I am an oncologist and treat patients with cancer for a living. The problem is that it doesn't work.
Two weeks ago I saw a poor lady who was "treated" with soda infusions. Of course the disease spread and, in addition, she suffered a stroke because of the way the treatment was delivered (via intra-arterial catheter!). It's such a pity that patients, in their considerable emotional distress, actually believe that kind of stuff.
PS: Posting anonymously because the incident with the intra-arterial soda infusions got some legal attention.
Why not work on prevention? Cancer rates have quadrupled in the last century, thanks to our increasing use of synthetic chemicals in food and environment. Why not try to get rid of the causes instead of finding out what other sort of drugs and chemicals we can add to reverse it?
And some of us have had relatives and friends saved from cancer using the same treatments.
NB that treatment aren't the same all over the world, in the US the therapy will in many cases continue until death occurs while in many other countries the treatment will shift to make the patients remaining time and death as comfortable as possible once it's obvious that the cancer will be lethal.
Let me give you a brief summary of TFA:
- Some cancers have IDH1, IDH2 mutations that change cellular metabolism
- This drug is the first targeting the IDH2 enzyme that has been tested in humans
- 6 out of 7 patients whose disease (leucemia) had the specific IDH2 mutations had "objective response" to the drug, ie the disease burden was reduced. Note, this does not mean cure.
Now, this is obviously good news, in the same spirit as previous targeted agents like vemurafenib, erlotinib, trastuzumab, crizotinib, especially since it concerns a new aspect of cellular functioning (metabolism). It's too early to say whether the drug will have long lasting impact, but we'll know more after phase II/III trials. It does seem promising.
For patients with AML or MDS and documented IDH2 mutation, the study (NCT01915498) is still recruiting in several centers around the US and in Paris/France (Institut Gustave-Russy). More information can be found in clinicaltrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT01915498&Search=Search).
2) Consider the annual sales and profits of Big Pharma. Then the same for Big Food. IF there's a simple cure using natural food and basic ingredients that big pharma cannot patent, what's Coca Cola, Pepsico and other similarly large companies waiting for to steal big pharma's lunch?
Actually, if a cure was "known" Big Pharma "A" would want to produce it first and charge $$$$$, before Big Pharma "B" does it. It's not like Big Pharma works as a single organism. Multiple companies, competition and all that. Furthermore, don't forget "little pharma". The drug mentioned in the article comes from a little drug company, Agios, not some multi-billion behemoth.Several new drugs have been created by start-ups and were later sold. In fact, Big Pharma mostly does the last part of the pipeline (human trials, FDA accreditations and marketing) but the first part of the drug-discovery process often comes from little inventors who are not afraid to take risks.
I happen to know two people who are in the drug "startup" business and would be quite happy to make $$$$$ selling a cure for cancer to Big Pharma. These are the people that actually do in vitro/in vivo experiments and, trust me, if compound ZZZ were very effective they would be very happy to test it immediately, even if it meant loss of billions for other companies.
Fuck cancer and fuck big pharma fucking patients over over money, so fuck money too.
Think about it: If a company finds a cure for all cancers (emphasis on the plural form, cancer is not just one disease) they could demand any price at all and people would pay it. "Let's discuss payment plans." The inventors would receive hero status and could retire rich as kings of old. You don't think this would sound appealing to the people allegedly sitting on this cure-all?
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The main proponent of sodium bicarbonate as an alternative cancer treatment is Tullio Simoncini, MD. ..
According to the Cancer Treatment Watch Web site, "[Dr. Simoncini] has been using unsubstantiated cancer treatments for 15 years in 2003, his [Italian] license to practice medicine was withdrawn, and in 2006 he was convicted by an Italian judge for wrongful death and swindling"
We are far from general cure for cancer.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've seen one analysis that estimates that if all medical causes of death were eliminated, we would enjoy an average lifespan of about 650 before some accident would kill us. With a lifetime like that, imagine the tall tales you could tell your descendants. And if, in such a society, the most cautious individuals made it to age 1000, would they get birthday cards from Skynet?
My response to those "they're sitting on a cure" conspiracy theorists is that though pharma may be the most powerful lobby in the US, there's a whole world out there. A number of other countries would love the sheer prestige attached to announcing a cure. And even if they gave that treatment away through nationalized health care systems, they would reap huge income from American medical tourists.
