GranoblasticMan: The virus has mutated. The virus is spreading.

Shut.
Down.
EVERYTHING.

I'll just be over here with my two rocks and a cup of water.

I've seen this headline before.

anfrind: It's not a movie, it's a novella.
[www.orbitshortfiction.com image 378x500]

A pretty darn good novella as well.

I'm just a bit confused by how they managed to get a 14 month survival rate, from a  trail period of only 4 weeks. Other than that , sound's good to me. Sign me up, Scotty!

A high ph level can also kill cancer.

2 Replies: [i1184.photobucket.com image 470x200]

K I gotta ask: why was he sleeping in the bathtub?
I mean, I know in warzones that's what people do if they think the tub is more likely to deflect shrapnel that comes through the walls when bombs land nearby -but for a bunch of zombie monster type things??? Just go to bed!

Am I alone in thinking that that made no sense at all?

leevis: A high ph level can also kill cancer.

Morbosayscancerdoesnotworkthatway.jpg

leevis: A high ph level can also kill cancer.

As can a low one...

My step father was in a study like this, unfortunately he died because he was too far gone already and it did not have time to take effect....but ALL of the patients who did not get the placebo recovered.  His was throat cancer, in the 'bracheal-therapy" they were using your own DNA attached with a virus to tell it to behave like a virus does; blockers were applied to tell the cells never to grow again.

This use of a beaning virus is said to have a lot of potential for inserting gene fixes as well, for say Parkinson or giving an immunity to HIV (give you 2 copies of Delta 32)

Oh. It's this announcement. "We've cured cancer", then you never hear about it again.

I'll reserve judgement until Dr. Jenny McCarthy weighs in.

Still,  no cure for stupidity.

Ishkur: But can the virus kill the Grimace?


"Nothing can kill the Grimace."

sudo give me more cowbell: 2 Replies: [i1184.photobucket.com image 470x200]

K I gotta ask: why was he sleeping in the bathtub?
I mean, I know in warzones that's what people do if they think the tub is more likely to deflect shrapnel that comes through the walls when bombs land nearby -but for a bunch of zombie monster type things??? Just go to bed!

Am I alone in thinking that that made no sense at all?

I think it was more of a psychological thing. Fetal position and all that.

But it was secrecy that was keeping him safe more than the security measures, so it at least seems plausible that he was trying to avoid giving his position away with any inadvertent noise after dark (what with nightmares, and a dog...).

The tub thing in I Am Legend might make some sense if he thought the creatures might detect body heat, but I agree it was probably mostly psychological.

anfrind: It's not a movie, it's a novella.
[www.orbitshortfiction.com image 378x500]

Hadn't read the novella, but the trilogy is pretty good. Feed, Deadline and Blackout if anyone cares.

3rotor: I'm just a bit confused by how they managed to get a 14 month survival rate, from a  trail period of only 4 weeks. Other than that , sound's good to me. Sign me up, Scotty!

That'd mean they were on the drug for 4 weeks. That's the 'trial period'. The 14 months would include that 4 weeks plus followup, which usually last until death or two or three years, whichever happens first.  J. Frank Parnell: Fano: But saying that you don't need anything else in the fight against cancer is folly

What you definitely don't need is radiation and chemo, that much is certain. Radiation causes cancer, and studies are now showing chemo makes many cancers stronger. Even if those 'cures' manage to destroy the tumors they also damage everything else, like your immune system, and leave you with an extremely high chance to get cancer again because they are themselves highly carcinogenic.

What i was trying to get at earlier is mainly just that drug companies have no interest in cures because they don't make as much money as treatments, and that's what this sounds a bit like. Any potential cures they find are buried under years of tests while other dubious drugs are rushed to market and later found to be very dangerous.

