cancer
oracknows | November 2, 2012I hate to end the week on a down note, but sometimes it's necessary. It's been a while since I've written about Stanislaw Burzynski. I'm sure you recall Burzynski. He's a hero in the alternative medicine world, having been cast as a martyr to The Man (i.e., the FDA and Big Pharma) because of his selling of a dubious cancer cure that he calls antineoplastons. Although he's been selling his questionable cancer treatments for thirty years now, he's recently been in the news a lot lately thanks to a credulous paean to his activities in the form of a movie that was released in 2010 called,…
sa smith | October 29, 2012NICE!
Gene therapy of pancreatic cancer targeting the K-Ras oncogene
Cancer sucks, but some kinds of cancers suck worse than others. One that really sucks is pancreatic cancer. From the intro of this paper:
Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death among men and women, comprising 6% of all cancer-related death. The disease is usually diagnosed at advanced stage as it causes no specific symptoms in the early stages. Thus, the prognosis is very poor and the overall 5-year survival rate is <5%.
And then there is this:
There are several standard approaches to treat…
milhayser | October 12, 2012Alexander Pope wrote "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," but cancer isn't far behind. Yet when hope springs, it can lead the sick to the unproven, to more dire disease, and death. On Respectful Insolence, Orac tells the stories of two women—one Kenyan, one American—who avoided modern treatment for their breast cancers. Orac writes, "Neglected tumors like this often bleed or rot—or both. It’s truly horrible to behold, and at this point there is nothing a surgeon can do except to recommend local wound care and hope that the chemotherapy works." Sometimes it's not too late. And…
oracknows | October 11, 2012And now for something completely different...
Well, not really. It's a little different, but regular readers will soon recognize it as a variation on the same old theme. One topic I've been writing about since the very beginning of this blog is the alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial, or, more specifically, the breast cancer cure testimonial. Indeed, one of the very first (perhaps the very first) of my "classic" Orac-length deconstructions was about this very topic. It's a topic that's come up again and again, even quite recently. To make a long story short, many breast cancer cure…
cmonforton | October 10, 2012Planning a conference is a pain in the neck. There are loads of details to attend to and the only time you get a little relief is when you can cross tasks off that long, long to-do list. Now imagine learning that clergy, women's groups, labor organizations, immigrants' rights networks and others are urging individuals to boycott the venue where your conference is scheduled. You signed that hotel contract ages ago, paid that hefty deposit and crossed that item off your list. What a dilemma. It's the exact one faced in the last few weeks by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO…
oracknows | October 9, 2012Another year, another Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
While most people who have either been touched by breast cancer or who have a professional interest in it, the significance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is that it is a time, well, to increase awareness and to promote breast cancer research. There is another side to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, however, and it's not just the question of its excessive commercialization, which concerns some people. Rather, inevitably, just as the vaccine-autism quacks have come out of the woodwork for Autism Awareness Month each April, each October…
sa smith | October 3, 2012Orac wrote yesterday about the abominable union between anti-vaxers and anti-GMOers:
“Genetically modified” vaccines and GMOs: Sapping and impurifying all our precious bodily fluids?
My 'message' to these kinds of people? Get over it. Fast. Because you look ridiculous.
Skinner: Im telling you people, the earth revolves around the sun!
Abe: Burn him! [lights the pyre]
Shutton: What a story! [takes a photo]
Abe: [chasing him] Youve stolen my soul!
Average Joes and Janes might, might know a little bit about the Most Famous GMO viruses: Vaccines. And thats all fine and dandy for some of them…
cmonforton | October 2, 2012The Pump Handle is launching a new "Public Health Classics" series exploring some of the classic studies and reports that have shaped the field of public health. If you have a favorite Public Health Classic to recommend, let us know in the comments. And if you're interested in contributing a post to the series, email us at thepumphandle@gmail.com (send us a link to the report or study along with a sentence or two about what you find most interesting or important about it). As we add more posts to the series, they'll all be available in the "Public Health Classics" category.
A headline from…
oracknows | September 28, 2012From time to time, I tussle with various animal rights activists online. Over the summer, unfortunately the radical animal rights types, those who think that, at the very least, vandalism is perfectly acceptable in the name of their cause, some of whom think that action up to and including murder of scientists could potentially be morally justified, came to my campus. They also threatened and harassed an excellent scientist whom I know personally and with whom I've served on a committee. That's a bit too close.
Then there are animal rights apologists whom, although they make a point of…
sa smith | September 19, 2012Science hath no insanity like the XMRV fiasco.
*sigh*
But there is a constant, bright spot in this ridiculous storm, and I dont want it to be overlooked-- The scientific leadership of Robert Silverman, and everyone associated/partnered with his laboratory*.
As a young, hopeful, yet increasingly derisive scientist like myself, Silvermans behavior throughout all of this has been shockingly appropriate. Shockingly responsible. He is doing nothing that a good scientist shouldnt do, but its still shocking when people do the right thing, even at personal, professional, and financial cost to…
sa smith | September 18, 2012This is not overly helpful information for MS patients, but its still good news:
No additional copies of HERV-Fc1 in the germ line of multiple sclerosis patients.
