6 ms·

Some Thoughts on Cancer from a Hacker

79 points by DanielBMarkham 15y ago

eps 15y ago
I wonder how the cervical cancer fits in, because it was ultimately traced to a virus as a trigger and then they developed a vaccine for it. The same may apply to other types of cancer, in which case "debugging" the condition without removing the root cause does not make much sense.
- Mz 15y ago
  I have come to think that (or at least wonder if) maybe all cancers are viral/have a viral component: 1) Human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer (which is why women get annual "Pap smears") 2) Cancer causes tumors, ie odd growths, much the way warts and fever blisters cause growths on the body. Both warts and fever blisters are caused by virii and I don't know of any other pathogen which causes growths of that sort, by taking over the cell like that. 3) Virii are made of the same stuff as genes: RNA. This is precisely why some of them can get inserted into a cell and take it over, which is the way warts operate.
  - Palomides 15y ago
    WHO estimates 17.8% of cancers have a viral origin. see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16404738 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16404738
    - Mz 15y ago
      Thank you for the link, but it doesn't say "viral origin" it says "infection associated" and lists liver flukes (a parasite) as one of the known associated infectious agents. But great info nonetheless.
      - puredemo 15y ago
        Makes me want to try HumaWorm.
  - huhtenberg 15y ago
    > Human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer (which is why women get annual "Pap smears") If you meant to say the test was called after the Pap-illoma virus, then it's not correct. Pap test checks for abnormally shaped cervix liner cells rather than a virus. And it is named "Pap" after a person who invented it, not a virus.
    - Mz 15y ago
      No, I didn't mean to specifically say that. I think I was vaguely aware it was named after a person. Is anything in that line factually incorrect? (EDIT: I am guessing you are reading it that way due to the quotation marks? If you check my comment history, I think you will find I am prone to overuse of quotations. I stick them in to make it clearer it is a phrase and those words belong together. I often feel English doesn't do a good job of making such distinctions. I suspect this has something to do with growing up in a bilingual household. In German, lots of words get run together into a megaword, which makes it clear it's basically a phrase. We do not have a similar mechanism in English. I often feel that leaves too much room for misinterpretation. So it's an odd personal quirk. Sorry for the confusion.) Thanks.
  - RK 15y ago
    The book mentioned by the OP discusses the "virus theory" of cancer, which was very popular for a while. What people eventually realized was that cancer is the result of genetic mutations and there are many potential causes of the mutations, viruses being one of them. E.g. HPV can lead to cervical, anal, throat cancer, etc. An interesting book. The books feels a little bit narrowly focused on medical oncology, but the author is a medical oncologist, so you'd expect that.
    - pradocchia 15y ago
      I'm in the middle of the book myself, and I half-suspect the/a common thread will turn out to be chronic inflammation. Bacteria causing ulcers causing stomach cancer seems a case in point. Also, tobacco & lung cancer: sure, the smoke contains carcinogens, but you're also looking at decades of chronic inflammation in the lungs. Likewise, the recent WHO announcement re: cell phones & brain cancer was poopooed, since everybody knows the radiation is not powerful enough to damage DNA, but! it could certainly cause some low-grade inflammation of brain tissue. Low-grade inflammation + daily use -> chronic inflammation -> cancer? No, I don't know how something like leukemia would fit under this rubric.
      - Mz 15y ago
        FWIW: Inflammation is known to promote infection. For example, it is well established that reducing inflammation in cystic fibrosis patients reduces incidence of infection. Reducing inflammation via diet is one of the things that helped me get off multiple drugs, most of which had anti-inflammatory properties as their primary or secondary purpose.
ericb 15y ago
What about the equivalent of find and replace (delete) based on pattern matching? Something along the lines of, extract a sample of the cancer, create a virus that binds to it with high specificity and kills it, then deploy.
- Palomides 15y ago
  I would observe that both cancers and viruses evolve very rapidly in the human body; in many cancer patients, a particular treatment grows less effective over time because the cancer evolves to be less susceptible. Adding a virus that may just quickly evolve to infect all the cells in the body to the mix seems rather risky.
  - Mz 15y ago
    This is basically the plot for the movie "I am Legend", starring Will Smith. In that movie, yeah, things go terribly wrong with this approach. (EDIT: And I mention the movie to say that as a thought experiment this has been done before and drew the same conclusion: This has potential to go very, very wrong.)
    - rvkennedy 15y ago
      It's a general law in fiction, going back to Frankenstein, that any development that challenges the status quo will prove harmful. Mary Shelley didn't call it "The Modern Prometheus" for nothing - the implication is that to challenge our limitations offends the gods, or God, or Nature. It's a great way to make people feel OK about mortality or failure. And a guaranteed trope - when a TV episode or movie starts with a new development in science with great promise you know 100% by the closing credits that the scientist will have been punished and the status quo ante restored. I would guess that when the first crazy experimentalist tried putting seeds in the ground instead of foraging for fruit, there was a cave painting about how the Spirits would punish the whole tribe for its arrogance.
      - Mz 15y ago
        Well, I'm kind of familiar with that firsthand since my hobbies include getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. So I get called a liar, charlatan, and snake-oil salesman...blah blah blah... by folks who think it just cannot be done. Still, the idea of intentionally introducing a virus to cure cancer doesn't sit well with me. :-)
