cancer
terrasig | January 18, 2008Erleichda is the nom de plume of a guest blogger who contributes regularly to The Friday Fermentable columns. The act of contributing a column periodically on the topic of wine is consistent with the philosophy embodied in his pseudonym, i.e., to "lighten up" (from 'Jitterbug Perfume' by Tom Robbins).
Erleichda holds a PhD in microbiology following a baccalaureate in the same discipline. Post-doctoral training was received in tumor immunology and virology. While initial employment involved transplantation immunology research for a few years, a subsequent job at a research institute focused…
oracknows | January 15, 2008
Today is a very sad day around my lab.
I've just been informed that one of my scientific heroes, the man whose work inspired me to enter the research area that I entered, namely tumor angiogenesis, died last night. Yes, sadly, Dr. Judah Folkman reportedly died of a heart attack last night.
I had the honor of meeting Dr. Folkman on two or three separate occasions, one of which was for a laboratory meeting that involved discussion of our lab's work. A self-effacing and humble man, he was a true scientist, always questioning, always thinking of new hypotheses to test based on answers that…
terrasig | January 15, 2008This missive came in yesterday from NIH, apparently sent to all investigators funded by the agencies:
A recent open letter to Secretary Leavitt (PDF here) from Dr. Roland Nardone and several experts in cell biology highlighted an important methodological issue associated with research involving cultured cells. The letter identifies a number of instances in which research has been based on misidentified or contaminated cultures. In some cases, proper characterization would have altered the experimental outcome significantly. Improper characterization can impede efforts to replicate…
oracknows | January 9, 2008(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.)
Cancer is scary. It's very, very scary, even when it is a cancer that is treatable and potentially curable. It's such a common disease that, by the time we reach a certain age, the vast majority of us have seen at least one friend or loved one die of some form of cancer. All too often, that death is horrific, and even when it is not the wasting and weakness that is often seen before the end provokes a visceral reaction matched by few diseases. Moreover, the treatments of cancer can be toxic.…
scientificactivist | December 31, 2007An individual cell inside the human body is in a dynamic environment: it not only has to anchor itself to its surroundings but also be able to communicate with them and respond as appropriate. One group of proteins--the integrins--play a central role in all of these tasks. The integrins are large (about 200,000 Da) membrane-spanning proteins, and each integrin consists of two subunits (alpha and beta). The vast majority of the integrin is located on the exterior of the cell, where it anchors the cell to the extracellular matrix. Each subunit has a short tail inside of the cell, and the…
oracknows | December 27, 2007It's been a while since I've heard anything about Abraham Cherrix, the teen who rejected conventional chemotherapy for Hodgkins' lymphoma in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy. Ultimately, there was a legal battle resulting in a compromise that allowed Cherrix to pursue "alternative" therapy at a clinic in Mississippi run by a radiation oncologist who, in addition to providing radiation, also provides a variety of "alternative" therapies. When last we left Abraham Cherrix, after multiple recurrences on low dose radiation plus an unproven "immunotherapy," he had no evaluable disease…
oracknows | December 20, 2007Maybe it's unfair to proclaim this a "well, duh!" study, but its conclusions do seem rather obvious. On the other hand, it's information that we need in a cold, hard scientific form, and I'm glad that the investigators did it:
(AP) -- Uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die within five years as those with private coverage, according to the first national study of its kind and one that sheds light on troubling health care obstacles.
People without health insurance are less likely to get recommended cancer screening tests, the study also found, confirming earlier research.…
oracknows | December 19, 2007I used to be of the opinion that there might just be something to acupuncture. No, I never thought there was anything to the notion that acupuncture "works" by somehow rerouting the flow of a magical life force (qi) that no scientific instrument can detect and that no practitioner of acupuncture (or other practioners "healing arts" that invoke qi or something like it as the reason that they can heal) can detect either, even as they claim to "release blockages" of or somehow improve its flow. Rather, I wondered whether the simple act of sticking needles into the skin might release some hormone…
oracknows | December 18, 2007Several months ago, i wrote quite a few posts about a new anticancer drug that had not yet passed through clinical trials but had demonstrated efficacy against tumors in rat models of cancer. The drug, called dichloroacetate (DCA), is a small molecule that targeted a phenomenon common in cancer cells known as the Warburg effect. Because DCA is a small molecule that is relatively easy to synthesize, the misguided news stories proclaiming it the "cure" for cancer that big pharma wouldn't fund because it was not patentable spawned a cottage industry of charlatans who used the Internet to sell…
oracknows | December 11, 2007How could I have been so remiss? I totally forgot to plug a new blog carnival that I really should be plugging, given my area of scientific interest. Yes, indeed, it's a new edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival, with lots of scientific bloggy goodness to enjoy.
Worse, I forgot to submit anything to it. I'll have to remedy that next time...
oracknows | December 10, 2007Dr. Rashid Buttar is a quack. There, I've said it. It's my opinion, and there's lots of evidence to support that opinion. As you know, I seldom actually invoke the "q-word." Indeed, for the longest time after I started blogging I tended to go out of my way to avoid using it, even to the point of being a bit ridiculous, but in Dr. Buttar's case I now have little choice but to make my opinion of him plain.
