Posted on 04/01/2007 2:44:52 PM PDT by neverdem
WITH the cancer recurrences of Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow the question arises: Why does this still happen? As is often the case, the answer isn’t very satisfying: not all cancers are alike, early detection doesn’t always work and treatments are still far from perfect.
But there’s another problem: we keep focusing on doing the same thing better rather than trying something new. It is as if we are wearing blinders that let us see only one path and not the alternatives.
If you look at most cancer research journals you will see that our focus remains on finding smaller cancers, doing less surgery and radiation and developing new drugs to add to the old ones in an attempt to treat the cancers we detect. This approach — finding the enemy, and then slashing, burning and poisoning it — hasn’t changed since I was a resident in training 30 years ago. We have certainly refined it over the years — two publications just came out that recommended expanding the use of M.R.I. scans in women who have breast cancer or are at risk for it — but, as in this situation where the additional exam only identified 3 percent more cancers, each progressive development leads to a smaller increment in benefit.
Why do we lack new approaches? One of the key problems is the way research on cancer is carried out. In the past it was common for clinicians to observe their patients, come up with a hypothesis regarding diagnosis or treatment and then head to the lab to test it out. For instance, in 1983, two Australian clinicians — one was...
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At a breast cancer conference in San Antonio last December, a leading cancer researcher, James Holland, presented evidence suggesting that breast cancer may also have viral associations.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think she's a liberal, but I think she's right about thinking out of the box. There are other microbial pathogens associated with cancer. H. Pyelori, the bug that causes 80 - 90 percent of gastroduodenal ulcers is also associated with MALT lymphomas. Epstein-Barr virus is believed to cause Burkitt's lymphoma. IIRC, there are others.
Read "The Ph Mircle".
enough said.
Bump for later.
One reason is that we are wasting too much money on AIDS research and not enough on Cancer.
I wish I could do more than offer prayers.
She is a liberal. But she wrote the single most important and substantial book I've ever read about breast cancer and continues to do substantial research into prevention. So as far as I'm concerned, she's out working for the good of humanity and her politics are her own.
>"her politics are her own"
FReepers have a "folding" project going on which uses your available computer time to fight disease.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1805959/posts
Two left wing scum, refugees from DU I guess, have joined and left names mocking the effort, Ronald Reagan and FReepers.
ProsecuteBushCheney,
EndBushWarProfiteering
Their twisted politics is irrelevant to me. I welcome their participation and I hope their involvement helps find a cure for cancer.
We have a good friend that has spent years and years as a cancer research doctor. When his own mother developed brain cancer,and died, he said that the inability to know what to do for her just overwhelmed him.
Thanks for your kind thoughts.
Don't be an idiot. Unless Susan Love, MD is one of the individuals hijacking the "folding" project (those who have made their politics something other than their own), you have no point.
And then there's genetics ...
Cheap, 'safe' drug kills most cancers.
It has to do with mitochondria, whose main purpose within the normal cell is turning glucose into energy. It turns out they are also responsible for triggering apoptosis, or natural cell death. In cancer cells, the mitochondria are unable to carry out this normal function, so cancer cells live forever.
Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, have recently discovered that dichloroacetate (DCA, for short) can turn the mitochondria back on and reinstitute apoptosis. They have demonstrated this on human cancer cells in test tubes, and also on human cancer cells transplanted into mice. They are anxious to begin human trials, especially since DCA is very cheap and relatively non-toxic.
This Wikipedia page on dichloroacetate has lots more information, including caveats on side-effects to the nervous system and possible increased risk of liver cancer. They also mention that only 5% of test-tube successes are successful on real cancers in live people, so there are no guarantees, of course.
Here's a general Google search on dichloroacetate and cancer.
What the heck are trophoblasts? They are the cells that cover the embryo at the time of implantation into the uterus. They have the special property that they completely defeat the immune system of the mother so that they can embed themselves in the wall of the uterus and allow the embryo to become a "parasite" on the mother.
In the normal course of cell differentiation, these trophoblasts migrate to a specific position in the fetus and transform themselves into cells which become the ovaries or the testes. At around day 52 or 53 of gestation, the fetal pancreas kick in, producing an enzyme that kills off any remaining trophoblasts.
One of the most deadly kinds of cancer is gestational choriocarcinoma where, roughly speaking, the trophoblasts go wild and allow the fetal cells to continue invading the mother's body, beyond the uterus.
One version of the trophoblast theory says that sometimes some of the trophoblasts survive, and end up distributed randomly throughout the body. Due to an unknown trigger, a trophoblast may awaken, and start multiplying -- practically anywhere in the body -- triggering cancer. Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez has developed the Gonzalez regimen as a possible treatment for cancer, and has begun trials with funding from the National Cancer Institute. The Gonzalez regimen includes pancreatic enzymes in hopes that they will have the same effect on trophoblast-like cancer cells as they do on trophoblasts in the embryo. (There's lot's more info on Beard's theory at the Gonzalez link.)
Thanks for the links.
This is so spot on.
We've had a "war on cancer" my entire life and not all that much has been accomplished, relative to the investment of time, money and brainpower.
I read Science Daily and similar sites. There are constantly reports of basic research that "may provide insight into novel approaches" to fighting cancer. Yet the vast majority of cancer patients are still exposed to "slash and burn" therapies that have changed only incrementally.
The medical world is hamstrung by its inability to reassess its own "truths" and think outside the box.
Okay, Susan, here's a "wild idea" for starters.
One of the things obvious to anyone who reads up on medical research is the startling lack of "connecting the dots" that goes on.
One guy finds a protein that does "x," but that info is never collated with the hundreds of others bits of research discoveries that might actually add up to a workable hypothesis, a new paradigm, a adjuvant therapy, and on and on.
Maybe this exists, but it seems that software that could analyze and document relationships between research findings could be very productive when used by people trained to think about the meaning of those relationships.
Wow, thanks! I'm going to check that out.
Ditto war on poverty.
Liberals OWN defeat...
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