cancer
sa smith | March 21, 2012Common everybody! Sing the chorus with me, you know the words!
The vast, vast majority of ERVs are junk. They are genomic pirates, and your genome is doing the best it can to keep them silent. When ERVs are making noise, its a sign that something has gone wrong. Very, very wrong. Like, for example, breast cancer:
Immunotherapeutic Potential of Anti-Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K Envelope Protein Antibodies in Targeting Breast Tumors.
This paper has the potential to lead to something incredible. Lemme try to convey how cool this is...
Like I always say, cells not only making ERV RNA, but…
oracknows | March 15, 2012If there's one quack who both amuses and appalls me at the same time, it's Robert O. Young. You remember Robert O. Young, don't you? He's the guy who thinks that all disease is caused by excess acid. I've written about him quite a few times over the last several years. For instance, he amused me when he declared that cancers are all liquids, and this liquid is the "toxic acidic waste product of metabolism or energy consumption." In fact, he goes beyond that by saying that the tumor making up the cancer is the body's protective mechanism to encapsulate "spoiled" or "poisonous" cells. And what…
oracknows | March 6, 2012If there's one thing that practitioners of dubious cancer therapies rely upon, it's testimonials. If there's one such practitioner who really, really relies on testimonials, it's Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, founder of the Burzynski Clinic. Dr. Burzynski is known for what he refers to as "antineoplaston" therapy (which he massively oversells and is currently rebranding as sodium phenylbutyrate) and a highly dubious "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy." The results of these testimonials are patients from all over the world organizing fundraisers, or, as I put it, harnessing the generosity…
cmonforton | March 5, 2012The Center for Public integrity's Jim Morris was the first to report that two long awaited cancer mortality studies of US workers exposed to diesel exhaust finds significantly elevated levels of lung cancer. Researchers with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) proposed the studies two decades ago, going great lengths to address methodological limitations identified in previous epidemiological studies of diesel exhaust-exposed workers. The bottom line, and with now stronger evidence than ever, there should be no question…
oracknows | March 2, 2012I was originally going to write about an amazing article that appeared in the NEJM today, but then, as happens all too often, something more compelling caught my eye. Unfortunately, it's compelling in exactly the wrong way. It's infuriating and saddening, all at the same time. It's also yet another example of how it's so very, very difficult to blog about these cases. Yes, unfortunately, it's Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski again in the news, and this time around he's managed to snare yet another unfortunate family into believing the hype about his "antineoplastons," his "personalized, gene-targeted…
cmonforton | February 17, 2012"What's taking so long?" might be uttered by a youngster waiting for a parent to assemble a swing set, or an art patron waiting for a conservator to restore a masterpiece. When the wait is finally over and the eager child or art lover see the final product, they realize the time was well spent.
Public health and worker safety advocates have been asking "what's taking so long?" for the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete a review of a draft occupational health standard. A 1993 Executive Order gives OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) authority…
lborkowski | February 16, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
What's being called the first-ever such criminal conviction, an Italian court has returned a guilty verdict against owners of Eternit, the Switzerland-based building materials company. Two weeks ago, W.R. Grace announced its bankruptcy case settlement for the residents of Libby, Montana where the company's vermiculite plant exposed residents to deadly asbestos fibers for decades. While more than 40 countries, including Italy, have banned asbestos use, it remains legal in the US. An effort by the US Department of Justice hold W.R. Grace criminally liable for the Libby…
milhayser | February 16, 2012
On The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski surveys a new report on chronic illness released by the Institute of Medicine. Borkowski writes, "diabetes and heart disease are what leap to my mind—in part because they're so tied to the lifestyle factors of smoking, inadequate exercise, and poor nutrition, and in part because they cost our health system so much money." But other physical (and mental) afflictions beleaguer tens of millions of Americans (116 million of which, for example, suffer from chronic pain). In total, the IoM report "highlights nine 'clinical clusters' that together 'encompass and…
oracknows | February 15, 2012It's been a while since I mentioned Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston doctor who has somehow managed over the last thirty-plus years to treat cancer patients with something he calls "antineoplastons" without ever actually producing strong evidence that they actually cure patients, increase the chances of long-term survival, or even improve disease-free progression. Although there was a tiny bit of prior plausibility behind the concept--albeit only very tiny--back in the 1980s, the relentless drip, drip, drip of negative evidence, coupled with Burzynski's failure to advance his therapy…
cmonforton | February 14, 2012The world's largest producer and supplier of beryllium and workers exposed to the highly toxic mineral decided not to wait any longer for federal OSHA to draft a proposed worker safety rule on the hazard. Last week, the United Steelworkers International Union and Materion Brush (the only U.S. manufacturer) sent the complete text of a draft regulation to the head of Labor Department's Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Individuals exposed to the metal may become immunologically sensitized to it, and develop a unique disabling, chronic lung disease. Beryllium is also…
sa smith | February 6, 2012Last time I talked about why treating cancer is so hard:
Why havent we cured cancer yeeeeeet?