If it were anything so simple as ozone or baking soda, we would have known it years ago.
Please don't diffuse complete nonsense. The pH of the body is regulated within very strict limits, generally 7.35-7.45, and a therapeutic window ie a dose of drug X, in occurrence any alkaline agent, that does not kill the patient while killing the disease does not exist. You either don't kill any cancer cells or die with them by taking too much soda.
I'm going to take you at your word that you're an expert, but as a listener you suck. He never said anything about anything 'killing' anything.
He said (to paraphrase): "It seems to make it harder to grow", and, "I'm not a researcher", and "I've seen more than one person go into remission, ostensibly as a result".
It would be extremely easy for any individual researcher to publish this research and become instantly famous. Hell, I could do it tomorrow since I am an oncologist and treat patients with cancer for a living. The problem is that it doesn't work.
Two weeks ago I saw a poor lady who was "treated" with soda infusions. Of course the disease spread and, in addition, she suffered a stroke because of the way the treatment was delivered (via intra-arterial catheter!). It's such a pity that patients, in their considerable emotional distress, actually believe that kind of stuff.
PS: Posting anonymously because the incident with the intra-arterial soda infusions got some legal attention.
Now see I don't think he said that either. Intravenous 'Soda Infusions' sounds like crazy nutter shit to me; I believe his people were eating the baking soda.
He said another thing: If it appeared to cure one person, then it's worth looking into. That's the one thing he said that I am sure is true; there's no such thing as magic, *something* cured them. Of course they are flying blind without scientific training, and only doing it because they feel they have nothing to lose.
What I don't like, is not so much the out-of-hand dismissal, you're entitled to that if you're an expert in the field; but the idea that to even talk about it, is somehow doing a disservice to cancer victims and is a bad thing. Right here in the comments on an article about thinking outside the box in cancer treatment.
Excuse me if you aren't the only one to have gone through that.
Or not. Different people react differently to differente chemotherapy treatments.
Sorry for that to be your case. Fortunately, chemotherapy actually avoids that fate in many cases.
Until you notice that they have had no measurable success, that they are based on quack science (cancer grows on acidity? How does that explain leukemia?), and that, actually, some of them have narrowly escaped being sentenced to prison for manslaughter.
Technically once? If the chance is 50% that's the odds of a coin flip landing favorably.
Which would be a medical cause of death....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
As another doctor and Internist (not the same as the AC), it absolutely hurts to keep talking about the same quackery that has been discussed and dismissed decades ago. It brings false hope to desperate people. It keeps people away from legitimate treatments (Eg: Steve Jobs) which may lead to worse outcomes because of the delay. And it wastes the precious time of both the patient and the medical staff, and promotes distrust of the very people who could likely help cancer patients the most. This is not a benign discussion.
On the technical aspects, anyon
Hmm, I think that the patients on which nonsense treatments actually work, likely were misdiagnosed and didn't have cancer in the first place, but were rather ill from something lesser, which was cured by their immune system as normal.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Wow, congratulations on beating the devil, but keep on being vigilant.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If a company finds a cure for all cancers (emphasis on the plural form, cancer is not just one disease) they could demand any price at all and people would pay it.
It's even bigger than that. The best statement I've ever seen on the subject came from a Slashdot poster, and since I can't remember the specific post (or user, sorry!), I'll just paraphrase:
"Curing cancer" implies an incredibly high level of technical competence, so advanced that anything you touch would turn to gold. You could start to treat aging as a chronic disease.
This should ring true to anyone who understands the biological basis for "cancer". To start with: it's not one disease, it's many, they just all happen to take the form of uncontrolled cell proliferation, which can have many different triggers. Attacking specific molecular mechanisms is difficult because there are so many to choose from (and the targets tend to further mutate over time within each patient anyway, decreasing the efficacy of drugs). Also difficult: killing cancer cells without killing the rest of the patient. To actually treat all cancers at once - without lethal side effects - would require extraordinarily advanced knowledge of human biology and most likely a degree of personalization beyond anything we've experienced. It's the stuff of science fiction.
The supposed "cures" that are being suppressed are either poorly tested experimental leads (pharma companies have more than enough of these already), or dodgy experimental therapies that haven't undergone real testing either, some of which may be outright scams.
I take it that you flunked statistics.
And calculus.
And biology.
