Scientists Discover Cure For Cancer But Big Pharma Ignores Them....

[Hardrock69]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/228583-Scientists-cure-cancer-but-no-one-takes-notice

Hubpages.com
Sun, 15 May 2011 17:05 CDT
Print
Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.

Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.

This drug doesn't require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.

Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human's cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA. The drug is widely available and the technique is easy to use, why the major drug companies are not involved? Or the Media interested in this find?

In human bodies there is a natural cancer fighting human cell, the mitochondria, but they need to be triggered to be effective. Scientists used to think that these mitochondria cells were damaged and thus ineffective against cancer. So they used to focus on glycolysis, which is less effective in curing cancer and more wasteful. The drug manufacturers focused on this glycolysis method to fight cancer. This DCA on the other hand doesn't rely on glycolysis instead on mitochondria; it triggers the mitochondria which in turn fights the cancer cells.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.

With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.

Pharmaceutical companies are not investing in this research because DCA method cannot be patented, without a patent they can't make money, like they are doing now with their AIDS Patent. Since the pharmaceutical companies won't develop this, the article says other independent laboratories should start producing this drug and do more research to confirm all the above findings and produce drugs. All the groundwork can be done in collaboration with the Universities, who will be glad to assist in such research and can develop an effective drug for curing cancer.


This article wants to raise awareness for this study, hope some independent companies and small startup will pick up this idea and produce these drugs, because the big companies won't touch it for a long time

Update here:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/cure-for-cancer-resurfaces-and.html

[fryingdutchman]

Baffling...but not surprising.

it's never about making things better for the human race...it's just about making more money. Just ask the big oil companies....

Can you imagine how much the world would change if cancer were eradicated? Think of the untold BILLIONS of dollars that would vanish from the pockets of the drug companies, the doctors, the special interest groups, etc....

It's so sad, but there are so many people with a vested business interest in the continuation of the cancer problem that they won't ALLOW a cure to be publicized.

Good find, HR.

[fryingdutchman]

Of course, they've pretty much knocked out AIDS at this point.

But that's because the draw of the human libido may actually be stronger than the almighty buck...

[Nitro Express]

Baffling...but not surprising.

it's never about making things better for the human race...it's just about making more money. Just ask the big oil companies....

Can you imagine how much the world would change if cancer were eradicated? Think of the untold BILLIONS of dollars that would vanish from the pockets of the drug companies, the doctors, the special interest groups, etc....

It's so sad, but there are so many people with a vested business interest in the continuation of the cancer problem that they won't ALLOW a cure to be publicized.

Good find, HR.

It always amazed me that the computer industry seems to be full steam ahead but yet we are shoveling up the earth and burning it for energy. Also, it's interesting that the computer industry gives you more for less on a constant basis but education and medicine give you less for more.

It's pretty obvious medicine, education, and energy are all kept back from advancement because someone doesn't want to lose money. With computers, software, networks we can make education cheaper than ever with the best instructors teaching. Medicine is way overpriced. Energy has changed very little in the last half century. The internal combustion engine has been used for over 100 years and sure it's been improved but it's still very old technology. It seemed in the 1950's and early 60's they were gung ho on pushing the technology envelope in the energy arena and then it just stopped.

[Nitro Express]

One thing you can do to lessen your chances of getting cancer or even beat it in the early stages is to keep your blood oxygenated and keep your blood PH alkaline. Cancer cells thrive in a low oxygen, acidic environment so just by making your body PH and blood where the cancer cells can't thrive you can eliminate cancer. Most people today have acidic blood PH and low oxygen levels. I worked in a large office building and everyone was having respiratory problems and getting sick. The company hired some people to come in and find out what was wrong. They moved in a bunch of plants and that took care of the problem. The plants put oxygen into the air and helped clean it. It was a simple solution but we couldn't believe how much better the air in the building became.

So a lot of it is what you are eating, what your are drinking, how much and what kind of exercise you are getting, what you are breathing and where you reside.

[FORD]

Naturally, a discovery like this had to happen in Canada. It would never have been allowed in the profit-driven US corporate health care system.

[Candy Girl]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/22...e-takes-notice

One and only answer for this: GREED

[Nitro Express]

One and only answer for this: GREED

Greed has always existed but I have never seen it at the levels it is at now. In the not too distant past such abuses would bring in the wrath of society. We are talking about life and death. Not only do they want to break you financially using death as the motivator, they want to keep an endless state of war going. They might as well be throwing bodies into a big chipper machine and selling the mess as fertilizer for all to see. The corporations have now fallen so low, they kill people to make money and the government enables the process.

