Don't buy into the idea that this hope for a cancer cure won't be researched and brought to the market. The argument that only patented drugs are sold or researched would imply that aspirin, ibuprofen and vinegar douche wouldn't be available.
I agree with your analysis about generic drugs. However, the problem is that for Dichloroacetic acid to be approved as a cancer drug -- it has already been approved for "rare metabolic conditions -- the drug will have to tested for its efficacy in treating cancer. Therefore, it is clear that drug needs to undergo several years of very expensive testing. This leaves the difficult issue of how the drugs trials ought to be funded. In Canada, given that the Federal and provincial governments spend more 1/5th of the budgets on healthcare, it would probably make sense for them to foot the bill; there is a chance that the drug will deliver to patients much better health-outcomes at a much lower cost to the provincial health plans.
All of the items you named are old. Now medicine is built around the principle of getting deadly conditions to the point where the drug companies can milk you for years of profit. Its about treating symptoms. Cure don't make money treating only the pain does. Hope that you or someone you love never gets seriously ill because no one will cure it they will simply drag out the sickness. I don't often agree with Glen Beck but this time he is right.
Glen Beck isn't wrong, but he misses the issue (probably because he confuses the issue of the drugs efficacy -- which has not been proven in humans -- with the drug's ownership and consequent issue of who will pay for the regulatory approval process). No one owns the patent to DCA. Therefore, no drug company has an incentive spend the tremendous amounts of money running trials to get the drug approved. The problem isn't that evil "big pharma" is blocking the approval of the drug, the problem is the very structure of capitalism and intellectual property laws. Therefore, the important questions is how does society ensure that DCA is tested. Glen Beck does address this problem, but ignores discussing possible solutions about the problem, perhaps because he got so indignant about there being a problem in the first place.
World Citizen, I am not sure what you are referring to when you say that "All of the items you named are old."
In the last Alberta Provincial budget, the government spent a vast amount of money on medical research. They announced that they were trying to attract medical researchers from around the world to establish research Centres of Excellence, or something like that. This story hit the news here about a year ago, about the time the budget was being developed. The Alberta government is famous for it's frugality, so this story's discussion about government assistance certainly is true; somebody here thinks we might have the cure for cancer.
cancer is not A disease, it is MANY, MANY diseases....the term "cure for cancer" comes from the mistaken notion that it is ONE disease.....it is NOT
when people post and blame this on big pharma, they do not have a clue what they are talking about.......there are many molecules that kill cancer in the lab (arsenic is one of them), but it is VERY expensive to test this on humans correctly so that we don't kill more people than we save
there are certain cancers (e.g. leukemia) that respond well to drug therapy.......this is the result of massive amounts of time and resource spent by organizations that may or may not have a profit motive......please don't involve socialized medicine in this debate (it has nothing to do with it)
DCA has been used for years as a treatment for some metabolic disorders and has shown side effects the most severe being peripheral nerve toxicity and even cancer... yes... it has been seen to CAUSE CANCER!
"DCA and TCA are involved in TCE-induced liver tumorigenesis and that many DCA effects are consistent with conditions that increase the risk of liver cancer in humans."
There is no one cure for cancer, there never will be due to the vast differences in different types of cancer cells.
I agree with your point. It may very well cause cancer, and it certainly is not the "silver bullet" to cure all cancer. However, in the balance of risk, if this does turn out to cure certain cancers, and the side affects are deemed acceptable, this may very well be a signicant medcal breakthrough. After all, many existing ubiquitous technologies save hundreds of millions of lives, but still pose a very small but acceptable health risk.
lol glenn beck has obviously never heard of oxycontin(oxycodone) if he thinks pharm. companies have any trouble keeping their patent and screwing other companies out of producing generic versions.
I suspect that despite your name -- which is the same as a proposed type of matter in physical models of the galaxies and universe -- you are not, or would not be, very good at university level physics.
Don't worry though, many stupid people lead very happy and successful lives; the president of the United States for Example.
"Disease of age?" Tell that to the 3 year old with neuroblastoma.
This isn't "The Fugitive." Believe me that if someone thought they had an effective CA drug it will go through the appropriate clinical steps. Let me remind you also that Big Insurance likes to save money, so they'll be all over this.
Like Johnny Researcher said, there are alot of "miracles" that don't translate into humans.
We covered this guys research paper in a Cancer Journal Club at work. The data is very nice which is why it ended up in Cancer Cell and it is a great step forward. This paper shows DCA effects in cancer cells grown in culture (on plastic dishes) as well as in a rat model where the animals are injected with lung cancer cells. So cells grown in culture are a useful tool to point you in the right direction for in vivo work (i.e. rat studies) and the rat studies are a good tool to point you to the clinic in humans but no way should people with cancer be clamoring for this compound. Cancer cells in culture are riddled with acquired mutations that allow them to be grown in culture and rat models are done in "nude" models. This means that the rats are unable to mount an immune response to the injection of the foreign cancer cells leading to greater tumorigenicity. So now you have an immunocompromised rat injected with immortalized/mutated human lung cancer cells that are treated with DCA and the researchers find that the tumor growth is slowed down. Like I said this is a great step but there are an awful lot of caveats to the findings. phd makes a fine point - DCA is a carcinogen - and since the tumor bearing rats don't actually lose their tumors they would probably have to be treated with DCA long term increasing their susceptibility to secondary cancers not to mention other toxic effects. The researchers also show no survivability curve in their data which leads one to think that while the tumor size is reduced in the DCA treated rats the tumor burden remains the same in terms of malignancy and both the treated rats and controls die within the same time points. They didn't show this data so I am speculating. As far as expecting Big Pharma to chase this - these are companies not charities, they answer to shareholders not patients. Sure they provide drugs they have developed for compassionate use when they are not through clinic and when the patient can't afford the treatment but why should they be expected to throw money at a compound that is readily available from chemical companies that they have not developed, can not be patented, and would require millions in capital to move through the FDA clinical nightmare? If anyone is going to research this compound it should be academic institutions working together with the NIH and NCI which, I'm sure, they are doing.