reasonattlm 15y ago
You want to fix cancer, don't wait for the scientists. They are hobbled by regulation. Be an engineer: get out there and make one of the viable solutions work, and make it work outside the US, because you'll never get approval from the FDA for a reasonable amount of money - money that could to towards making something work rather than the normal nonsense. The best present tack for dealing with cancer is granulocyte therapy. It works very, very well, but because researchers can't yet say why it works it's pretty hard to get trials going in the US. I think there's only one right now. But somewhere out there, for as far as we can see near every cancer, there's someone with an immune system that can kill it. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/the-state-of-leukocyte-or-granulocyte-transplants-to-kill-cancer.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/the-state-of-leuk... But at a cost of $100k per patient in a formal trial, and with researchers willing to go to bat on this one, getting something going in Asia shouldn't be out of the possibility for a few million dollars. The philosophy of all new medical development should be "get it done outside the US". Seriously. See: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/05/31/open-cures-an-initiative-to-speed-clinical-development-of-longevity-science/ http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/05/31/open-cures-an-initiative... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-world-without-the-fda.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-worl... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2007/03/whose-life-is-it-anyway.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2007/03/whose-life-is-it-...
- carbocation 15y ago
  > because researchers can't yet say why it works it's pretty hard to get trials going in the US That can't be right. We use plenty of drugs with unknown mechanisms of action. Here's a list: 4-Aminosalicylic acid Alendronate Ambroxol Arsenic trioxide Becaplermin Bexarotene Chloral hydrate Clofazimine Dactinomycin (RNA synthesis inhibitor) Dapsone (folic acid synthesis inhibitor) Diethyl carbamazine Diethyl ether Diloxanide Dinitric oxide Ethambutol Gentian violet Ginkgolides Griseofulvin Halofantrine Halothane Hydrazinophthalazine Limefantrine (antimalarial; prevents haem polymerization) Levetiracetam Mebendazole Methyl-(5-amino-4-oxopentanoate) Niclosamide Pentamidine Podophyllotoxin Procarbazine Selenium sulphide Source: http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v5/n10/full/nrd2132.html http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v5/n10/full/nrd2132.html
rsheridan6 15y ago
There's nothing stopping docs from using customized therapies that haven't been through clinical trials. Once a drug is approved, doctors can pretty much do whatever they want with them. If there is an approved drug with the mechanism that the computer program wants, the doc can prescribe it. But bear in mind that the doc may have trouble with malpractice liability, and insurance probably won't pay for it.
- ryanmarsh 15y ago
  "There's nothing stopping docs..." Oh yes there is, the strongest entropy I've ever witnessed in any field of science.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
ryanmarsh 15y ago
This is a great article and while Daniel may be on to something, the sad truth is: It doesn't f*ing matter. Here's why: When my wife and I lost our two year old daughter to cancer we started a nonprofit to raise money "for research" we thought. What we found when we got very prominent doctors behind closed doors is a system of bureaucracy that has led to the ineffective local maximums in research that have left heavily funded diseases such as Neuroblastoma (MYC-N amplified) with an increase in survival rate that amount to a rounding error. I'll keep this short so it doesn't turn in to a tirade. 1. Doctors tend to want to study, and grant advisory committees tend to want to fund INCREMENTAL research. Anything that is not incremental on something that is being done prominently is considered "high risk". Good luck with your out of the box thinking. You'll be labeled a hack and your career will end. 2. Many doctors who apply for and receive grants from cancer research foundations do so only because it is a good source of funding for their life's work if they can construe it to in some way have an angle on cancer. A real life example would be studying the immune systems of Zebra fish because: an immunotherapy discovery in the similarly functioning immune systems of Zebra fish might create a model that is applicable to humans. I've been told behind closed doors that it's flat out bullshit, he probably has studied the immune systems of fish his whole career. I was flat out asked by the director of a major US cancer research center to just give them money so that the could continue to keep certain researchers on salary. Lastly, we want to fund a study into using THC (yes, from Marijuana) as an option for children with cancer because it positively affects three major areas of children with cancer: pain, nausea, and appetite. Right now we pump them full of IV nutrition, anti-nausea meds, and morphine. All of which is very hard on their little bodies. Top cancer research doctors are horrified of the light this kind of research will cast them in so good luck finding someone who will do it, much less sit on your board. I could go on forever but I'll leave you with this. My wife and I lived on PubMed and Wikipedia while our daughter was sick. We wanted to understand everything, and you know what we found? The very first question that every single parent who has a child that is diagnosed with cancer asks: "What can I feed my child?" They have to say "we don't know.". Search PubMed, you won't find a single study related to nutrition and solid tumor cancers in pediatric patients. That's fucked up, and its because of the bureaucracy and entropy in the research community. We'd like to break that mold, but first we'll need to raise a lot of money. Shameless plug http://laylagrace.org http://laylagrace.org
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
aneth 15y ago