[Nitro Express]

Another thing you can do to keep yourself healthy is don't let the bastards grind you down. A placebo effect comes into play if you start to worry about your health or allow negativeness to rule you. How many of us have played sports when one negative thought leads to another and it snowballs and affects your performance? Life is a mind game. Much like golf is. I see it all as a showdown right now. The corporations and politicians think we are stupid little wimps and they can do anything they want. I think they are going to get a rude awakening. People are finally pissed and they know who's responsible. Once that is organized and comes out of the box it will be like a left hook from nowhere.

[bb64]

I don't write much here, just reading through the forums is entertaining but articles like this hit close to home...My nephew was diagnosed with cancer a year and a half ago, he went through a year of chemo and radiation, cancer was gone...4 months ago it came back so he's going through it again(does not look like it ever will go away, he's a stage four)...Yesterday I went to his Babe Ruth baseball game, he went 3 for 4, drove in 3 runs and scored himself twice!! He was playin right field with a helmet on to protect his head just in case and a padded vest just in case(he's got 2 ports in him where they administer the medication)...I love that boy!! All he wants to do is play baseball and the doc said wear this shit and you can. He feels funny with the helmet on in the outfield but his desire to play outweighs it.
My brother is going through hell with this, sometimes I don't even know what to say to him?
I hope they come up with something...my nephew is only 14.

Thanks for listening...bb64

[Seshmeister]

Ok just a word of advice, if you ever see anything about a cure for cancer in your head translate that as a 'cure for all disease' and see if that sounds likely to be true.

There are thousands of different types of cancer. There will NEVER be a cure for cancer, there will be better and better different treatments for different cancers.

Secondly big pharma do a lot of medical research but governments and charities fund billions and billions too and so conspiracy theories are bunk. Sure they put their money into the financially profitable stuff but there are plenty of other bodies who don't have to. Also remember that maybe a third of all the people that work for these companies will die of cancer as will their loved ones so they want cures too.

Sorry to rain on the parade but this drug is untested and may help in some cases of some cancers at some point. I remember reading about this urban myth the first time it went around.

Here is a more detailed posting on it, worth reading at least the conclusion.

ANOTHER CURE FOR CANCER?

by STEVEN NOVELLA, May 16 2011

In the last week I have received a flood of e-mails asking my opinion about an article, “Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice.” The sensational theme is a familiar one – scientists hit upon a cure for cancer, but since the drug in question is already off patent (or is “natural”) the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in developing it. The more conspiracy-minded take it a step further and declare that “Big Pharma” will keep anyone else from developing it either.
Most of those e-mailing me saw the skeptical red flags in this story, but still many found the idea intriguing. Like most urban legends – something about the story resonates with our hopes and/or fears. The story rides this emotional wave, now supercharged by social media.
In fact, this is an old story about DCA (which I will get into below). The article that has been going around is four years old – there is no date on the article itself, but I recognize the story from several years ago (it has made the rounds numerous times) and there are four-year-old comments on the article. But, someone posted the article on their Facebook page, and someone else tweeted it, and it was retweeted and linked to by other Facebook pages and voila – the magic of the internet has breathed life into a dessicated urban legend.

The Cure for Cancer

This story is a variation on the notion that “they have cured cancer” but the cure is being kept from the masses by greedy interests aided by the lazy and apathetic. This is a topic I have written about before at length. It has a certain psychological appeal (to that little conspiracy theorist inside each of us). There is something compelling about the notion that the powers that be are not acting in our interest. It gives us a (usually false) sense of empowerment to think we are peeking behind the curtain and seeing what’s really going on.
But on close inspection the story makes no sense. The core flaw in this notion is the unstated premise that the medical establishment is a monolithic entity capable of acting with one intent. Rather, like many aspects of our civilization, modern medicine is a complex organism with many independent parts, and no one piece has dominion over all the others. The pharmaceutical industry does not control all of medical research. It does fund a great deal of research, because it has billions of dollars to invest in R&D and it does direct its research funds to developing drugs that will make them money. But there is also billions of dollars in research funding from the government, and from private organizations, patient groups, and other sources. And of course, there are many other countries each with their own medical research infrastructure.
And research is not the only piece of the puzzle either. There are professional organizations, academic institutions, and disease advocacy groups.

The notion of “a cure for cancer” is also highly improbable. Cancer is not a single disease, but a category of disease with a great deal of variation. That is why there are numerous treatments for cancer, and treatments need to be specifically tailored to the cancer type, stage, and location, as well as the individual patient.

