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Cancer - good news of a cure at last

  • 16-02-2016 7:08pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,063 ✭✭✭


    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35586834

    This is brilliant news and hopefully it's the truth. It seems to have reached epidemic proportions here in Ireland.


«13

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,267 ✭✭✭Elessar


    Another day another cure for cancer. Until one of these new successful treatments are widely available for people, I'm not holding my breath.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 984 ✭✭✭gutenberg


    Hitchens wrote: »
    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35586834

    This is brilliant news and hopefully it's the truth. It seems to have reached epidemic proportions here in Ireland.

    It's undoubtedly exciting, but reading the full article, it also mentions that seven patients developed extreme reactions to the therapy that required stints in intensive care, while two patients actually died from an extreme immune system reaction :( So yes, very exciting but undoubtedly still tons more research, testing etc. is required.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 14,949 ✭✭✭✭IvyTheTerrible


    The headline makes it seem like it's for all cancers but it's just a possible cure for one type.
    There are many many types of cancer and talking about "a cure for cancer" is oversimplification in the extreme.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,741 ✭✭✭✭Ally Dick


    And then some greedy b@stard buys the patent and makes it too dear for the ordinary person to be able to afford


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 43,028 ✭✭✭✭SEPT 23 1989


    It's looking like the children born today will never die of this horrible disease and there will be a simple vaccination to prevent it


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,883 ✭✭✭✭AndyBoBandy


    Ally Dick wrote: »
    And then some greedy b@stard buys the patent and makes it too dear for the ordinary person to be able to afford

    The pharmaceutical industry in a nutshell.

    "why cure with 1 pill, when we can treat for a lifetime with many pills"


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,592 ✭✭✭✭kneemos


    It's looking like the children born today will never die of this horrible disease and there will be a simple vaccination to prevent it


    Not really.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,117 ✭✭✭✭Junkyard Tom


    It's a breakthrough rather than a cure. The piece you've linked to doesn't mention cure once.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,511 ✭✭✭✭PARlance


    kneemos wrote: »
    Not really.

    It would be very harsh on the children born yesterday and tomorrow anyway.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,605 ✭✭✭gctest50


    gutenberg wrote: »
    It's undoubtedly exciting, but reading the full article, it also mentions that seven patients developed extreme reactions to the therapy that required stints in intensive care, while two patients actually died from an extreme immune system reaction :( So yes, very exciting but undoubtedly still tons more research, testing etc. is required.

    missed this bit :
    The lead scientist, Prof Stanley Riddell from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, said all other treatments had failed in these patients and they had only two-to-five months to live.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,785 ✭✭✭KungPao


    Huge money in sickness, terminal illness, and death. I bet any cure would be eye-wateringly expensive...even if it was just a few injections or pills. They certainly wouldn't be dishing it out willy nilly.

    Probably never hear about this again anyway. Like when you hear about advances in finding a cure for baldness...then poof, nothing.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    gutenberg wrote: »
    It's undoubtedly exciting, but reading the full article, it also mentions that seven patients developed extreme reactions to the therapy that required stints in intensive care, while two patients actually died from an extreme immune system reaction :( So yes, very exciting but undoubtedly still tons more research, testing etc. is required.

    Well if the 5 who survived the extreme immune reaction got cured I'd take those odds. Sure use this for now on patients where all else has failed but worth using it.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    The headline makes it seem like it's for all cancers but it's just a possible cure for one type.
    There are many many types of cancer and talking about "a cure for cancer" is oversimplification in the extreme.

    Well it said it seemed effective in blood cancers. Im sure a lot of types fall under that term.
    Anyway seems a bit too good to be true, but lets hope.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    It's a breakthrough rather than a cure. The piece you've linked to doesn't mention cure once.

    'symptoms vanished' how is that not a cure?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,768 ✭✭✭✭tomwaterford


    I really hope it's true


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,938 ✭✭✭galljga1


    KungPao wrote: »
    Huge money in sickness, terminal illness, and death. I bet any cure would be eye-wateringly expensive...even if it was just a few injections or pills. They certainly wouldn't be dishing it out willy nilly.

    Probably never hear about this again anyway. Like when you hear about advances in finding a cure for baldness...then poof, nothing.

    I lost my wife to cancer. I am also bald. Guess which cure I want advanced.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    It's looking like the children born today will never die of this horrible disease and there will be a simple vaccination to prevent it

    New diseases will always emerge. Im sure people would have said that back when TB was killing children but now look at all the new diseases we have that still kill many children.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    This is the only way that cancer will really be stopped, reprogramming your immune system to target the cells. This is what has been promised for a while and hopefully this will be the start of the end for the big C.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    galljga1 wrote: »
    I lost my wife to cancer. I am also bald. Guess which cure I want advanced.

    ? I don't think he was saying that theyre in anyway comparable on scale of suffering, just that both are things that are regularly reported to have been cured but then it turns out not to be true


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    wakka12 wrote: »
    New diseases will always emerge. Im sure people would have said that back when TB was killing children but now look at all the new diseases we have that still kill many children.