I've noticed before that, as far as antivaccination cranks and the mercury militia go, when it rains it pours, and stories about such lunacy seem to come in waves. Weeks can go by without my…
terrasig | December 8, 2007We've been speaking about this issue on behalf of our lymphoma colleagues since late August.
But yesterday's New York Times (Alex Berenson) and Wall Street Journal's Health Blog (Jacob Goldstein) brought greater awareness to the issue of Medicare's proposal to cut reimbursement for "smart-bomb" radioimmunotherapies for lymphomas. So far, it appears that Medicare will move forward with plans to cut reimbursements for two RIT drugs, Bexxar® and Zevalin®, to less than their acquisition costs to hospitals.
This issue had already mobilized Newsweek's Jonathan Alter to write a piercing screed…
terrasig | December 8, 2007I can't do any better than this today:
I finally got around to reading yesterday's Cancer Research Blog Carnival that I cited and was completely entranced by Matthew Zachary's essay in The Huffington Post about his long battle with medulloblastoma. It was posted originally in July and provides outstanding insights on the life of a cancer survivor.
While many oncologists are all too familiar with cases like Matthew's, this is required reading for anyone involved in cancer research, especially us basic scientists whose research is sometimes funded by organizations working toward "The Cure."
Aw…
oracknows | December 8, 2007Sorry, but I can't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude over this. Chelationist extraordinaire Dr. Rashid Buttar is, it would appear, in a bit of trouble:
A Huntersville doctor is facing charges of unprofessional conduct.
Dr. Rashid Buttar's alternative medicine clinic treats autism patients from the around the country, but tonight there are questions about his treatment of cancer patients.
The North Carolina Medical Board's allegations are spelled out in a 10 page document.
They could ultimately lead to the revocation of Dr. Buttar's medical license.
He is accused of offering therapies that…
terrasig | December 7, 2007I've been terribly remiss as of late in both promoting and submitting to blog carnivals. However, I wanted to draw your attention to an interesting new carnival and the latest edition of an old stalwart.
The Cancer Research Blog Carnival is hosted this week at nosugrefneb.com/weblog written by Ben Ferguson, an MD/PhD student in cancer biology and a capella jazz singer at the University of Chicago. Ben also writes for Medscape's med student feature, The Differential, and produces the Pritzker Podcasts for prospective students interested in the University of Chicago. In his spare time, he is…
oracknows | December 5, 2007The other village quack of the Chicago Tribune has decided to enter the breast cancer fray again.
No, I'm not talking about the main village quack of the Chicago Tribune. That would be Julie Deardorff. Rather, I'm talking about the Chicago Tribune's newly minted breast cancer crank, Dennis Byrne. We've met him before, parroting credulously an incredibly bad study claiming that it had found a slam-dunk association between abortion and breast cancer. How bad was the study? Well, it was so bad that it was published in that bastion of politically-motivated pseudoscience, the Journal of American…
terrasig | December 3, 2007With the help of the good people at Patients Against Lymphoma, we've been following the ruling by Medicare that costs of radioimmunotherapeutics for lymphoma would now only be reimbursed at less than the acquisition cost (CMS-1392-FC). So ridiculous is this proposition that Newsweek's Jonathan Alter weighed in with an article, "How Washington is Nixing a Cancer Cure."
We've now learned that two senators are modifying the language of the bill coming up for approval by the Senate Finance Committee tomorrow (4 Dec). However, there seems to be misinformation spreading regarding the affordability…
oracknows | December 1, 2007Yesterday, I wrote about the overwhelmingly sad case of Dennis Lindberg, the 14-year old Jehovah's Witness who died because of his misguided adherence to the twisted interpretation of a 3,000 year old Biblical text and the court's acquiescence to this lunacy. So did P. Z. Myers. In response to the post on Pharyngula, I saw a comment that disturbed me greatly:
At the hospital where I work we have a procedure in place just for JW's. We have a stack of court orders waiting. When the patient loses consciousness a doctor fills out a form declaring them no longer capable of making their own…
oracknows | November 29, 2007It looks as though the Jehovah's Witnesses have claimed another life. This time, though, it wasn't an adult, as it was recently. This time, though, through the indoctrination inherent in the Jehovah's Witness religion and, incredibly and inexcusably, the acquiescence of our legal system to their irrational and dubious interpretation of a text written thousands of years before blood transfusion was ever contemplated, the life lost was that of an adolescent:
A 14-year-old boy who refused blood transfusions in his fight against leukemia -- based on religious beliefs -- died Wednesday night in…
oracknows | November 17, 2007Ever since I started blogging about a story about a youth named Chad Jessop who, it was claimed, developed melanoma and cured himself of it with "natural" remedies, with the result that his mother was supposedly brought before the Orange County Superior Court and his mother thrown in maximum security prison and denied the right to hire her own attorney, I've been fascinated at the contortions of the person most recently responsible for spreading this story, a blogger who goes under the pseudonym of the Angry Scientist. For one thing, the first person to spread this story by e-mail, Thomas…