DCA Again

But what about this specific treatment – dichloroacetate, or DCA? Promoters of science-based medicine deal with many types of health claims. Some are purely magical, others are physical but are clear quackery. DCA is neither. It is a legitimate drug with an interesting mechanism of action and some potential as a treatment for some cancers and other conditions as well (but to be clear up front, it is not a proven and accepted treatment for cancer in humans).
DCA falls under the category of prematurely promoting an experimental drug before it has been adequately studied. It can sound very compelling to hear the story of how DCA works to kill cancer cells. It certainly sounds like it is a cure for cancer. But medical researchers have been here before. Many potential treatments look good in the test tube, but do not eventually work as treatments in humans. Cancer is complex, and biology is complex, and in a living person the net effects may not be what we expect.

There is also safety to consider. Medical decision-making is about risk vs benefit. There is a tendency for naive and sensational reports to hype a treatment by focusing entirely on the potential benefits. But before we can reasonably recommend or give a treatment, we need to know something about the risks as well. We want to make sure we are not doing more harm than good (I remember something about that in that oath I took when I graduated medical school).
That is why we need to perform those pesky controlled clinical trials. We need some reasonable measure of net clinical effects. The history of medicine has demonstrated this a thousand times over.
Orac has written a thorough series of articles on DCA. Here is the latest, which also contains links to his entire series of articles on the topic. In summary, some cancers survive by switching from burning oxygen to get their energy to deriving energy from anaerobic glycolysis. DCA forces the mitochondria in cancer cells back into their oxygen-burning state which triggers cell death. Again – sounds great in principle. This is a very interesting potential mechanism for attacking cancer, and there is solid basic science behind it.

But again – we cannot leap from compelling basic science to clinical claims. We need to do the actual research, and clinical research proceeds in stages. The reason for this is to sort through the hundreds of interesting potential treatments to see which ones are reasonably safe and promising. Then we proceed to larger and more elaborate trials, and if drugs still appear to be safe and effective then we go on to definitive trials. And then even after that we need to do further study and monitoring to see that the effect of a treatment in the real world is working out. Each step exposes more people to the treatment, and so more and more subtle risks and effects can be detected.
It’s a messy and frustratingly slow process, but the alternative is to be buried in potential treatments, most of which will be useless or harmful. Without this research process we would be doing more harm than good. It’s like going bankrupt playing the lottery, hoping to score big, when instead you should be making sound long-term investments.
Right now the preliminary evidence for DCA is weak but there is still a glimmer of promise. It looks like the cytotoxic potential (ability to kill cancer cells) is low, and therefore any clinical effect may be limited. Further, serious side effects are also coming to light. The drug has been linked to serious encephalopathy (brain dysfunction) and neuropathy (nerve damage).
Meanwhile researchers are experimenting with chemical variants of DCA that may have higher anti-tumor activity and less toxicity.

What all of this research also shows is that – DCA is being researched. Contrary to the core claim in the article making the rounds, DCA is getting just the research attention it deserves.

Conclusion

DCA is just one of many potential future cancer treatments in the pipeline. It is an interesting approach, focusing on cancer cell metabolism, specifically mitochondrial function, and that may be the most interesting thing about DCA. But in its current form its activity seems to be low and its toxicity high. It may still find a role in cancer treatment. There may be specific cancers for which it has high activity, especially when combined with other treatments. There is a lot of research to be done. And we may find derivatives that are even better. Or, it may ultimately fail as a treatment.
A common story in the cancer-treatment world is that a new potential treatment, based upon a novel approach, is sensationalized as a cure for cancer. But then 5-10 years later we still haven’t cured cancer. But what has often happened is that the new treatment works, it just has a limited role in a subset of cancers. It prolongs survival and is being used – it’s just not the “cure” that it was originally hyped to be.
The history of cancer treatment has taught researchers to be humble and realistic. New treatments are great, and they are each contributing to the slowly increasing survival of many cancers. We are making progress with a lot of singles – just not the grand-slam home-runs that the media wants for good headlines.
So don’t believe the conspiracy-mongering and the hype. The research is happening. It is being targeted largely to therapies in proportion to their promise. But unfortunately research progresses much more slowly than rumors spread through Facebook and Twitter.

[Seshmeister]

Also debunked on snopes.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/cancercure.asp

[Candy Girl]

Ok answer this: Do you think that if there was a miracle cure for cancer, heart disease, etc that the drug companies would actually make the drug? I tend to think not because of the lost profits. If they did, you can bet your ass they would want a premium price for it. Remember the drug companies are just like any other business, they're in it for the money.

[FORD]

Another thing you can do to keep yourself healthy is don't let the bastards grind you down.

[SunisinuS]

I am just here for the Gazoleen.