cancer
sa smith | October 26, 2011The HPV vaccine is one of my most favoritest vaccines.
From a public health perspective, its efficacy is unprecedented.
From an immunological perspective, learning how the HPV vaccine works is going to teach us something about our immune system we didnt know before.
From a virological and evolutionary perspective, we dont have to be worried HPV is going to evolve 'around' our vaccine, or 'new evils' will take the eliminated variants place.
Its a beautiful vaccine!
It would be great, for women, if boys got the vaccine too. Of course, boys cannot get cervical cancer, but they can carry the…
oracknows | October 25, 2011I usually don't do requests, at least not very often. As selfish as it might sound, I do this blog mainly to amuse myself, which means that I choose whatever topics interest me and write about them. Believe it or not, I'd probably still be doing this even if my readership were 1/100 of what it is. After all, I did it seven years ago before anyone had ever caught on to the glory (and ego) that is Orac. I've just been fortunate in that, for the most part, the topics that interest me enough to write about them are generally interesting enough to a bunch of people every day to read them. That…
oracknows | October 24, 2011There's a disturbance in the Force. Well, in the Dark Side of the Force, as in the Quack Side of Medicine. Basically, there's a rumble in the quackosphere that reached me through three different quack mailing lists that I'm on for the purpose of gathering material for blogging, including--you guessed it--the mailing list of that One Crank To Rule Them All, Mike Adams. This disturbance?
The Healing Cancer World Summit. The promise?
In this unique program you'll discover...
The therapies these doctors and experts are using that they say can prevent and even treat cancers naturally.
The cancer…
oracknows | October 24, 2011As I've said before recently, I have mixed emotions regarding Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On the one hand, I look forward to it because it provides us with a pretext to get out science-based messages about breast cancer and to highlight a lot of the cool science that we do at our cancer center. On the other hand, the quacks see an opportunity in Breast Cancer Awareness Month to spread their message too. That message, not surprisingly, generally involves attacking science-based modalities for the detection and treatment of breast cancer and promoting their "alternative" methods. For example…
oracknows | October 21, 2011A couple of weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of Steve Jobs' death, I took issue with the claims of a skeptic that "alternative medicine killed Steve Jobs." At the time, I pointed out that, although it was very clear that Steve Jobs did himself no favors by delaying his initial surgery for nine months after his initial diagnosis, we do not have sufficient information to know what his clinical situation was and therefore how much, if at all, he decreased his odds of survival by not undergoing surgery expeditiously. To recap: Did Steve Jobs harm himself by trying diet and alternative…
oracknows | October 16, 2011We humans like control. Actually, we need to feel as though we are in control. Perhaps that's why, when we aren't in control--can't be in control, for whatever reason--we instinctively seek ways of being more in control, or at least of feeling as though we are in control. I've often wondered if providing the illusion of control is part of the reason for the appeal of quackery alternative medicine, or, as it's become known these days, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" (IM). That, and the human need for certainty.
Think about it, taking cancer (my…
cmonforton | October 10, 2011Freshman congressman Larry Bucshon (R-IN) scolded OSHA chief David Michaels for using the term "cancer" as a buzz word. The congressman, who is also a thoracic surgeon, said:
"I don't like it when people use buzz words that try to get people's attention, and cancer is one of those."
The exchanged occured last week at a House congressional oversight hearing called "Workplace Safety: Ensuring a Responsible Regulatory Environment," where Members were examining some of OSHA's enforcement and regulatory initiatives. Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, David Michaels mentioned lung cancer in…
oracknows | October 9, 2011I debated a while about whether I should take this particular post on. It's not because there isn't a lot of fodder there deserving of that special form of not-so-Respectful Insolence that only Orac, in his usual inimitable fashion, can provide. There most definitely is. The problem, as is sometimes the case when I get on a roll, is that it represents going back to a topic that I've already covered very recently. In fact, it's a topic I've already covered twice, namely Steve Jobs and the insulinoma that ultimately killed him. Last week, I reposted what I wrote about him back in 2009 after he…
oracknows | October 6, 2011It's been a mere two days since Steve Jobs died. Although it hasn't yet been revealed what his specific cause of death was, it's a good bet that Jobs' death was due to a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer, first diagnosed in 2003, for which he underwent surgery in 2004 and ultimately a liver transplant in 2009. It's a history that I outlined yesterday (at least up to the time the original posts were written) by reposting two posts I wrote about his liver transplant back in 2009. But a funny thing has happened since then, and that's that Jobs has become a flashpoint in an argument that has…
oracknows | October 6, 2011
Another day, another grant. Well, not exactly. We have a visiting professor in town, and I have to give a talk at our department research retreat today. Between going out to dinner, working on the talk, and working on the grant, another day has passed without new Insolence. Bummer. But that pales in comparison to having learned last night while at dinner that Steve Jobs has passed away. Apple fanboy I may be, but I was surprised at how much the news saddened me. It did, however, make it easy to figure out what post(s) I would rerun today. In 2008 and 2009 I did a series of posts about…
lborkowski | October 3, 2011One thing that drove me nuts during the healthcare reform debate was the scare tactic of claiming that proposed legislation would result in rationing of healthcare. The problem with making such a claim is that healthcare is already rationed in the US. We ration healthcare based on insurance status and ability to pay. And, as a story from NPR's Richard Knox points out, we ration when there are supply shortages -- as there are now with several important drugs. Here's Knox's overview of the problem:
The shortages involve a wide range of medications: cancer chemotherapy agents, anesthetics,…
oracknows | September 25, 2011When you've been at this blogging thing as long as I have, it's possible to be shocked at how long you find yourself commenting on the same story. As I approach the end of the seventh year of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, I find these "senior blogging moments" popping up from time to time. One such story is that of a young man named Abraham Cherrix. I first learned of Cherrix back in June 2006, when, a few months after having been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 15, Cherrix, supported by his mother, decided that he didn't want to take any more chemotherapy and…
oracknows | September 21, 2011We get hate mail. Or I do. True, I don't get an inordinate amount of hate mail, but I do get some. A lot of the time, it's rather boring and predictable, which is why I don't often respond to it on the blog, although sometimes against my better judgment I respond by e-mail. That happens less and less frequently, though, given my e-mail volume between work, personal life, and the blog.
