Canadian Scientists Cure Cancer... No One Notices?

[DragonChi]

Wow, that's...incredible...and, not that it matters, but im actually FROM Edmonton, Alberta. So 3 cheers for E-Town for such an amazing life altering (in a postive way) discovery, assuming its real. I have no reason to think otherwise.

 

[Jumplion]

I got given a document about the Illuminati by my friend recently and it had a section concerning how they make us ill so we go and take their medication which is tailored to make us more ill so we will then go and take more medication.
Whether you believe in the Illuminati or not, this rings true.
The amount of people I've seen get really fucked up on prescription medication is astonishing, when they probably would've been far better off drinking plenty of ginger tea and sleeping it off.
Of course, that won't work for cancer or anything, but then look at all the stuff about Cannabis' cancer fighting properties...

Not to mention all the stuff I personally got told about my depression being a chemical imbalance, which they then gave me pills for.
Y'know how I beat my depression?
By getting away to a rural area for a week and sitting under trees simply not worrying.
Chemical imbalance my ass.
To me that stinks of literal lies and misinformation.

Personal anecdotes =/= factual evidence.

Thousands of people are helped by these prescription drugs. It is also true that thousands of people are hurt by these drugs. It all depends on the individual. Personally, when I went on medication, it helped me a great deal and I got off relatively quickly. Others are unfortunately not so lucky.

This only reinforces my thoughts on this article just being an "anti-Big Pharma" paper designed to make people go against "tha Man" or whatever.

 

[Matt_LRR]

And people wonder why I rail on about what a sick fucked up system privatized healthcare is. In a socialized healthcare system, where people come ahead of money, we'd have jumped all over this. Too bad we'd rather make money by holding people's own lives hostage until they fork up the dough for a treatment.

...Canada's healthcare system is socialized.

-m

Yes I realize that. It's kind of hard for a devoted liberal like myself to have not seen Michael Moore's documentary after all. My point was directed more towards the American capitalist system, one which I see being much slower to take up any treatment that isn't highly profitable.

Point being that the drug being developed in Canada kinda shoots the "private medicine is the devil" argument in the foot.

-m

 

[Dorian6]

Can't say I'm surprised

I suppose next we'll be hearing that these pharmaceutical companies have done studies showing a "deadly side effect" and they're urging people not to use it

 

[The Moehlinator]

Working in the healthcare field, I can also say that even if the drug itself cannot be patented, the pharm companies would still be interested because they would just patent a delivery system and launch a marketing campaign stating how wonderful they are because they developed a unique and effective way to deliver that vital, life saving drug DCA and now you too can get the treatments for only 5 buttmillion dollars per dose! How exciting!

Without exclusive rights to the drug itself, no company would be interested because all another company would have to do would be to modify the dosage form and the patent would be useless.

Merck: We have a patent for DCA tablets.

Roche: That's cool... We're making enteric coated capsules

Pfizer: Nice. We're making a transdermal implant.

Wyeth: We're making an IV transfusion.

GSK: Shut the fuck up Wyeth. Who asked you?

Not to mention the number of generics who would pounce on this as soon as one of the big pharmas have done their thing...

As a drug its simply not viable.

Yes and no. There would for certain be generic versions, but the doctors would not prescribe the generic versions because the nice, pretty blonde pharmacy rep would stop bringing free lunches and golf outings....and what fun is that? I don't know any actual statistics, but my experience with the pharmaceutical industry has led me to believe the vast majority of medicines prescribed today have generic variations available....yet only the high dollar, name brand versions get prescribed in mass. Plus, in an industry as lucrative as the pharmaceutical industry, you have to believe the large companies get together and say "ok, we can all have variations of this drug, but we all need to sell it at similar prices 90000% profit margins? Everyone good with that?"

 

[Dumori]

It was researched after that initial resarch it works in some cases in other makes it worse. It's not unnoticed but its not in common use unitll the why is found out for differing results.

 

[Lunar Templar]

uh huh

so >.> would i be pyro-kinetic to? cause there's a few people i like to light up ...

anyway ...
gonna call BS on this, cause while I'm not a biology whiz, i do know what mitochondria do, more or less, an that anti it

that, and we would have heard about it

only thing i don't doubt, the pharmaceutical company's response, if its cheap and will fix the problem permanently, they don't want it, hell if it fix the problem permanently they don't want it, they're just as bad as the big oil company's

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

I got given a document about the Illuminati by my friend recently and it had a section concerning how they make us ill so we go and take their medication which is tailored to make us more ill so we will then go and take more medication.
Whether you believe in the Illuminati or not, this rings true.
The amount of people I've seen get really fucked up on prescription medication is astonishing, when they probably would've been far better off drinking plenty of ginger tea and sleeping it off.
Of course, that won't work for cancer or anything, but then look at all the stuff about Cannabis' cancer fighting properties...