But keep it up, positive thinking is good for you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Seriously, a load of bull. "If we can't kill Cancer". You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, the Medical industry and corporations would like that disinfo so they can keep selling placebo medicine and useless overpriced medicine to people, as well as all the devices and aperture. If we get a cure for Cancer, the corporations and medical industry stand to lose billions and trillions in the long term.
We've had the means and we know the means, to kill Cancer, for years. We've had the means to make a special bacteria, or use a special solution, that identifies a specific type of cell in the human body, any specific type.
If you have the means to identify it and designate it, then you have the means to eliminate it. Nano-technology helps there, if not specially designed bacteria.
I know! Let's improve this discussion by talking about vaccines.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If cancer was insta-kill instead of the slow-death-money-milking disease that it is
This ignores a basic fact about cancer treatment: standard chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery aren't very profitable for pharmaceutical companies, and for many cancers, that's all we have. They may be profitable for other sectors of the medical system, but these are also a huge drain on the economies of rich-world countries, who have a big incentive to keep costs down. If you get one of the cancers for which there isn't a $100,000/year drug, your only option is a quick course of debilitating treatment aimed at eliminating metastases, which will either work and leave you cancer free (if you're "lucky" and have one of the less aggressive types of cancer, and/or catch it early), or not work, and you'll die in a relatively short time. Or, if you're especially unlucky, the therapy itself will kill you. No pharma company is getting rich off these patients.
If you do get to take the $100,000/year drug, there's a good chance you'll only add a few years to your lifespan anyway. Which is part of the reason why these drugs are so expensive, of course. On the other hand, a drug that could either a) eliminate cancer outright, or b) suppress cancer permanently for as long as it's taken, would be worth an incredible amount of money, either up-front or over the course of decades. And insurance companies and governments would be much happier shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a treatment that might actually "cure" the patient in some meaningful sense (and enable him or her to keep paying taxes and/or insurance premiums!), rather than a treatment that probably isn't going to work over the long term.
This is true for "general" treatments. (Treatments applied to the whole body, EG-- "General Anesthetic") However, there are also local treatments that are more targeted that can change the environment locally.
Several such treatments exist. In the feild of cancer specifically, you have the various direct radiation treatments, the various nanoparticle+radiowave treatments, and of course, local excision treatments.
In the case of colon cancer, the inner wall of the colon has evoloved to handle some pretty extreme changes in pH, and also insane levels of salinity. Circumstances that if presented in the rest of the body would kill the patient in minutes. (If not seconds).
This tissue is also very thin, only a few millimeters thick.
The crime that the OP really has comitted is assuming that all cancers are interchangable as a general category. They arent.
In the case of colon cancer, a concentrated baking soda enema (or even a supository) would work to keep the ambient pH inside the colon quite low, and would be in direct or nearly direct contact with the cancer spreading in the colon wall at the same time. Healthy colon cells would be easily able to handle this environment, but diseased ones would not.
The major risk of complication comes from disruption of GI Flora from prolonged alterations of the pH in that environment (and from administration of probably not-very-sterile sodium bicarbonate solution directly introducing new microbial strains), and from the risk of possible impaction (if using a supository) or rupture (from overzealous enema use)
As long as the cancer has not yet metasticised, there is no real compelling reason not to couple such a clinically untested treatment like bicarbonate exposure along with a more well documented anti-cancer regimen, but some caveats apply. (If surgery was used to remove the cancer from the colon wall, then common sense applies. Dont use enemas unless directed to do so by your physician. You DONT want your colon to rupture, especially when you are immunosuppressed from having cancer.)
Just understand that not all cancers are created equally. Colorectal cancer is a very real, epidemic form of cancer. However, the ways you treat it are very different from how you would treat, eg, blood cell type cancers, or cancers in bone tissue. You dont need general application of treatment with some forms of cancer.
These may go undetected for years, at which point it is too well established to be totally eradicated.
Sorry bud. But that is some tiny thinking. There will be time, soon enough, where cancer will be no more dangerous than a simple infection.
Human cells get "cancerous" ALL THE TIME. But it's only some very specific ones that are ignored by the immune system and grow. The key to kill ALL types of cancers is to find a markers that the immune system can be stimulated to clean up. That is all.
These are not easy things to do and definitely require research, but these are not insurmountable problems. The days of broad spectrum chemo cocktails are numbered along with notion that "cancer is deadly".
