What do you guys think? Bunch of baloney, or does this hold merit? Is extra pain while you're taking the drug worth killing the cancer forever? I would think so.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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On the surface it doesn't look like baloney, but it seems odd that we wouldn't have noticed something so simple by now. Still, crazier things have happened.
We'll know once the clinical trials are completed.
And as for pain, current cancer treatments aren't exactly a walk in the park.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I'm trying to keep my optimism low, but if they're already considering clinical trials, it sounds cautiously promising.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I'm not specifically a cancer biologist (my focus right now is HIV), but I took a glance at the abstract of the original paper in Cancer Cell. I'll read the full paper at work tomorrow, when I actually have access to the journal contents. From what little there is in the abstract, though, the proposed treatment does sound promising, with some caveats. The authors note in the abstract that "several human cancers" show the differences in membrane potential from normal cells that allows DCA to initiate apoptosis (cell death) selectively in the cancer cells, which suggests to me that it may only apply to specific types of cancer, rather than "all cancers" as the New Scientist article suggests. But if their experiments are sound, then their results are definitely very encouraging. I'll let y'all know my final thoughts once I read the whole thing tomorrow. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Huh, that's the principle Laetrile is claimed to work on, though it has been dismissed as quackery for as long as I can remember. Keeping in mind that the metabolic properties of a cancer cell are a different matter from what a substance would be activated to do in the presence of those conditions. The latter action is where Laetrile was dismissed.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:And as for pain, current cancer treatments aren't exactly a walk in the park.
*glances down at scars from port-a-caths*
No kidding.
Pain can be treated. In fact, I'd much rather deal with pain during treatment than I would nausea. Pain is, in my opinion, more easily treated. The days I dreaded the most weren't the ones with the pain, but the severe nausea which didn't respond to medication. Even my post-surgical pain was easier to deal with than the constant nausea.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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