Briefly, scientists did complete genome sequencing of seven individuals prostate tumors, and things were all kinds of jacked up. Not only were all seven tumors different, but one tumor had over 200 chromosomal rearrangements. Like taking your genome and shuffling it like a deck of cards.
As if that kind of complexity isnt bad enough...
Another group of scientists sequenced the genomes of acute myeloid leukaemia patients pre- and post-treatments:
Clonal evolution in relapsed acute myeloid leukaemia…
cmonforton | February 2, 2012Communities affected by contaminated air, water and soil, workers retaliated for complaining about safety issues, and vulnerable groups abused by organizations charged with protecting them, are topics at the heart of public health. This week they are especially recognized by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government as finalists for its Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Four of the six teams of journalists dug deep and reported on issues intrinsically linked to public health.
The Center for Public…
cmonforton | January 30, 2012The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing new for OSHA---an agency that has only issued two new major health or safety standards in the last 10 years.
To put these new projections from OSHA in perspective, I'll refer to forecasts made previously by the Obama/Solis Administration in 2009 and…
cmonforton | January 25, 2012A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly a year, although the Executive Order (EO) giving OIRA authority for such review sets a four-month maximum time limit.
The signatories on the letter to President Obama, many of whom are members of the Union of Concerned Scientists or the…
oracknows | January 23, 2012I was disturbed several months ago when I learned that the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, had agreed to be the keynote speaker at the Eight International Society for Integrative Oncology Conference in Cleveland, OH. I say "doubly" disturbed because it disturbed me that Francis Collins would agree to speak at such a function and, perhaps even more, because the host institution was Case Western Reserve University, the institution where I both completed my surgery residency and my PhD in Physiology and Biophysics. Sadly, it now appears that my old stomping…
cmonforton | January 20, 2012Money talks, as the saying goes, and a recently published paper on the annual cost of work-related injuries and illnesses should get policymakers to listen up. The number is staggering: $250 Billion, and it's a figure on par with health conditions like cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes that attract much more attention and research funding.
The author, J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a professor of health economics at University of California Davis, assembled data from more than a dozen sources to estimate the annual economic burden of occupational injuries and illnesses. Using data from 2007…
oracknows | January 19, 2012It's a new year, but some topics remain the same. One of these is the case of the highly dubious cancer doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who claims to have discovered anticancer compounds in the blood known as antineoplastons, conducts "clinical trials" for which he charges patients and whose results he are largely unpublished, and of late has started marketing a do-it-yourself "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy" that--surprise! surprise!--almost always involves antineoplastons. More importantly, contrary to Dr. Burzynski's claim that he doesn't use chemotherapy and that his therapy…
cmonforton | January 12, 2012The late Steve McQueen---the King of Cool---will be honored later this year by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) with its "Keep Me in Your Heart" memorial tribute award. McQueen starred in dozens of films including the The Great Escape (1963), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Bullitt (1968), and Papillon (1973). He died in November 1980 after being diagnosed a year earlier with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.
His wife, Barbara Minty McQueen, will accept the award on her late husband's behalf at ADAO's annual conference scheduled for March 30…
oracknows | January 11, 2012For all the good things about my life there are, there is one bad thing, and that was that I was born so that I reached high school age right at the height of the disco era. At least, that's the way I viewed it at the time because at the time, like many teenaged boys of that era, particularly in Detroit, I hated disco. Loathed it. Despised it. I used to draw cartoons in the back of my notebooks showing Robert Plant destroying disco records, and I was a card-carrying member of DREAD. Not for me were the Bee Gees, who were so huge during my sophomore and junior years in high school, although I…
cmonforton | January 11, 2012Washington State becomes the first in the nation to adopt specific workplace safety rules to protect healthcare workers who are potentially exposed to anti-neoplastic drugs and other hazardous medications. The new rule, issued earlier this month by the State's Department of Labor & Industries, stems from legislation passed in April 2011 and signed into law by Governor Chris Gregoire. The rule applies to healthcare facilities in which employees are "reasonably anticipated" to have "occupational exposure to one or more hazardous drugs." The CDC's National Institute for Occupational…