Less tiresome is hate mail from proponents of alternative medicine whom I have apparently really, really annoyed. Well, sometimes it's less boring. Often it's very boring indeed, but sometimes when I'm in the…
oracknows | September 16, 2011"CHEMOTHERAPY KILLS!!!!"
I've lost count of how many times I've come across brain-dead statements like the one above, often in all caps on websites resembling that of the Time Cube guy, quite frequently with more than one exclamation point, on the websites of "natural healers," purveyors of "alternative medicine." In fact, if you Google "chemotherapy doesn't work," "chemotherapy is poison," or "chemotherapy kills," you'll get thousands upon thousands of hits. In the case of "chemotherapy kills," Indeed, the top two autofill choices I get on Google for "chemotherapy kills" are "chemotherapy…
sa smith | September 15, 2011This study is a case study from this study (lol):
Chimeric Antigen Receptor-Modified T Cells in Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia
I imagined this scene happened in one of their lab meetings:
I didnt go in-depth as to how everything was working before, so I thought I would do it now!
This paper is a case report of an individual who had a B-cell cancer. The patient had tried everything and anything recommended to him by scientists (no mention in the report of him disappearing for 6 months to Mexico for 'vitamin c' therapy, or whatever stupid thing wooers push to 'cure' cancer) and he was still dying…
oracknows | September 7, 2011I don't recall how many times I've said lately that I detest the term "integrative medicine." As I've pointed out time and time again, it's the preferred "successor," if you will, to the term "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) (at least among the woo-friendly). After all, as I've pointed out before, it just won't do to have the fashionable quackery du jour be considered as only being "complementary" or "alternative" to real medicine. That implies at best that it has a subsidiary role to real medicine and at worst that it is not real medicine, being "alternative" and all. The whole…
lborkowski | September 2, 2011A study just published in The Lancet compares the incidence rates of cancers in firefighters who worked at the World Trade Center site during and after the 9/11 attacks to the rates in firefighters not exposed to the disaster or its aftermath. Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Montefiore Medical Center and the New York Fire Department's Bureau of Health Services found that WTC firefighters had an overall cancer incidence ratio about 10% higher than that of a general population with similar demographics and 32% higher than that of non-WTC firefighters.
Firefighters who…
sa smith | August 29, 2011Just to make this clear up front:
WHAT I AM ABOUT TO WRITE ABOUT IS NOT A 'CURE' FOR CANCER. ITS A NEAT IDEA WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO CAPITALIZE ON IN THE FUTURE. ITS COOL! NOT A 'CURE'.
Perfect example of the potential domesticated viruses have to tame deadly diseases!
Tumor Cell Marker PVRL4 (Nectin 4) Is an Epithelial Cell Receptor for Measles Virus
... only the human tumor cell marker PVRL4 (Nectin 4) rendered cells amenable to measles virus infections... It is highly expressed on many lung, breast, colon, and ovarian tumors suggesting that they could be targeted with oncolytic measles…
oracknows | August 25, 2011A couple of days ago, I couldn't resist discussing a recent article in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research. I considered the article to be a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. While the article did a pretty good job of describing recent discoveries about how noncoding RNA, the tumor microenvironment, and even microbes are involved in the pathogenesis of cancer, it had an annoying spin that portrayed some of these discoveries as being much shinier and newer than they actually are. At the time, I noted that quacks would certainly use this article as a jumping-off…
oracknows | August 23, 2011About a week ago, there appeared a story in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research written by George Johnson and entitled Cancer's Secrets Come Into Sharper Focus. Overall, it was a better-than-average article for the lay press about recent discoveries in cancer research that go beyond just the cancer cell and just oncogenes. I must admit, however, that certain aspects of it irritated me, not the least of which is that it appeared to buy into one of the most cliched of tropes about medicine and science in spinning the story along the lines of "everything you know about…