Early detection is very important, survival is dependant on early detection and the effectiveness of treatment
This depends. One tumor is not like another. For example, with breast cancer today, it has been shown that all the effort spent on early detection do not really increase survival. Routine mammograms do increase false positives though. Another example is most common types of prostate cancer. On the other hand, melanoma is critical to have early detection.
sadly the cost of drugs is high and people are not always able to afford them, even in 1st world countries.
That is not a 1st world problem, except in America. Virtually everywhere else, these costs are socialized, as they should be.
do the right things, loose weight, build fitness, eat better, look out for body changes, get regular check ups. You can't live forever.
That is very true. You may not live longer, but you sure as hell will live better. There is a difference between living your last 10 years sitting in a wheel chair attached to oxygen tank, or being able to walk and run and swim.
That depends on what you mean by die. Seems pretty clear today, but technology is always blurring things. Did Henrietta Lacks die in 1951?
We're not ready as a society for elimination of aging. Currently, with money and power generally growing with age, death is the great equalizer. Rich or poor, everybody dies. This is the only thing stopping unfettered hoarding of wealth. Would Bill Gates give away his money if he never aged? I don't know, but it does seem less likely. We'd be stuck in a society where the elders own and control everything, and the young would fight to survive. Murder would replace age-related illness as the leading cause of death.
For this society to work, the time value of money has to be negative, not positive. Money has to decay with time, not grow. This is the way money should work today, but good luck convincing our overlords.
Isn't every cause of death medical?
Just like all the other times, we will have to adapt to the elimination of aging when the time comes. In the good old days before civilization and technology, there was no such thing as grandparenthood. As soon as the longest-lived individuals started to survive plague and war to live that long, we adapted to the new reality.
> This is the only thing stopping unfettered hoarding of wealth.
Except for corporations, which have no lifespan limit.
Choke on the barbed cock of Satan, asshole.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Well, ozone is fatal to most cells, so I suppose that if you exposed cancerous cells to it, it would kill them. Hydrogen peroxide is easier, though, and just as deadly. Hell, even pure O2 is pretty deadly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
All accidents are "medical" in nature in that they cause damage to the body that is medically treatable to an extent, just like any other illness. Therefore, if we could "eliminate all medical causes of death", we would be immortal.
How our minds would survive such an ordeal is a whole different story.
This is what they have been looking for: long term drug therapy they can charge whatever they want for. Pay or die. A cure doesn't pay enough. Yes I am cynical.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I'm pretty sure grandparents existed long before agriculture.
I really doubt that it's possible to 'reprogram' cancerous cells. They usually have so many mutations (including seriously weird ones, like chromosome fusion or duplication) that it's a wonder they can still fission.
My daughter was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in July of this year. she is currently in her second round of chemotherapy.
I doubt whether she will be given the opportunity of being part of this research, but I am really glad that there are continuing advancements happening in this field.
And as a personal point of pride, my son (age 15) was tested, and confirmed as a match for stem cell therapy this weekend ! He agreed without hesitation to help his sister.
Go to Youtube and search for "Run from the Cure"
It seems marijuana cures most cancers and many other diseases.
Of course, this will never be official news due to the Medical Industry, the Government with their U.N. treaty against marijuana, the Media with their livelihood dependent on government and all the people who see it as "too good to be true" because they never heard it from a doctor, the government or the media.
Not actually medicine that makes you high, this comes from vegetative plants in the pre-flower stage. You can't patent marijuana, so the medical industry will never be producing this cure.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Is telomerase antagonists. The key to all cancers is that the cells use a substance called telomerase to rebuild the telomeres each time the cell divides. In essence it makes the cells immortal. But block telomerase and the cell just undergoes apoptosis after so many divisions.
If they found a cure that worked very well, was easy to administer, safe to administer, and cheap to produce - it'd mean they'll be throwing out their billion dollar -treatment- routines that people keep having to come back to otherwise.
That's what patents are supposedly for. No matter how cheap it is to produce, they would have a limited monopoly on it, so they could charge much more than a free market would normally allow.
Not that I normally endorse free markets, I believe from a consumer point of view they break in half once you get two or three large players that shut out other competition.
He effected a bored affect.