/actually, just forget all that
//dioxins and radiation for you

Neither radiation or chemo work every time. They can, and occasionally do, make it worse. But they continue to be used because, on average, they do good. There's a reason that cancer mortality rates have been falling even though incidence is rising (http://globocan.iarc.fr/factsheet.asp), and it's improvements in surgery, drugs and radiation. Will all the lifestyle stuff you suggested to boost your immune system do some good? Yeah. It might decrease your chances of getting cancer, and it might help manage it once you've got it.
At any rate, this article isn't about chemo. A bit part of the reason oncolytic viruses are such a hot area (there are several others, some a lot closer to the market than this) is that they can provide the benefits of chemo without debilitating side effects.
Finally, if you don't think the pharma industry has an interest in cures, you haven't thought it through. In the long run, would it be more profitable to keep coming up with new treatments and not cure the disease? Only if one company had a monopoly. As it is, there are many drug companies, from Pfizer down to start-ups out of university labs. They're facing a huge patent cliff, where most of their best drugs will come off patent in the next couple years. When that happens, generics get in and prices promptly drop to around the cost of production. They need blockbuster drugs to fill those holes. Add in the fact that drug patents are globally standardized at 20 years now (with short extensions sometimes, but not much). It takes years to get a drug to market, and you generally have to patent early in the process. Once a drug hits the market, they control it for 10 years, 15 if they're really lucky. So you're in a cutthroat industry, facing a revenue problem. Your scientists come up with a potential cure. What do you do? Sit on it and try to come up with more treatment type drugs? Ok, then you run the risk that a competitor discovers the same thing and releases it, crushing your market. Even if they don't, you have to rely on your development pipeline to come up with an alternative that's provably better than what's currently on the market, and that's better than what your competitors come up with. Or you develop the cure, sell it, make unholy amounts of money and get hailed as a hero (the top cancer drug today, Avastin, is worth ~5 billion a year, and a cure for even one type of cancer would make more), and kick the fiscal can 15 years down the road. Which seems more like typical corporate behavior? The risky, hard work based long game approach, or get rich, get promoted, and leave the mess for the next guys?
You might argue that the drug companies have some sort of agreement to keep the ultra-competitive scenario I described above from happening. But even if you believe that it's possible for the dozen or so major drug companies around the world to enforce such a pact, there are always startups, usually formed by scientists who discover a single potential drug, looking to break in.
So even if you don't buy that the people who work at drug companies are people too and want to help patients, as Fano pointed out, the pure economics mean companies would have to be insane to sit on a cure for cancer. The reason they don't have one is that it's incredibly hard to find one. Mostly what they get are ones like this, that just hope to buy the patient some time, and hopefully improve their comfort. By the time you're trying out advanced therapies like this, you're usually terminal anyways.

LincolnLogolas: HotWingAgenda: I was puzzled by the reference to it as a vaccine.  It's clearly not a preventative shot, more like a treatment for an existing cancer.

It's because the virus they used: They mutated the Vaccinia virus (thus named because it was used to vaccinate against Smallpox).

Actually, TFA states that the altered Vaccinia prompts the body's immune system into attacking the tumors. That makes it a vaccine.

Yeah, right. Like they'd ever cure cancer.

At best, they'll find an expensive way for everyone to live with it. You kow -- so you have to keep going back for more treatments.

/Insert picture of Chris Rock here.

J. Frank Parnell: Actually, reading it again, it seems they might have just given one dose to the subjects, saw that it was very effective, then never gave them any more, and watched them die.

The Nature Medicine paper says 3 treatments, days 1, 15 and 29.

It's a phase 2 clinical trial, they are testing the effects of dosage on consenting patients. Since it is an exploratory drug with unknown side effects, it is highly regulated. They can't just keep administering the drug over and over again at will. The idea is to see if it works, and the good news is that it appears to. There is very little that can be done with late stage metastatic cancers, so whether or not you agree with modern medicine, it is a big step.

If continued usage of it is required, it's still just a treatment they'll milk people for, instead of a one time deal.

Yes, a therapeutic vaccine is meant for patients with an existing condition, so it is not a one time vaccine that can prevent getting cancer. It is a treatment, which in this case happens to use a vaccine virus, that needs to be administered more than once. This wikipedia article may be of interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_vaccine

That stuff causes more cancer than a cell phone in a hot spot.  I'm holding off for the non-GMO version.

Stone Meadow: LincolnLogolas: HotWingAgenda: I was puzzled by the reference to it as a vaccine.  It's clearly not a preventative shot, more like a treatment for an existing cancer.

It's because the virus they used: They mutated the Vaccinia virus (thus named because it was used to vaccinate against Smallpox).

Actually, TFA states that the altered Vaccinia prompts the body's immune system into attacking the tumors. That makes it a vaccine.

Wikipedia: "Vaccines may be prophylactic (example: to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by any natural or "wild" pathogen), or therapeutic (e.g. vaccines against cancer are also being investigated; see cancer vaccine). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine]

This is a therapeutic vaccine.

BenJammin: Still,  no cure for stupidity.

This! Until my stupidty is cured I don't care about anything else!

fusillade762: [www.movie-page.com image 442x323]

?

That movie scared the ever-loving shiat out of me as a kid. Definitely a sleeper for the gore/horror factor

neversubmit: BenJammin: Still,  no cure for stupidity.

This! Until my stupidty is cured I don't care about anything else!

I clicked "Smart"

Did that help?

