Cancer-Fighting Cells

Associated Press - direct feed | September 19, 2002 | PAUL RECER

[NYer]

people will talk about the "hidious" and "archaic" things we did to patients who had cancer

Okay, this will date me but I remember watching the Jerry Lewis telethon while growing up. Back then, patients were placed in an iron lung. It had a mirror pointing down towards their head which allowed them to see what was going on behind them. They would be wheeled out on the stage to talk with the show's host. One look at these poor souls and the phones would ring off the hook. Talk about archaic!

[Siobhan]

Amazing. Bump

[luckodeirish]

Well, you can't be that old, cause I certainly am not (am not, am not!) and I remember a neighboor woman we had who had polio and sometimes would be on an iron lung, which of course all the kids thought was so cool to see....



But was the telethon in black and white? :)

[tabsternager]

Thanks for the post. I'll send it to my dad, who very recently had melanoma that went to one of his lymph nodes.

[Salvation]

This is very encouraging news.

I agree!

[Billthedrill]

Correct - the white blood cells of leukemia do not "mature" - some immunologists prefer the term "evolve," although Lord knows the trouble that word will get me into on FR - and are produced by their precursors in an uncontrolled fashion. These white cells are mature, targeted, and the difficulty was not to control their production, but to get the body to continue to produce them at all in sufficient numbers to attack a gross somatic phenomenon like a tumor.

A BTT for my buds at Fred Hutch. For those wondering why scientists are reluctant to test these treatments on even terminal patients, you need only to look at just how badly Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center was trashed earlier this year by a Seattle Times expose on one of their disease protocols that resulted in the "untimely" demise of a couple of patients that the "experts" at that newspaper declared were insufficiently informed of the dangers of the treatment in question. Second-guessing in this field is more prevalent than in politics, even, and the reward is a potential Pulitzer prize and a hefty settlement to the heirs. If any of these end up with cancer rest assured that they'll be the ones bleating the loudest about new treatments being fielded too slowly.

[Romulus]

It is amazing, and wonderful. Sometimes I think about the overwhelming preponderance of medical cures in the catalogue of supposed miracles submitted in various causes for canonisation, and reflect on God's special interest in healing and restoration in terms of their larger, theological significance.

[stainlessbanner]

bump-to-the-top!

[Billthedrill]

"Disease protocol" = "research protocol." Shouldn't type when I get irritated...

[eastsider]

]P]romising new treatments such as this take many years to even get to the point where terminal patients are offered a chance to try them.

Unless you have a politically correct disease like AIDS.

[andysandmikesmom]

Thanks for your post #26....you helped clarify what I was trying to say, about the differences in the maturity of white blood cells...

As to Fred Hutch....well, we were there with my son, because he needed a bone marrow transplant....I can hardly think of any group of doctors, that were more caring, more genuinely interested in curing as many patients as they could, and also never saw doctors, give so many warnings about the many and various dangers of the medical protocols that would be used in connection with the bone marrow transplant...

One of the doctors told us, that as far as he was concerned, having a bone marrow transplant, and all that it entailed, before and after the actual transplant(which really is a misnomer, its not really a transplant, but rather an infusion of bone marrow), made this procedure one of the most dangerous, and 'morbid' of all medical procedures, yet one that can and does potentially cure many people, especially many children...

I find it really hard to believe that anyone who was at Fred Hutch, was not fully informed of all the dangers and pitfalls associated with medical protocols...when we were reminded constantly of this fact, to make sure that we really understood what we were possibly going to have to face...

[Askel5]

The placemarker did it for me ... lol.