Interesting.
Last night I read this article about cancer in the July issue of Scientific American. Current thinking about the disease as being "rogue cells" suffering DNA damage is changing towards tumor-as-organ model, whereby the tumor has a support network that includes hijacking the immune system.
The goal is to make cancer a chronic disease that doesn't kill you, but you live with until you die from something else.
Treating cancer with drugs is like weeding your lawn with napalm. It's criminal that we're spending such a large proportion of available resources on treatments of such infinitesimal effectiveness, rather than doing the basic research necessary for real cures.
In 20 years, we should be able to do protein modelling sufficiently well that we can infect cancer patients with viruses that kill only cancers, based on the cancer's unique properties.
This is all interesting data - but as someone who's worked in healthcare for a long time - I don't think it's fair to portray the whole industry as an abysmal failure.
Cancer care has vastly improved over the past 5-10 years from what I see. If nothing else we are not killing them with chemo as much as we used to.
We may not have a cure for metastatic cancer yet, but our treatments are definitely giving patients more time with a better quality of life than we used to.
For folks interested in this, one of the better articles on the quest to find the cause of cancer was published in SciAm about 4 years ago-- Untangling the Roots of Cancer by Wayt Gibbs.
The recent follow-up to the Gibbs piece in SciAm -- Chromosomal Chaos, was, of course, written by our favorite scientist, Dr. Peter Duesberg.
BTW, TallDave's analogy -- weeding your lawn with napalm -- is exactly right. Poison (chemo), Slash (surgery) and Burn (radiation) have been hyped and exaggerated as effective treatments.
My cousin's wife has been diagnosed cancer free (from melanoma) after a regiment of MDX-010 (still in trials). Any thoughts on the applicability of this sort of drug to other forms of cancer? I did some reading about it a while ago and it seemed like a distinct break from the chemo approach.
Eric, I hate to try to field questions like yours before the entire series is done, and I'll let Drs. Miklos and Baird answer commenters after the series is done some time next week.
However, on a personal level, I'll say a few things:
1) I'm actually in favor of FDA "fast track" testing of various approaches--in fact I think we should be testing far more approaches than we are now and the "fast track" system is actually much too slow and limited.
2) On a more personal level, I am deeply skeptical of any approach which looks at viruses and vaccines as a primary preventive or treatment for malignant cancer of most sorts. That someone got better after being part of some experiment really doesn't prove much of anything, which is the whole purpose of rigorous application of the scientific method in the first place.
I know that's not an entirely satisfactory answer. And it's only my personal opinion. Miklos and Baird can answer if they want to but all I'll say is: "well yes, that's interesting that someone with melanoma got better when getting this vaccine. Others with melanoma also get better without this vaccine. So what is the significance?"
To some that seems evasive. To others it seems dry and clinical. In fact it is the truth.
But on a personal level? I think the idea that a virus causes most (most) cancers is probably bullshit on its face.
8.2.2007 8:41pm
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
Last night I read this article about cancer in the July issue of Scientific American. Current thinking about the disease as being "rogue cells" suffering DNA damage is changing towards tumor-as-organ model, whereby the tumor has a support network that includes hijacking the immune system.
The goal is to make cancer a chronic disease that doesn't kill you, but you live with until you die from something else.
In 20 years, we should be able to do protein modelling sufficiently well that we can infect cancer patients with viruses that kill only cancers, based on the cancer's unique properties.
Cancer care has vastly improved over the past 5-10 years from what I see. If nothing else we are not killing them with chemo as much as we used to.
We may not have a cure for metastatic cancer yet, but our treatments are definitely giving patients more time with a better quality of life than we used to.
For folks interested in this, one of the better articles on the quest to find the cause of cancer was published in SciAm about 4 years ago-- Untangling the Roots of Cancer by Wayt Gibbs.
The recent follow-up to the Gibbs piece in SciAm -- Chromosomal Chaos, was, of course, written by our favorite scientist, Dr. Peter Duesberg.
BTW, TallDave's analogy -- weeding your lawn with napalm -- is exactly right. Poison (chemo), Slash (surgery) and Burn (radiation) have been hyped and exaggerated as effective treatments.
Barnes, Hank
However, on a personal level, I'll say a few things:
1) I'm actually in favor of FDA "fast track" testing of various approaches--in fact I think we should be testing far more approaches than we are now and the "fast track" system is actually much too slow and limited.
2) On a more personal level, I am deeply skeptical of any approach which looks at viruses and vaccines as a primary preventive or treatment for malignant cancer of most sorts. That someone got better after being part of some experiment really doesn't prove much of anything, which is the whole purpose of rigorous application of the scientific method in the first place.
I know that's not an entirely satisfactory answer. And it's only my personal opinion. Miklos and Baird can answer if they want to but all I'll say is: "well yes, that's interesting that someone with melanoma got better when getting this vaccine. Others with melanoma also get better without this vaccine. So what is the significance?"
To some that seems evasive. To others it seems dry and clinical. In fact it is the truth.
But on a personal level? I think the idea that a virus causes most (most) cancers is probably bullshit on its face.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.