cancer
oracknows | October 3, 2006Abel explains, in the first part of a promised series.
This is a topic I've been meaning to write about for a long time but somehow never got around to it. Abel explains nicely the barriers to drug absorption, distribution, and activity and why it's very bad science for alties to try to extrapolate from studies of cells cultured in dishes to humans. In fact, toxicity to cultured cancer cells correlates only weakly with efficacy in an actual human, thanks to many of the factors Abel explains.
I would also point out that I'm involved as a coinvestigator in the evaluation of a drug that actually…
terrasig | October 3, 2006Subtitle: Why Petri dish studies don't always translate into benefit for patients
While I am an enthusiastic supporter of naturally-derived compounds as the source of drugs, I am extremely disappointed and dismayed at how non-prescription natural products are promoted indirectly for disease treatment. Patients with cancer or HIV/AIDS are those most often preyed upon by manufacturers of the "next great cure" - hence, the convergence of cancer and natural products leads me to today's post, the first in a multi-part series of general comments on the marketing of herbal or dietary supplements.…
oracknows | September 25, 2006After the three posts that I recently did about vaccination have garnered well over 250 comments between the three of them (and still counting), I thought it might be time to switch topics. As important as they are, I don't want this blog to become all vaccines all the time. (After all, look what happened to the blog SupportVaccination.org. It's a long story that I'll have to tell you sometime; but suffice it to say that the blog no longer exists.) Quite frankly, seeing the same old fallacies being repeated over and over again by antivaxers does get tiresome after a while. After all, how many…
terrasig | September 20, 2006Curcumin has been much in the news as of late as considerable cell culture data has been suggestive of the compound's utility in cancer prevention and cancer treatment. The impetus for me speaking on this has been the recent report by my ScienceBlogs.com colleague, Razib, at Gene Expression.
Unfortunately, the story of curcumin has been clouded by overly aggressive attempts by marketers to manipulate in vitro, or Petri dish, cell culture studies with human consumption. Some very outstanding scientists have been working on the anticancer effects of this herb, but it seems that their efforts…
oracknows | September 5, 2006I was perusing some articles that had accumulated while I was away, looking for ones that I wouldn't want to have missed and also looking for blog fodder (sometimes my day job and my blogging job actually mesh quite well, at least when it comes to discussing biomedical studies), and then I found an article that I had to discuss. Somehow I had missed it in the week leading up to my departure; how that happened I don't know, but it's time to make up for it. In any case, when I saw this article over the weekend, I knew I'd better comment on it, because, mark my words, it will soon be showing up…
terrasig | August 31, 2006I'm deeply appreciative of all who've come out to support my student and former lab intern, Jen, who is riding in her brother's memory in the Philadelphia LIVESTRONG Challenge 100-mile bike ride for the Lance Armstrong Foundation on 10 Sept 2006.
http://www.livestrongchallenge.org/06pa/jenforjon
Jon, a Carnegie-Mellon graduate student, crew coach, and all-around monster athlete, died in late June of a bacterial infection secondary to his treatment for osteosarcoma. He was 23.
As promised, here's an update that shows her tremendous progress since our last post, when she was still around $2,…
oracknows | August 28, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 28, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
terrasig | August 22, 2006The beauty of being here on ScienceBlogs.com is being part of an international discussion with so many folks from diverse backgrounds.
So, on many occasions, commentors have more to say than I, with both broader perspective and greater brevity.
In our recent discussion of the Virginia teenage cancer patient who wishes to refuse conventional cancer chemotherapy, Terra Sig reader, Ruth, weighed in as follows:
My last paying job was doing patient follow-up at a major cancer center. Every year we had to contact former patients to see how they were doing. Some patients from the 1970's are now…
oracknows | August 22, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 22, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 21, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 21, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…
oracknows | August 18, 2006Given how much I've written about the Abraham Cherrix case, I would be remiss in not pointing out some posts by fellow ScienceBloggers:
1. First, Abel Pharmboy discusses how this might all come down to a failure of communication between Cherrix's doctors and Cherrix and his parents. While this is probably true, I'm not sure that any amount of communication and empathy would have changed Cherrix's mind. Abel also makes some good points about "natural" therapies in cancer. I would also agree with him that it is important to be as nonconfrontational as possible when a patient insists on…
terrasig | August 18, 2006I've stayed out of the Starchild Abraham Cherrix case, where a 16-year-old boy and his parents are trying to refuse known, effective, and life-saving chemotherapy for a curable cancer in lieu of a scientifically unproven alternative regimen that includes coffee enemas.
Orac of Respectful Insolence has been most prolific in commenting on the issues at hand and yesterday, The Cheerful Oncologist, weighed in. I'm happy about this because both fellas are MDs with highly-specialized oncology training in surgical and medical oncology, respectively. Hence, I defer to them on issues of life and…
oracknows | August 17, 2006I wondered what took him so long (maybe diving into heated debates is not his style), but fellow ScienceBlogger The Cheerful Oncologist has weighed on on the Cherrix case, in which a 16-year-old has refused chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's disease. And he would know better than I what the treatment options are for relapsed Hodgkin's disease. Personally, I'd like to see him chime in on such issues more often.
oracknows | August 16, 2006Sadly, Starchild Abraham Cherrix is almost certainly doomed:
ACCOMAC, Virginia (AP) -- A 16-year-old cancer patient's legal fight ended in victory Wednesday when his family's attorneys and social services officials reached an agreement that would allow him to forgo chemotherapy.
At the start of what was scheduled to be a two-day hearing, Circuit Judge Glen A. Tyler announced that both sides had reached a consent decree, which Tyler approved.
Under the decree, Starchild Abraham Cherrix, who is battling Hodgkin's disease, will be treated by an oncologist of his choice who is board-certified in…
terrasig | August 15, 2006So, we're finally turning around some of the darkness that has surrounded this blog since late June.
I'm deeply appreciative of all who've come out to support my student and former lab intern, Jen, who is riding in her brother's memory in the Philadelphia LIVESTRONG 100-mile bike ride for the Lance Armstrong Foundation on 10 Sept 2006.
http://www.livestrongchallenge.org/06pa/jenforjon
With your help, Jen is now over $2,000 ($2,230, precisely) toward her $10,000 goal with about 25 days to go until the ride. Moreover, their team, Jon's Crew, stands midday EDT (1700 hrs GMT) at $9,395 toward…
terrasig | August 14, 2006She could've joined the lab of a Nobel laureate at Yale.
She picked me instead.
This is my thank you.
Regular readers may recall my post earlier last month about the tragic, heart-wrenching loss of the brother of my former student, Jen, a Morehead Scholar and sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her brother Jon was a 23-year-old Carnegie-Mellon University graduate student and crew team coach. After completing the Chicago Marathon last fall, some nagging persistent pain in his femur turned out to be the bone cancer, osteosarcoma.
After months of hospitalization…
oracknows | August 12, 2006Thanks to those who sent me a copy of the article I requested. Sadly, the library at my university has some rather large holes in its online collection. Even some fairly common journals are not represented. I'll have to read it this weekend. You'll all get personal e-mails from me later today, after I finish rounding on our service.
As for finding the paper online at the author's website, personally, I find that to be a very uncommon situation, although I have had some luck in the past e-mailing corresponding authors. This is much the same as in the old days, when we old geezers would…