Previous research has indicated that there are endogenous retroviruses that are disregulated and leading to detectable production of ERV proteins in MS patients. They found the bugger involved-- an ERV they named HERV-Fc1. We do not know whether this protein is causing MS, or just a side-effect we might (might not) be able to capitalize on for diagnostic purposes, or whether its a bit of both.
But with all of this previous research…
sa smith | September 17, 2012What happens when the pain gets to be too much? What happens when the drugs stop working? The physicians are giving you as much as you can take without dying, and youre still living with 7, 8, 9 levels of pain, every waking moment? Some of the talk behind physician assisted suicide is to let people decide when enough is enough, and to permanently end their pain-filled hellish existence.
But what if there were options?
What if herpes could bring your pain levels down from 7, 8, 9... to 1-2? What if herpes could take you from 'I want to end my own life' to 'I can handle this'?
What if I…
cmonforton | September 17, 2012When the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act (P.L. 111-347) was signed into law in January 2011, among its aims was providing screening and medical treatment for the fire fighters, police officers, emergency responders and certain other survivors. More than $4 billion was authorized by Congress for the program. The adverse health conditions covered by the program for eligible participants were limited primarily to respiratory and mental health disorders. The list included the conditions that the responders and survivors were already suffering due to exposures at the World Trade…
oracknows | September 16, 2012As part of my ongoing effort to make sure that I never run out of blogging material, I subscribe to a number of quack e-mail newsletters. In fact, sometimes I think I've probably overdone it. Every day, I get several notices and pleas from various wretched hives of scum and quackery, such as NaturalNews.com, Mercola.com, and various antivaccine websites. I think of it as my way of keeping my finger on the pulse of the antiscience and pseudoscience wing of medicine, but I must admit that I don't really read them all, but they do allow me to know what the quacks are selling and what new…
cmonforton | September 11, 2012Let's say you're curious to know whether there's evidence that a particular compound is carcinogenic to laboratory animals or to humans. Maybe you're wondering about UV radiation from tanning beds, or wood dust, or the drug tamoxifen. Do you want to rely solely on the opinion of the compound's producer or an industry trade association, or might you like to know the views of a panel of independent scientists?
Hearing from the latter was the vision for the U.S.'s Report on Carcinogens. It is a program put in place in 1978 by Public Law 95-622 with amendments to the Public Health Service Act…
lborkowski | September 7, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Another study, another support beam in the argument that access to insurance coverage matters — a lot.
In a study published this month in the journal Health Affairs, researchers took a look at rates of amenable mortality deaths — in other words, deaths that shouldn't happen in the presence of timely and effective care — between the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Their conclusion? The U.S. — home to the world's highest rate of health care spending — is lagging behind.
Between 1999 and 2007, amenable mortality rates among men fell by 18.5 percent in the U…
oracknows | September 5, 2012Long, long ago, seemingly in a galaxy far, far away, I first encountered quackery on the Internet. Because I am a cancer surgeon, naturally I gravitated towards cancer quackery at first. Believe it or not, it was quite some time after that before I started to take an interest in what has become a major focus of this blog, the antivaccine movement and the misinformation it spreads. Both are equally damaging in their own way. True, these were back in the deep, dark days when I used to cruise various Usenet newsgroups, ranging from alt.revisionism (Holocaust denial), sci.skeptic (of course!),…
oracknows | September 2, 2012For my international readers, it's a holiday here in the U.S. That means I plan on taking it easy, which means I've decided on doing, in essence, a "rerun." I chose this particular rerun based on my post from last Thursday. I thought that rerunning this particular post is a good reminder of what the cost of eschewing science-based therapy for breast cancer can be, and that price is horrible. This particular post dates back to 2006; so, if you haven't been reading the awesomeness that is my blog that long, it's new to you. I'll be back with new Insolence tomorrow.
I've written before about how…
oracknows | August 29, 2012As a cancer surgeon specializing in breast cancer, I have a particular contempt for cancer quacks. In particular, that contempt smolders and occasionally bursts in to flames right here on this very blog and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere, when I see instances of such quackery applied to women with breast cancer. They are, after all, the type of patients I spend all my clinical time taking care of and to whose disease my research has been directed for the last 13 years or so. That's why I keep revisiting the topic time and time again. Unfortunately, over the years, when it comes to this topic…
oracknows | August 22, 2012Since I seem to be on a roll the last few days discussing cancer quackery, I thought I'd just go with it at least one more day. Frequently, when I get on these rolls laying down the Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, over antivaccine quackery I start whining about how I need to change topics, but not this time around, not this topic. It takes a lot more than what I've posted lately to make me feel as though I need a change of pace. Besides, for whatever reason, the blog fodder is flying at me fast and furious, whether it be the dubious testimonial I discussed yesterday, yet…