DailyDirt: Imagine There's No Cancer...
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
In 2015, an estimated 1.6 million patients were diagnosed with cancer and over half a million died from it. We've previously pointed out some cancer research that could lead to promising new treatments, and it looks like we're making significant progress in the fight against the many forms of this deadly disease. Using the body's own immune system to fight cancer is a growing strategy that seems to be working. Check out a few of these minor successes.- Jimmy Carter announced that his cancer treatments are going well, and his latest brain scans don't show any tumors. Carter has been getting radiation treatments and doses of Keytruda, an immunotherapy drug, to fight off cancer. Immunotherapy drugs are promising, but it's not well understood how they work just yet. Presumably, as we figure them out, we'll be able to target different kinds of cancer and improve the treatment. [url]
- Sequencing the genes of cancer cells can help determine drugs that could specifically target tumors. Hundreds of cancer drugs have been tested in clinical trials, and a few are extending the life expectancy of patients. As long as the drug prices don't skyrocket unexpectedly, many people might be able to benefit from this advance in biotech. [url]
- The FDA has approved a virus that can attack cancer cells. This living virus, sold as Imlygic, is an engineered version of herpesvirus, and it's probably the first of a class of viral anti-cancer treatments. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: biotech, cancer, cancer research, dna, drugs, health, imlygic, immunotherapy, jimmy carter, keytruda, medicine, pharmaceuticals, treatment, tumor
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Same old, same old
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Do cancers get cancer?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
to go out of business within their lifetimes. ;]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: big biz
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/08/joseph-mercola/theres-no-cancer-cure/
Why Medicine Won’t Allow Cancer to Be Cured
By Joseph Mercola
Imagine a commercial plane crashed and there were some fatalities involved. You can be sure that would make the headline of every major newspaper. Well, we have the equivalent of 8-10 planes crashing
EVERY DAY with everyone on board dying from cancer.
Nearly two million Americans are diagnosed with cancer every year—one person out of three will be hit with a cancer diagnosis at some time in their lives, in spite of the massive technological advances over the past half-century.
Western medicine is no closer to finding a “cancer cure,” while cancer has grown into a worldwide epidemic of staggering proportions. The statistics speak for themselves:
In the early 1900s, one in 20 people developed cancer
In the 1940s, one in 16 people developed cancer
In the 1970s, it was one in 10
Today, it’s one in three!
According to the CDC, about 1,660,290 (1.66 million) new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in 20131. If overall death rates are falling, why are incidence rates still on the rise? The answer is simple: the 40-year “war on cancer” has been a farce.
The cancer epidemic is a dream for Big Pharma, and their campaigns to silence cancer cures have been fierce, which is a tale well told in the documentary film featured above, Cancer: Forbidden Cures.
The Cancer Machine
Please understand that cancer is big business. The cancer industry is spending virtually nothing of its multi-billion dollar resources on effective prevention strategies, such as dietary guidelines, exercise and obesity education. Instead, it pours its money into treating cancer, not preventing or curing it.
Why would they shoot their cash cow? If they can keep the well-oiled Cancer Machine running, they will continue to make massive profits on chemotherapy drugs, radiotherapy, diagnostic procedures and surgeries.
The typical cancer patient spends $50,000 fighting the disease. Chemotherapy drugs are among the most expensive of all treatments, many ranging from $3,000 to $7,000 for a one-month supply.
If the cancer industry allows a cure, then their patient base goes away. It makes more sense to keep a steady stream of cancer patients alive, but sick and coming back for more. How did this societal monster come about?
The featured documentary is enormously informative. It details how the pharmaceutical industry partnered with the American Medical Association (AMA) in an ingenious plan to overtake the medical system in four swift, easy steps, back in the early 1900s. In a nutshell, it went something like this:
International bankers that own the drug and chemical companies gained control over the medical education system over 100 years ago.
They gave grants to the AMA and leading medical schools in exchange for seats on their board and the ability to control policy.
Finally, they cleverly engineered their control of virtually every federal regulatory agency relating to the practice of medicine.
‘Don’t You DARE Cure Anyone!’
In spite of the enormous amounts of money funneled into cancer research today, two out of three cancer patients will be dead within five years after receiving all or part of the standard cancer treatment trinity—surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. This is not too surprising when you consider that two of the three are carcinogenic themselves! One study estimated that chemotherapy benefits about one of every 20 people receiving it.
Over the last hundred years, a number of natural cancer treatments have been developed and used successfully to treat patients in the US and other countries.
All have been vehemently discounted, silenced, and pushed under the rug by the medical monopoly, with physicians and researchers attacked, smeared, sent to prison, and professionally ruined for daring to defy the medical establishment.
To this day, with respect to credibility in medicine, “quack” is synonymous with “competition.”
In order to protect the medical monopoly,
any viable natural treatment
is met with massive opposition by the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
Drug companies have no interest in natural agents that they cannot patent, because they interfere with their revenue stream.
They will go—and have gone—to extreme measures to prevent the truth about effective natural treatments (competitive threats) from reaching the public.
The FDA is now, thanks to PDUFA, primarily funded by the drug companies and is complicit in this process. They restrict competition in the guise of protecting the public, when the reality is they are protecting the profits of the drug companies...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: big biz
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: big biz
I don't think I have had cancer, but vit d has been super helpful to me for other problems i had a couple years back [eliminate: pains in chest -- heart/lung area primarily; problems breathing at night; head pains when falling asleep lying flat; heartbeat skipping; horrible feelings overall after eating lots of cheese before going to bed (fat absorbs vit d from blood); frequent night time bathroom trips; .. and some others.]
low vit d is a silent killer since there are many diverse symptoms possible and harm to body coming from unexpected places (eg, careful with colonoscopies because of stress to internal organs that vitamin d with calcium help keep bound tightly.. and one of problems with cancer is cells break off from tissue).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: big biz
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fasting...
But who am I kidding, in this age of pill popping people can't be bothered with that! Just give me a pill doc, I am a slave to the system already!
The body will heal itself if we supply it with the proper nutrition and if we avoid over stuffing the system with extra or bad calories burdening the system with the extra management overhead!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Fasting...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Fasting...
Not all parts of the world get uvb. Those that get less (away from equator.. and in winter) have higher rates of all cancers.
The study of 3x is for melanoma. In general outdoor workers get the safer skin cancers earlier in life and more frequently (but it's the people with less vitamin d, mostly indoor workers, that tend to get the melanomas).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Fasting...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
That's where the promise of genetic engineering is working toward - a cheap and quick way to identify and target very specific targets, like one kind of cancer, or one kind of flu virus. Eventually, the hope is you go to the doctor who does a genetic test of the flu or cancer, programs the machine, and you get a medicine tailored to that specific problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.factbuckscounty.org/revolutionary-treatment-uses-hiv-to-reprogram-cells-into-fight ing-cancer/
The treatment] had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment ... used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.
http://keranews.org/post/how-doctors-are-using-hiv-fight-cancer
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hard sell for marketers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
US only
On a related note, could you make your Techdirt deals available worldwide?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: US only
Cancer Statistics Report: Deaths Down 20% in 2 Decades
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/cancer-statistics-report-deaths-down-20-percent-in-2-decade s
[ link to this | view in chronology ]