    I'm pretty sure that child mortality has dropped significantly. All the same.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,042 ✭✭✭zl1whqvjs75cdy


    Ally Dick wrote: »
    And then some greedy b@stard buys the patent and makes it too dear for the ordinary person to be able to afford

    Are you gonna pay for the massive production and regulatory costs then?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 22,412 ✭✭✭✭endacl


    Ally Dick wrote: »
    And then some greedy b@stard buys the patent and makes it too dear for the ordinary person to be able to afford

    Or a company invests millions of investors' cash, without which the gene splicing technologies such as CRISPR would never have been developed. They don't patent something which doesn't exist. They put a lot of time,cash and effort into developing technologies that wouldn't exist if they didn't invest time, cash and effort. They create the patents.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,768 ✭✭✭✭tomwaterford


    galljga1 wrote: »
    I lost my wife to cancer. I am also bald. Guess which cure I want advanced.

    I'm sorry to hear this (about your wife)...it would be great if twud stop even one person from dying


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    wakka12 wrote: »
    ? I don't think he was saying that theyre in anyway comparable on scale of suffering, just that both are things that are regularly reported to have been cured but then it turns out not to be true

    Yeh but the bald "cures" aren't really by scientists. Not the snake oil pills anyway. Hair replacement does work - see Rooney.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,063 ✭✭✭Hitchens


    a friend died recently from that bastard of a disease and this would have given him a lift to read about this, and he would have volunteered to try it if he'd been offered the chance, and who in that position wouldn't


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    endacl wrote: »
    Or a company invests millions of investors' cash, without which the gene splicing technologies such as CRISPR would never have been developed. They don't patent something which doesn't exist. They put a lot of time,cash and effort into developing technologies that wouldn't exist if they didn't invest time, cash and effort. They create the patents.

    That company/clinic is partly (or mostly) funded by the us government. Governments can always buy the patents and give billions to the company that discovers the cure.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,080 ✭✭✭✭Maximus Alexander


    Any additional weapon in the anti-cancer arsenal should be welcomed. People just need to stop expecting a single, magical cure for all cancers.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,935 ✭✭✭TallGlass


    Always good news to hear, as with everything, it can only lead to greater things.

    Computers where expensive when first developed now there cheap as chips. It's all steps to a bigger goal in the end.

    Sadly when people are in a critical state, time is not on there side.

    I'm sure by my time comes, there will be a new bug wanting to kill me off and time won't be on my side.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,938 ✭✭✭galljga1


    Yeh but the bald "cures" aren't really by scientists. Not the snake oil pills anyway. Hair replacement does work - see Rooney.

    True Eugene, but believe it or not there are also a lot of snake oil merchants out there willing to take advantage of desperate cancer patients.It beggars belief how they can do this.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,592 ✭✭✭✭kneemos


    wakka12 wrote: »
    'symptoms vanished' how is that not a cure?


    Might come back.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 984 ✭✭✭gutenberg


    gctest50 wrote: »
    missed this bit :

    If you read it carefully, you'll see that all the patients who participated in the trials had two to five months to live.
    The lead scientist, Prof Stanley Riddell from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, said all other treatments had failed in these patients and they had only two-to-five months to live...

    Prof Riddell told the BBC: "Essentially what this process does is, it genetically reprograms the T-cell to seek out and recognise and destroy the patient's tumour cells.
    "[The patients] were really at the end of the line in terms of treatment options and yet a single dose of this therapy put more than ninety percent of these patients in complete remission where we can't detect any of these leukaemia cells."

    So those that died were in a similar condition to those that the experiment helped.


  • Moderators, Education Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 12,514 Mod ✭✭✭✭byhookorbycrook


    I would be wary of any "cure" interpretation. There was a Panorama programme on stem cell therapy for MS which some of the media hailed as a cure. Unfortunately it is not and can cause severe health issues but this was glossed over.

    With all the research going, hopefully a cure for any of these diseases will be found sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, be media savvy.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,935 ✭✭✭Anita Blow


    gutenberg wrote: »
    If you read it carefully, you'll see that all the patients who participated in the trials had two to five months to live.



    So those that died were in a similar condition to those that the experiment helped.

    I think what gctest was implying was that if the participants had 2-5 months to live, then a 6% chance of death from this treatment is a risk worth taking.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,063 ✭✭✭Hitchens


    there will be an item about it on the RTE 1 TV News at 9pm


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 984 ✭✭✭gutenberg


    Anita Blow wrote: »
    I think what gctest was implying was that if the participants had 2-5 months to live, then a 6% chance of death from this treatment is a risk worth taking.

    If that's the case then I agree. The extreme reactions are still something to worry about & research a lot further though :)


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,214 ✭✭✭cbyrd


    The pharmaceutical industry in a nutshell.