Not to mention all the stuff I personally got told about my depression being a chemical imbalance, which they then gave me pills for.
Y'know how I beat my depression?
By getting away to a rural area for a week and sitting under trees simply not worrying.
Chemical imbalance my ass.
To me that stinks of literal lies and misinformation.

Personal anecdotes =/= factual evidence.

Thousands of people are helped by these prescription drugs. It is also true that thousands of people are hurt by these drugs. It all depends on the individual. Personally, when I went on medication, it helped me a great deal and I got off relatively quickly. Others are unfortunately not so lucky.

This only reinforces my thoughts on this article just being an "anti-Big Pharma" paper designed to make people go against "tha Man" or whatever.

I don't disagree with anything you've said. My own experiences cannot be used as a form of objective evidence, this I understand.
But bitter against pharmaceutical medicine am I? Yes, yes indeed.
I do think people are generally a bit too quick to pop a pill and make it all go away when they should really be examining the root of the problem though, and again, I have nothing to quantify this, but is anyone really going to disagree with that?
As far as depression goes, popping a pill will never truly be a replacement for a period of honest self-analysis and focused relaxation. Is this ever said to us? No. And this is why I am bitter against the pharmaceutical industry.

 

[Lullabye]

Holy shit, this is intense.

Also, it's Edmonton, Alberta.

Alberta is weird, like Florida. But IN CANADA!

-tom

Hah no. Its more like Texas here.

 

[SeaCalMaster]

Protip: Most science journalists don't actually have very good scientific knowledge. Their articles thus tend toward the sensational, and you should take them with a grain of salt.

 

[SilentCom]

When I read Mitochondria, some reason I thought midiclorian...

Seriously, if it really is the cure to cancer, why wouldn't pharmaceutical companies flock to them? Who cares about profit, it's the CURE TO CANCER. What could be more special than that?

 

[Nouw]

Scientific Smackdown

My god, what a coincidence! I'm learning about cells in Science!

And to be fair I'm learning very low level science.

 

[uc.asc]

People, please, stop acting like you know Biology, because half of you don't know two craps of what is written there...

This paper have been proved as fact by the community and many third party supporters are angry about this fact.

Then the person who wrote the blog article didn't know what they were talking about; what I said about mitochondria was accurate.

<link=http://www.dca.med.ualberta.ca/Home/Updates/2010-05-12_Update.cfm>Here's a link to the website of the university that made the actual discovery. The article that was linked was a piece of sensationalism; they're still in early trials, and in addition to this, the drug is already widely available, meaning there's no need for drug companies to invest further. Currently, it's an off label use that is being researched to become an on label use. Care to tell me where my biology fails?

Edit: Forgot to mention, according to the article I linked, the drug isn't even a cure for cancer. All it does is halt the growth, and allow other methods to kill the cells that are already there without having to worry about further growth. It's a break through, but not a cure in and of itself.

Besides I have never heard of any nearly always effective, nearly immediate cure. Almost everything I have heard of is a treatment. It helps your immune system do their jobs better.

It's like.... if you send in proper supplies and support you aid soldiers in doing their jobs and taking important objectives, it doesn't do the fighting itself.

What good is an air drop with no one to take the ammo and rations? What good is a tank without a bloody tank crew to operate it?

Not exactly. Most drug-based cancer treatments (chemotherapy) work in ways which fuck up everything, except that they fuck up quickly-dividing cells (i.e. cancer) the most. This is why people on chemotherapy tend to lose hair and fingernails and have gastrointestinal problems; fingernail beds, hair follicles and the GI tract all have quickly dividing cells.

There are some other methods which are more targeted; for example, iodine gathers in the thyroid gland, so radioactive iodine can kill thyroid cancer anywhere in the body while doing less damage to non-thyroid tissue.

 

[emeraldrafael]

well:

A) it happened in Edmonton*
B) it happened in Canada*
*Kidding, of course.
C) it probably needs more testing
D) There's not alot of profit for the medical market from the sounds of it.

 

[Necator15]

This article made my head hurt. There's just such a fundamental misunderstanding of biology, let alone cancer that it's simply astounding.

 

[GrimHeaper]

I already knew about this, it's not a cure all cancer it only stops certain types of very mild cases from developing though it certainly wasn't canada or any of the other stuff up there and is extremely expensive and is hardly 100%.

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

This thread keeps making me think of the band named "Mitochondrion."