Fark Rye For Many Whores: Still no cure for virus

J. Frank Parnell: Fano: But saying that you don't need anything else in the fight against cancer is folly

What you definitely don't need is radiation and chemo, that much is certain. Radiation causes cancer, and studies are now showing chemo makes many cancers stronger. Even if those 'cures' manage to destroy the tumors they also damage everything else, like your immune system, and leave you with an extremely high chance to get cancer again because they are themselves highly carcinogenic.

What i was trying to get at earlier is mainly just that drug companies have no interest in cures because they don't make as much money as treatments, and that's what this sounds a bit like. Any potential cures they find are buried under years of tests while other dubious drugs are rushed to market and later found to be very dangerous.

/actually, just forget all that
//dioxins and radiation for you

You should stick to the Alien Visitation stuff. Less derpy.

GranoblasticMan: neversubmit: BenJammin: Still,  no cure for stupidity.

This! Until my stupidty is cured I don't care about anything else!

I clicked "Smart"

Did that help?

Maybe it takes awhile? I'll keep my eyes crossed and we'll see what happens.

neversubmit: GranoblasticMan: neversubmit: BenJammin: Still,  no cure for stupidity.

This! Until my stupidty is cured I don't care about anything else!

I clicked "Smart"

Did that help?

Maybe it takes awhile? I'll keep my eyes crossed and we'll see what happens.

We're looking at you.

Stone Meadow: LincolnLogolas: HotWingAgenda: I was puzzled by the reference to it as a vaccine.  It's clearly not a preventative shot, more like a treatment for an existing cancer.

It's because the virus they used: They mutated the Vaccinia virus (thus named because it was used to vaccinate against Smallpox).

Actually, TFA states that the altered Vaccinia prompts the body's immune system into attacking the tumors. That makes it a vaccine.

Not through antibodies though.  The normal bodily reaction to a cell that's been hijacked by a virus is to kill the cell.  Whether that cell should be irrelevant.  You would, presumably, eventually get an antibody to the virus, which would actually make the treatment less effective, as if the virus targets cancer cells specifically, you wouldn't want your immune system to attack the virus openly.

I'm not sure how they can target cancer cells specifically.  Cancer is reproduction gone haywire.  They don't even bother to make they have all their chromosomes before splitting.  I'd imagine it would be hard to create a simple model to target.

Mytch: Stone Meadow: LincolnLogolas: HotWingAgenda: I was puzzled by the reference to it as a vaccine.  It's clearly not a preventative shot, more like a treatment for an existing cancer.

It's because the virus they used: They mutated the Vaccinia virus (thus named because it was used to vaccinate against Smallpox).

Actually, TFA states that the altered Vaccinia prompts the body's immune system into attacking the tumors. That makes it a vaccine.

Not through antibodies though.  The normal bodily reaction to a cell that's been hijacked by a virus is to kill the cell.  Whether that cell should be irrelevant.  You would, presumably, eventually get an antibody to the virus, which would actually make the treatment less effective, as if the virus targets cancer cells specifically, you wouldn't want your immune system to attack the virus openly.

I'm not sure how they can target cancer cells specifically.  Cancer is reproduction gone haywire.  They don't even bother to make they have all their chromosomes before splitting.  I'd imagine it would be hard to create a simple model to target.

Blasted distracting office.
Should be:
Whether that cell is cancerous or not should be irrelevant.

TheGogmagog: [spectaclesport.files.wordpress.com image 420x273]

What a replicating cure might look like.

I, for one, welcome our new virus overlords.

anfrind: It's not a movie, it's a novella.
[www.orbitshortfiction.com image 378x500]

Oh lordy, she's such a terrible writer.

Fano: ciberido: Fano: BTW, ciberido, would you be surprised I have you favorites?

Slightly.  I'm not very good at predicting what others do or will think of me.

I think from one of the recent threads you probably thought ill of me, but I've thought positively of you over the years.

Well... let's just say I've been dealing with some real-life frustration over the past few moths, and it's made me more harsh and belligerent on Fark that I want to be.  I'm trying turn over a new leaf, so to speak, to relax and see Fark more as a place to have fun and share jokes than a battleground.

So if you (or anyone else on Fark) have seen me act particularly confrontational or express a lot of scorn or anger in the past few months, take into account that at least some of it is real-life stuff that's kind of bled over.

ciberido: Well... let's just say I've been dealing with some real-life frustration over the past few moths, and it's made me more harsh and belligerent on Fark that I want to be. I'm trying turn over a new leaf, so to speak, to relax and see Fark more as a place to have fun and share jokes than a battleground.

I've read a lot of your posts for a long time and have found you to be thoughtful, funny and generally on the right side of whatever battle-ground issues come up -and it's natural to get angry every once in a while -I've definitely gotten caught up in it too. Whatever's causing you stress in real life, I hope it blows over.