    "why cure with 1 pill, when we can treat for a lifetime with many pills"


    There's huge money in cancer, what I'd like to know is why it's become so prevalent in recent years? Billions in research and still nowhere near a cure. A cynical person would wonder if it wasn't being introduced through some method, say for example, an injection or series of injections, that causes the body to develop, over time, abnormal cells. The same cynical person would wonder how much money can be generated from these injections and the fear/guilt factor of not getting them for very young bodies ....
    There's a lot of money to be made from making and keeping people sick ..
    It's a funny business, illness, profitable one too..!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,930 ✭✭✭Jimoslimos


    Hitchens wrote: »
    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35586834

    This is brilliant news and hopefully it's the truth. It seems to have reached epidemic proportions here in Ireland.
    We live longer than ever before and most communicable diseases are curable or treatable - of course cancer rates will rise. It's either that or cardiovascular disease.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,042 ✭✭✭zl1whqvjs75cdy


    Anita Blow wrote: »
    I think what gctest was implying was that if the participants had 2-5 months to live, then a 6% chance of death from this treatment is a risk worth taking.

    Agreed but if you're ever going to get it to market those reactions are a no no.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,063 ✭✭✭Hitchens


    Jimoslimos wrote: »
    We live longer than ever before and most communicable diseases are curable or treatable - of course cancer rates will rise. It's either that or cardiovascular disease.
    it's the rise in younger people getting it that's frightening


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,042 ✭✭✭zl1whqvjs75cdy


    cbyrd wrote: »
    There's huge money in cancer, what I'd like to know is why it's become so prevalent in recent years? Billions in research and still nowhere near a cure. A cynical person would wonder if it wasn't being introduced through some method, say for example, an injection or series of injections, that causes the body to develop, over time, abnormal cells. The same cynical person would wonder how much money can be generated from these injections and the fear/guilt factor of not getting them for very young bodies ....
    There's a lot of money to be made from making and keeping people sick ..
    It's a funny business, illness, profitable one too..!

    Could you limit this ****e to the conspiracy theory forum please.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,930 ✭✭✭Jimoslimos


    Hitchens wrote: »
    it's the rise in younger people getting it that's frightening
    You hear about it more because it's better reported and more accurately diagnosed. Also the improvements in infant mortality mean more young people make it to adulthood.

    We can control for behavioural and environmental risk factors (healthier living, stop smoking etc.). We can also monitor those with identified genetic risk markers (BRCA1 mutations).

    However you can't control for the main risk factor, which is ageing. Better screening and a wider range of available therapies are the most effective ways to control cancer.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 22,412 ✭✭✭✭endacl


    That company/clinic is partly (or mostly) funded by the us government. Governments can always buy the patents and give billions to the company that discovers the cure.

    There are loads of companies working towards this. One based in Maynooth in fact. 100% privately funded.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 22,412 ✭✭✭✭endacl


    I would be wary of any "cure" interpretation. There was a Panorama programme on stem cell therapy for MS which some of the media hailed as a cure. Unfortunately it is not and can cause severe health issues but this was glossed over.

    With all the research going, hopefully a cure for any of these diseases will be found sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, be media savvy.
    It's not really about cure in this case. What immunotherapy does in the case of cancer, is turn a life ending disease into a manageable condition.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    kneemos wrote: »
    Might come back.

    Yes?? Anything can happen? But as far as we know it cured the illness in a number of individuals so I don't get how its not a cure.


  • Moderators, Education Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 12,514 Mod ✭✭✭✭byhookorbycrook


    Agreed but if you're ever going to get it to market those reactions are a no no.
    Actually, it's not, my MS med is called Tysabri. It was withdrawn from the market after a number of deaths. Heavy lobbying by the MS community meant it was re-introduced. It is not used as a first line treatment, but is used where other meds have failed.

    https://www.tysabri.com/en_us/home/about/safety-side-effects.html

    I can see people who only have a few months to live would, of course, try the cancer treatment in the OP , but it is very early days to claim it can cure cancer.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,899 ✭✭✭UrbanSprawl


    Cool,Now I will never have to give up smoking :D


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,581 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    endacl wrote: »
    Or a company invests millions of investors' cash, without which the gene splicing technologies such as CRISPR would never have been developed. They don't patent something which doesn't exist. They put a lot of time,cash and effort into developing technologies that wouldn't exist if they didn't invest time, cash and effort. They create the patents.
    Pretty much ALL of that companies income comes from public heath service or health plans from the public. And most of the income goes to things like marketing and shareholders. And billions spent on fines.

    Only a small fraction goes on R&D.

    Pharma is a cash cow.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    Agreed but if you're ever going to get it to market those reactions are a no no.

    Why? We should allow terminally ill patients to take whatever.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 97 ✭✭Kepler 186f


    Hitchens wrote: »

    This is brilliant news and hopefully it's the truth. It seems to have reached epidemic proportions here in Ireland.
    It is great news?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 28,633 ✭✭✭✭murpho999


    Why are people already having a go at pharmaceutical companies for making money out of their products.

    That's the way the world works.

    If it really worked it would just eventually replace contemporary less effective treatments.
    Also, research into these drugs costs billions but that doesn't get mentioned.

    If these companies could not make profits then we would have a lot less medical advances that we have seen over the last 100 years.


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