There are two diet changes the best doctors in the world will give you the day you are diagnosed with cancer: 1) Eliminate sugar from your diet 2) Eliminate red meat from your diet This improves survival rates by orders of magnitude. The sugar cancer link is becoming increasingly apparent, and is the elephant in the room. Excessive red meat can be a problem as well, but from everything I gather, sugar is the real culprit. Sugar raises insulin levels, promoting cancer growth, causing metabolic problems, and inhibiting apoptosis, then feeds that cancer with excessive glucose in the bloodstream. Want to avoid or treat cancer with your diet (along with diabetes, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases)? Stop ingesting sugar!
- fonosip 15y ago
  This is gold info. I found out about this too late to help a family member. Some more links about it: Dying to have known http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=DoUl7F7dWdE&feature=mv_sr http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=DoUl7F7dWdE&feature=mv_sr Gerson Therapy http://gersontherapy.eu/therapy/gerson_therapy http://gersontherapy.eu/therapy/gerson_therapy
  - bhickey 15y ago
    The efficacy of Gerson Therapy not supported by the evidence and it can be harmful to patients. Coffee enemas can damage the large intestine. Foregoing demonstrably effective traditional treatments can lead to reductions in life span and quality of life.
- powertower 15y ago
  The "original cure" to many diseases has always been water fasting (no food for 2-3 weeks).
- pfedor 15y ago
  Citation needed. Google seems inconclusive, e.g., http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/questions/sugar-and-cancer-is-there-a-connection.htm http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/questions/s... http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-causes/CA00085/NSECTIONGROUP=2 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-causes/CA00085/NSECT... http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/03/do-you-fear-sugar-might-cause-cancer.html http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/03/do-you-fear-suga...
giardini 15y ago
The medical establishment has promised a cancer cure for more than 50 years and has nothing significant to show for it. "Cancer centers" will stop at nothing to get money from cancer victims who apparently will spend their last dime in futile attempts to "survive". "Children's" cancer centers are absolute pits of despair and hypocricy. We should terminate federal funding of cancer research (its a government white-collar jobs program for the medical field) and face the fact that we all die someday. Simultaneously significant effort should be spent ensuring that death from cancer is not painful. That is, give cancer patients the drugs necessary to relieve their pain. For some reason I am reluctant to watch yet another cancer victim writhing and sweating in pain as he/she slips into a 3-week coma and imminent death.
- derefr 15y ago
  Or, just as validly in my mind, go the other way, and shunt all the money people are spending on managing cancer into trying to cure it.
smharris65 15y ago
Cancer thrives in an environment that allows it to flourish. Dr. David Servan-Schreiber has written a great book that talks about his two successful battles against cancer and how our "modern" western lifestyle and diet(for example, too much sugar as @aneth mentions in another comment) may set the stage for rise in cancer occurrences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDt3AJQ98c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDt3AJQ98c
thisisnotmyname 15y ago
Some thoughts on cancer from a computation biologist working in the field of proteomics: The author of the article mentions "a million different proteins" - The human genome contains about 20,000 genes, each coding for a different protein. Some small fraction of these genes would be involved in cancer, although the exact proportion is an interesting question which we're not entirely sure of. Perhaps with splice variants we're getting into the millions, but obviously you can't consider splice variants to be unique proteins. In any case, the problem is at least 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the author is thinking. Currently, there are 10s of thousands of cancer researchers worldwide, and hundreds of millions of patients, so the studies he talks about are quite feasible. More troubling is the fact that with the huge amounts of money available, cancer biology attracts a gigantic number of researchers, many of whom are not doing especially great science. There are many, many different pathways in the body that can drive cancer generation, so you can study almost any of them and call yourself a cancer researcher, even though the chances are that most of that work won't lead directly to a cure. My opinion: cancer is impossible to cure - people will always get cancer. There are deep, fundamental connections between our ability to evolve and adapt to our environment and the inevitability of getting cancer. My opinion on how to beat the disease: genomic profiling of an individual's propensity to develop cancer, early detection, anti-metastasis drugs and improved surgical procedures. For anyone interested, there is a fantastic review called "The Hallmarks of Cancer", published in Cell that you should check out.
- mrvc 15y ago
  Someone once argued here that cancer is now just a business. With so many interests vested in keeping the money flowing, their is a significant disincentive to move towards a solution. Instead, it is better to murk the waters and hinder progress, as that will keep the tap flowing for longer, allowing those researches to continue paying their mortgages. It was suggested a better model would be massively rewarding those who create progress in the field (such as yourself) rather than offering large lucrative grants for research irrespective of result.
tintin 15y ago
Some thoughts of another hacker: The story is about a cure, not about the sources of cancer. When a program runs slow on a device you could add memory as the cure, but you could also start with the source. Skin cancer as example: You can find a cure for skin cancer but you could also tell people not to stay in the hot sun for too long.

