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Well, okay it’s not quite cured yet. But scientists have found something which might completely cure cancer. It’s cheap, safe to use, easy to make, and could possibly cure any form of cancer you’d care to name.
It also happens to be a substance that’s already in use, and which has no patents on it, it’s public domain.
Which means, of course, that any company can make it, so there can be no monopoly on it. Which in turn means that there are no major pharmaceutical companies willing to spend the money to finish the needed research. Because they wouldn’t be able to sell it at ridiculosly jacked up prices, so they’d be pouring their money down the drain.
So the cure for cancer is currently just lying about, with no way to finish all the testing needed to put it on the market.
This kind of thing nearly makes me lose faith in human nature. Ugh.
woot for edmonton
But what about all the money that people have donated to cancer research over the years? One would think that the cancer society would be wanting to back this research.
Well, it’s possible they will, or are, the article is far from complete.
I just hope this pans out. I’d much rather see a cheap cure than yet another expensive monopoly. Having to get into debt so far you’ll never get out again for medical expenses isn’t ever fun, and it happens a lot.
Just got a few updates on this. Looks like somebody is working on it anyhow.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html has more info on the cure, while http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/ is a Canadian site tracking progress on developing it.
OK, I have a few problems with that original article. First of all, it is an opinion piece written in a student newspaper. Student newspapers are perfectly valid means by which to disseminate information but there is also less strict editing of articles and verifying of information (I contributed a number of articles to my own student newspaper when I was at university and a friend of mine was the chief editor of that paper). That said, you did find other articles that support the new research and that’s good news.
To me, it just sounds like the research results were JUST verified and since you found two articles and a website dedicated to the subject, I find your original statement of “no one cares” to be faulty. Obviously, those reporters care and the university cares and the people funding that university project care. And after reading articles every year in science magazines like Discover and Popular Science, I can tell you that during their annual awards to the top ten scientists, they always have one scientist dealing with health issues and it’s almost always about treating cancer. How cancers work and how to stop them has been revised and reviewed so frequently that I’m not surprised to read a new article with yet another method that will cure cancer; I’ve read such articles in the past. I hope this one pans out in a way that meets the hype and even if it doesn’t, I’m sure it will be very useful to the medical community in the same way the previous “cures for all cancers” have been.
I asked my mum about this article, because she’s a pharmacist working at a rehabilitation hospital, and she said it was news to her. She graduated from the University of Alberta and still gets pharmaceutical journals from there every few weeks so I assume if it was older than the last few weeks, she would be familiar with it to some degree. It takes time for drug companies or other groups to review the research results and decide how to or whether to use that new drug.
I’d heard about this cure twice before running into the article I posted. I’d assumed, since I, a layman, had found out about it on three separate occasions, that surely all professionals in the field would already know about it!
It seems that I was wrong though.
Just wanted to add, I believe this was the same research I heard about in the Victoria Times-Colonist over a month ago. Can’t be certain of a date but… anyway, I’m no Biology major, but to my limited understanding (took all upper highschool years of Bio/genetics plus a number of years in University) I also thought it sounded different than the rest, and very promising. At least, not as flimsy or wishy-washy a headline as most of them sound; it seemed more revolutionary an idea when I read it.
SPark wrote:I’d heard about this cure twice before running into the article I posted. I’d assumed, since I, a layman, had found out about it on three separate occasions, that surely all professionals in the field would already know about it!
It seems that I was wrong though.
Spark, I just wanted to say that I hope I didn’t make you think I was trying to criticize you, I was criticizing the student paper article and their off-base remark of “no one cares” and I just wanted to point out that there is a LOT of research and different solutions being investigated so it’s a more complicated issue than something like “cancer could be cured right now but it won’t because the big pharmaceutical companies can’t make a killing from it”, does that make sense? Those sort of situations are definitely present but it’s not the only thing that affects the search for the curing of cancers.
*nods* I wasn’t sure who any of that was directed at, really. I do understand that there’s a lot more to it than just what’s said in that one paper. (See the two other articles I posted, for example.) And being a layman I don’t pretend to understand everything about it.
I do think it’s really sad though, becuase I’m pretty sure if this was something patentable, companies would be jumping all over it, rather than more or less ignoring it. Even if it’s not a perfect, easy cure for all cancer, the effect it does have on cancer cells so far means there’s almost certain to be some sort of value in it, after all.
SPark wrote:*nods* I wasn’t sure who any of that was directed at, really. I do understand that there’s a lot more to it than just what’s said in that one paper. (See the two other articles I posted, for example.) And being a layman I don’t pretend to understand everything about it.
I do think it’s really sad though, becuase I’m pretty sure if this was something patentable, companies would be jumping all over it, rather than more or less ignoring it. Even if it’s not a perfect, easy cure for all cancer, the effect it does have on cancer cells so far means there’s almost certain to be some sort of value in it, after all.
My apologies, I was just trying to show some of the other parts of that issue, since I do know people directly involved in that industry and I may have worded my response a little defensively because I know a lot of people working with the drug companies who are only interested in helping people with health problems and the drugs that these companies DO make can often save lives. I’m a big believer in the expression “trust but verify” which basically means give people the benefit of the doubt but also do your own research to confirm the facts. I don’t think that student paper article did that, but then again they aren’t obligated to as stringently when it’s just an opinion piece. Opinion pieces should always be taken with a grain of salt. It sounds like the author of that article has a chip on their shoulder about drug companies for whatever reason, but I want to know more about him – is he a scientist? Has he worked with or for drug companies in the past? Who did he talk to or what journals did he read as the basis of his article? He doesn’t say.
These particular sentences in the article stood out to me:
“Pharmaceutical companies probably won’t invest in research into DCA because they won’t profit from it.”
Probably is the key word. Yes it’s unlikely that drug companies will jump all over the research to work it out the same way they would if it was a patentable drug, but that doesn’t mean they still couldn’t make money from it. Water isn’t patentable yet there are many companies that sell bottled water and make a tidy profit from it. There is obviously a market for cancer-curing drugs so I find it hard to believe that NO company would be willing to come up with even that cheap version of the drug because that would still be money in their pocket.
“So, the groundwork will have to be done at universities and independently funded laboratories. But, how are they supposed to drum up support if the media aren’t even talking about it?”
First, that’s generally the way it works a good part of the time with any medical or scientific research. In fact, it’s often encouraged by some governments to do research through universities or indepedently-funded labs because universities have more transparency in publishing their results and the controls and so forth, in the process of sharing the results with the journals of their peers, which have strict rules for such published articles.
Secondly, if you look at the website for DCA research (http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/) it lists on its front page more than one article about their research which predates this student paper article. So obviously the media ARE talking about it.
I’m sorry, I’m just a big believer in journalists writing their articles based on sound research and it just seems like this David fellow did very little of that before he wrote his article, or he dismissed the facts in favour of making himself sound like a whistleblower of sorts. He could have written the article without the unsupported criticisms of the drug companies.
SPark wrote:Ah. I see your point.
I guess I’m just a little too cynical.
See, that’s what annoys me about the article, it could have been all about the excitement of this new research and its results! The author gave you an unnecessary downer just to make himself look good/smart!
*laughs* Now I think maybe you are being too cynical!
Maybe he wrote it because he felt that singling out the possible obstacles in the way would prompt more people do do something about it? After all, I didn’t post and pass along the two totally positive articles on it that I saw before seeing this one, did I? I read them, went “cool, I hope that works out,” and thought nothing more of it.
But seeing somebody telling me this great cure needed to be brought to people’s attention, needed me to do something about it, prompted me to share the news.
Perhaps that was the intended result? Bad news travels faster, after all!
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