Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

[Anita18]

I'm intrigued by your knowledge of DNA. Do you think we'd come closer to a cure for HIV/AIDS being that cancer will seem to never be cured? Do you think more research should be towards that subject?

Well, since HIV/AIDS is caused by a specific virus, you can fight that virus and know for sure that you're doing something that will help stop it. You can't really "cure" something that's caused by a virus because it will always exist in your bloodstream once you get it. (Same with bacteria, but at least we have antibiotics...) BUT, you can get the numbers low enough so that you won't suffer ill effects. That's why you can only get chicken pox once, plus it's how vaccines work. Once your immune system has fought it once, it'll be much more equipped to fight it in the future. The reason why people always seem to get to get the same colds and flu is because they aren't caused by the exact same virus. They're all caused by different viruses that coincidentally cause the same set of symptoms. Cancer is the same way - I don't think cancer can have a cure or even a treatment that is guaranteed to work in everybody, because cancer has many causes.

Think of it this way - cancer is a build-up of things that can go wrong in DNA. There certainly can be individual sequences that are out-of-order or even missing in DNA without any negative consequences, but build up enough of those mistakes in certain genes, and it MAY lead to cells that can't stop dividing. The collection of mistakes needed to cause cancer differ in certain cancers, such as the BRCA mutations that are correlated with breast cancers. Again, just because you have that mutation doesn't mean you'll get cancer for sure, it just makes it more likely.

(On a side note, to minimize the likelihood that your cells will suffer a mistake during DNA synthesis, you have to minimize the necessity of having them divide so much in the first place. Meaning, you have to minimize inflammation, because that means cells are dividing quickly to replace ones that are dying en masse. Minimizing inflammation means you shouldn't smoke, bake in the sun, or excessively drink, all that obvious stuff you hear about preventing cancer. The nutritional stuff is still up in the air...)

Scientists at my workplace (not my lab, we don't work with people) are looking into genetic markers in certain cancers, because they've discovered that some drugs will successfully treat cancers with a specific mutation but not others. If you have that mutation, the treatment will likely work for you, but if you don't, it's not worth the time, money, and potential side effects. In the short term, I believe getting patients' genetic histories will be the ticket to finding more effective treatments. But it's definitely slow-going, because again, there are many causes and we have to find the mutations one-by-one, THEN find/produce the medications that will be effective towards those mutations.

 

[Mike_D202]

I read an article last year that even eating bar-b-q'd food can cause cancer. I'd say maybe we should all live in a bubble but I'm sure living in a bubble could cause cancer as well.

 

[cryptic name]

The world is overpopulated...so I WILL be the guy to say it...there should not be a cure for cancer anytime soon. Sorry. We have a serious population problem on our hands people. While humans still have land to spread out on...they can only do so by taking away other species homes and food supplies. Sorry to say, but we are just mostly *******s to this planet.

If they're going to die, they'd better do it! And decrease the surplus population!

 

[Anita18]

I read an article last year that even eating bar-b-q'd food can cause cancer. I'd say maybe we should all live in a bubble but I'm sure living in a bubble could cause cancer as well.

That's because BBQ is often slightly burnt, and burnt/fried food contains acrylamide which "may" cause cancer.

But again, it's a case of numbers. You'd have to be eating A TON of BBQ to really effect your probabilities in getting cancer, if eating acrylamide caused cancer at all. (Remember, correlation doesn't equal causation.) I'm talking a ton of it all day, every day.

There was also some study a while ago that eating a lot of peanut butter raised your chances of getting leukemia. I was told this by a roommate's bf who, hilariously, smoked.

So yeah, I personally don't take stock in most (if not all) of those nutritional studies. Everyone's metabolism works in different ways, and the possibly-cancer-causing chemicals you get in food are so miniscule compared to a lot of other things. Like smoking. Sometimes people really miss the forest for the trees when it comes to stuff like that.

 

[fracture2112]

The world is overpopulated...so I WILL be the guy to say it...there should not be a cure for cancer anytime soon. Sorry. We have a serious population problem on our hands people. While humans still have land to spread out on...they can only do so by taking away other species homes and food supplies. Sorry to say, but we are just mostly *******s to this planet.

As somebody who is currently dealing with cancer-related woes...**** YOU. You can easily say that kind of trash from behind the safety of your keyboard without fear of someone putting you in your fat place. There are millions of people out there that would kick your sorry ass for saying that. I myself would join them if such an event were to take place.

Your pathetic attempt to have a intelligent opinion has failed. Go back to 4 chan, you massive failure of life.

 

[Anita18]

I read an article last year that even eating bar-b-q'd food can cause cancer. I'd say maybe we should all live in a bubble but I'm sure living in a bubble could cause cancer as well.

To 100% guarantee that we'd never get cancer, we'd need to stop our cells from dividing in the first place. And that's pretty incompatible with ya know, being alive.

 

[Anita18]

As somebody who is currently dealing with cancer-related woes...**** YOU. You can easily say that kind of trash from behind the safety of your keyboard without fear of someone putting you in your fat place. There are millions of people out there that would kick your sorry ass for saying that. I would join them if such an event were to take place.

Go back to 4chan.

I'm sorry to hear that, cancer really is hell to go through.

And that's about on par with ETM's posts in general. Guy hasn't had a lot of general life experience, wouldn't be surprised if he's never seen what a painful and debilitating toll cancer (and cancer treatment) is on people. I see it regularly where I work. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

 

[kane9321]

this story is bs

 

[SuperFerret]

Plus, ETM is stealing my material. And yes, Anita, by all natural rights your (and my own) need for spectacles means that we should be dead. We're not though.

 

[JAK®]

This story likes to pop up every now and then.

 

[THE MR. TERRIFIC]

This could be true. Money rules the world and the high ups would rather make money then benefit humanity. That's just the world we live in.

 

[Anita18]

And Boing Boing does the debunking for me!

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/19/there-is-no-miracle.html

Here is something fundamental that you need to remember: Every moment of every day, there is tons of research happening that is centered around chemical compounds that might be useful in some medical application. New compounds are discovered. Existing compounds are tested in new ways. Sometimes, one of these compounds looks particularly interesting to a researcher. They'll publish on it, and their school or institution will put out a press release. Basic chemistry isn't much of a news hook, so these press releases tend to speculate about what the compound could be used for, how it might benefit us someday.

There are so many of these sort of press releases floating around at any given time that journalists who focus on medical science talk about them as a separate category. But, just because a compound is interesting in a chemistry sense, or just because it has shown promise in some in vitro laboratory tests, doesn't mean that it will ever be useful in a practical application. It is very common for a compound to kill cancer in a test tube, but not actually do anything in a human body. Sometimes, a compound successfully fights cancer, but isn't actually safe for humans. And, most importantly, "cancer" isn't really one disease. Different cancers have different causes and require different kinds of treatment—even the same cancer at different stages might not be able to be treated the same. A compound could be effective against stage 2 leukemia, but not do a damn thing to treat stage 4 breast cancer.

DCA is just one of those chemical compounds that scientists are excited about. It's made it past some of the most basic, early studies, but we don't yet know how effective it truly is, and what it's effective against. From what I have read about it, the vast majority of research has been in vitro and in animals.

The first trials mentioned in the studies were done on tumors taken out of cancer patients, and the only study that utilized patients themselves, they were ALSO being treated with chemo and radiation, not just DCA. It was just a dosing trial - seeing how much DCA one could take without getting sick or dying. It was not a study for using DCA by itself as a treatment.

Yeah, science is always more complicated than people originally think it is.