A heady discussion, and informative. From a non-clinical view, it seems to me that this situation argues strongly for some sort of system that would permit voluntary human use. As noted, a cancer victim facing almost certain death might well wish to join the effort to find an effective medication. To pass without that effort is surely less noble than to pass after having tried to help...and perhaps, some might actually be saved.
Actually worldcitizen and canuck, you should be basing your position on facts, not looking for facts to back up your position. Canuck, the fact that you take the latter as a compliment and deem it to be acceptable casts more doubt than ever on anything you post.
HAAAHAHAAAAAAH!!! Canuck, you have been played like a fiddle. That nice lady, susanvi, was an alias that I created just for you!!! To prove it, I'll have her tell you to f' off. SUCKER!!!!
Put that pompous twat in his place! Had you posted the lady's comment under your own name, he would have blasted it. Just goes to show that he is not objective in his responses. Bases it on who it's from, not what it is. I actually got the impression that he was hitting on the woman!!! Lowlife.
Apparently, throbber is old enough to get you - hook, line, and sinker.
Seriously though, how can you argue with throbber's logic above that you should be basing your position on facts versus looking for facts to support your position?
The guy impersonates a female, and you talk about "facts"?
Ummm...yeah. okay.
So really....how old are you?
(Actually, he claims he was deported from the UK to the US; but given his faulty reasoning and his love of childish games, his credibility is nil. Kinda like yours.)
And by the way, everyone is impersonating someone here. You using your real name dickwad? As susanvi said, you talk in vulgarities to people you've just met in real life? No? Then you're a phony hiding behind a computer.
"And by the way, everyone is impersonating someone here"
Using a pseudonym on an internet thread, rather than one's actual name, is not the same as impersonating a female.
I "talk in vulgarities"?
"You using your real name, dickwad?"
Apparently, I'm not the only one.
As to my answer to your quaint little alter-ego...it stands. It was sincere at the time it was written, and I stand by it.
"Then you're a phony hiding behind a computer."
"Phony"? Well, ok then. Go back and bring up one thing (ANY thing) I was "phony" about. Please do. And that challenge is open to Barney as well. And I'm not aware of what "question" of Barney's I'm actually not "addressing" (although I've asked you both twice how old you are, with no answer. Doesen't matter; doubt it will be an honest answer anyway).
Well, it appears that under a diffferent stage name, you have this to say about my arguments, "your points, of course, are quite sound and reasonable".
2) Not being a priest or rabbi has nothing to do with it. You asked for ANY example of being phony and I gave you the cussing online one - someting you lcearly don't do when you meet people in person for the first time.
Being prone to "cussing", and being "phoney" are mutually exclusive; one has nothing to do with the other. You're basically using a George Bush argument, i.e. one has something to do with the other, much like saying or implying that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Completely different, and one has nothing to do with the other.
I honestly fail to see how a complete and utter fucking imbecile like yourself does not understand about that. Seriously. How long have you lived your life while asleep at the wheel? How long have you flown on auto-pilot? Like, really, get off it already, will ya?
Being fat and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
("Animal House", 1979, directed by John Landis, starring John Belushi, Tim Matheson and Donald Sutherland--a fine Canadian actor, in an equally classic comedy film)
Wrong. They are not mutually exclusive. When you act one way in person when meeting someone (no cussing), but act another whne meeting someone online (cussing), one has to be phony. Take your pick, but since you're one person, one of these behaviors has to be phony.
And again, you didn't address the point.
And again, you're back to your roots of cussing. If your response to susanvi was sincere, why are you now cussing again?
Canuck, you're too stubborn to admit whne you're wrong which undermines your objectivity. Digging your heels on the ground on this one makes you look foolish.
A position on a given topic should be based on available information (facts) = my contention.
Getting facts to support a position on a topic = your contention (you agreed with worldcitizen)
How you can continue to argue this is beyond comprehension.
And I'm not even going to mention your 'mutually exclusive' argument. Absurd.
worldcitizen, just want to reply that dragging out the illness, and only treating symptoms is not always the case. My niece was 15, ovarian cancer. An army of medical personnel in three hospitals and two states dedicated almost two years to getting her over it. They did. I will say though, the cost was astronomical. Somebody made money on it, but none of us really cared at the time.
and the answer is finally here...it all comes down to the allmighty dollar.think about it. the hospital, the doctors, the percriptions...all money.it may be a real cure, but it will put alot of people out of a job and no money is spent if you can get well too soon. there is no long term money spent in a cure.
hossrex, I see your point as from your point of view. But if it is your child, your family member, no, you do not care if you have to sell your house. Are you comparing a house to a child's life? Any of us, or all of us, would have done so, gladly. And there were many expenses that were agonized over, only inasmuch as, where are we going to get this money? Not that we didn't want to, but whether or not it could even be done. It comes down to, what do we have to do to get this child well again. That's the only thing that goes through your mind, and that's all we cared about. That's what I meant.
Glenn Beck's logic is pure bullshit. If big pharma won't make the cancer drug, smaller/overseas companies will and rake in billions. You need healthy young men and women for wars and labor and whatnot...
I doubt cancer will 'go away' if this drug is safe and effective. Note the U. of Alberta guy says the drug just kills the cancerous cells, he's didn't say it fixes the genetic mutations that occur which cause the cancer, nor precancerous cells, and the drug probably kicks your liver's ass. The real magic bullet would be a preventative cancer vaccine or nanite that protects against destructive cell mutation.
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