I know I'm very late to this discussion, but here goes anyway-- I work in a non-scientific role for the American Association for Cancer Research, so I'm pretty close to most of the research that goes on nowadays. There is no conspiracy to hide a real cure to cancer because cancer isn't one disease-- it's over 200 different diseases. They all involve irregular cell growth, but the similarities pretty much end there. The causes and mechanisms of cancers are many and varied and so the idea that there can be "a cure" for all cancers is ridiculous. There is one thing-- not a conspiracy, but a sad fact. As government research funding gets gutted in the interest of "fiscal responsibility" or some such nonsense, prevention research is suffering. Basic research into human physiology, biochemistry, and other subjects may not yield results for decades. Neither a corporation nor a philanthropic billionaire wants to wait to see the fruits of their efforts. That's where the government is in a unique position to take the reins and do this kind of long-term thing. The AACR is a key partner in the Rally for Medical Research. This is an alliance of over 100 organizations that are about all sorts of conditions and diseases-- not just cancer. They sponsor rallies and "Hill Days" to bend the ears of representatives in Washington, DC. I highly encourage anyone who is genuinely interested to get involved. Also, if you're looking for information on where we are in the fight against cancer from a reliable source, check out http://cancerprogressreport.or... We publish one of these every year at this time. The 2014 report will be released tomorrow and gives a great overview as to where progress has been made and where we are maybe losing ground and why (if we know).
Depends on semantics. By some definitions, you could say an accident/trauma isn't medical, while a heart attack is. I've certainly heard the word used that way. In any case, I think the point was: (i) consider aging to be a medical process, (ii) eliminate all medical reasons for death, (iii) it'd take an average of 650 years for a lethal accident to find you. Kind of a neat exercise.
Personally, if I had cancer I would try everything else before I would accept barbaric chemotherapy treatments. As the saying goes, "if the cancer doesn't kill you, the chemo will". .
And in my case the chemo mopped up the excess cancer cells from all the cancerous lymph nodes they couldn't remove via (barbaric) surgery. So it might be barbaric but in my case it worked. One more nodule removed, several unremovable but controlled by (barbaric) Avastin. So chemo is bad, very bad, but it can work. Of course there are the alternatives..... (no thanks).
The interesting thing with this is not the average, but the change in the distribution. Currently, the population curve has a sharp drop-off around the age of 70; with the elimination of medical causes of death, the curve will assume the shape of a decaying exponential, making that 650-year life expectancy more akin to a "half life".
If such a change happened today, of the 6 billion or so individuals currently alive, at least one of them could be expected to reach an age of over 20,000 years.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
And if you don't like the politics of today's 60-year-olds, imagine the political values o cautious, ultraconservative 20,000-year-olds.
lol no doubt..scientists in general can also be some of the most ego driven people alive, and there is a LOT of cancer researchers out there. we couldn't keep our own hemorrhoids secret if they were publishable. probably not a chance in hell any of us could sit on any significant finding without our head exploding. getting a well-cited paper in a high impact factor journal is too critical to career and epeen/testicular fortitude. hell, i'd kill everyone in my current lab for a Cell paper. :
with more and more targeted therapies showing promise, cancer treatment will continue down the path of personalized medicine to hopefully make cancer a more manageable disease like diabetes. it's a part of us and isnt going anywhere. but, all the magic bullets in the world wont stop the need for the nasty chemo agents/nuclear medicine any time soon, but they do lower the dose needed/side effects felt and raise effectiveness. (usually)
the great hope of priming the immune system has been around forever and just has not been as successful as hoped. it's a HUGE area of research, and should be, but generally speaking any tumor that grows to 1cm+ is pretty much invisible to immune surveillance. getting RNAi more viable as a human therapeutic, and to the needed area, will go a long way towards truly tailoring the cocktail to the patient's tumor and should be a monumental gain, in all aspects of patient care...not just cancer. too early to know how that will play out...complicated shit-storm of off-target effects and inflammation currently. works well in the eye though...
someone mentioned cost: when i was in school a question on my comps was the cost of ID/development and moving a lead target to FDA trials. i think it was ~$300-400 million for the tail end, and since most compounds fail clinical trials....well, there's no small pharm companies for a reason. that was well over 10 years ago. the newest drugs out can cost $7-12k+/month but it's not like those drugs are big money makers. (im not defending big pharm, they're more evil than ppl know.)