eps 15y ago

I wonder how the cervical cancer fits in, because it was ultimately traced to a virus as a trigger and then they developed a vaccine for it. The same may apply to other types of cancer, in which case "debugging" the condition without removing the root cause does not make much sense.

Mz 15y ago
I have come to think that (or at least wonder if) maybe all cancers are viral/have a viral component: 1) Human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer (which is why women get annual "Pap smears") 2) Cancer causes tumors, ie odd growths, much the way warts and fever blisters cause growths on the body. Both warts and fever blisters are caused by virii and I don't know of any other pathogen which causes growths of that sort, by taking over the cell like that. 3) Virii are made of the same stuff as genes: RNA. This is precisely why some of them can get inserted into a cell and take it over, which is the way warts operate.
- Palomides 15y ago
  WHO estimates 17.8% of cancers have a viral origin. see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16404738 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16404738
  - Mz 15y ago
    Thank you for the link, but it doesn't say "viral origin" it says "infection associated" and lists liver flukes (a parasite) as one of the known associated infectious agents. But great info nonetheless.
    - puredemo 15y ago
      Makes me want to try HumaWorm.
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  > Human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer (which is why women get annual "Pap smears") If you meant to say the test was called after the Pap-illoma virus, then it's not correct. Pap test checks for abnormally shaped cervix liner cells rather than a virus. And it is named "Pap" after a person who invented it, not a virus.
  - Mz 15y ago
    No, I didn't mean to specifically say that. I think I was vaguely aware it was named after a person. Is anything in that line factually incorrect? (EDIT: I am guessing you are reading it that way due to the quotation marks? If you check my comment history, I think you will find I am prone to overuse of quotations. I stick them in to make it clearer it is a phrase and those words belong together. I often feel English doesn't do a good job of making such distinctions. I suspect this has something to do with growing up in a bilingual household. In German, lots of words get run together into a megaword, which makes it clear it's basically a phrase. We do not have a similar mechanism in English. I often feel that leaves too much room for misinterpretation. So it's an odd personal quirk. Sorry for the confusion.) Thanks.
- RK 15y ago
  The book mentioned by the OP discusses the "virus theory" of cancer, which was very popular for a while. What people eventually realized was that cancer is the result of genetic mutations and there are many potential causes of the mutations, viruses being one of them. E.g. HPV can lead to cervical, anal, throat cancer, etc. An interesting book. The books feels a little bit narrowly focused on medical oncology, but the author is a medical oncologist, so you'd expect that.
  - pradocchia 15y ago
    I'm in the middle of the book myself, and I half-suspect the/a common thread will turn out to be chronic inflammation. Bacteria causing ulcers causing stomach cancer seems a case in point. Also, tobacco & lung cancer: sure, the smoke contains carcinogens, but you're also looking at decades of chronic inflammation in the lungs. Likewise, the recent WHO announcement re: cell phones & brain cancer was poopooed, since everybody knows the radiation is not powerful enough to damage DNA, but! it could certainly cause some low-grade inflammation of brain tissue. Low-grade inflammation + daily use -> chronic inflammation -> cancer? No, I don't know how something like leukemia would fit under this rubric.
    - Mz 15y ago
      FWIW: Inflammation is known to promote infection. For example, it is well established that reducing inflammation in cystic fibrosis patients reduces incidence of infection. Reducing inflammation via diet is one of the things that helped me get off multiple drugs, most of which had anti-inflammatory properties as their primary or secondary purpose.

ericb 15y ago

What about the equivalent of find and replace (delete) based on pattern matching? Something along the lines of, extract a sample of the cancer, create a virus that binds to it with high specificity and kills it, then deploy.

Palomides 15y ago
I would observe that both cancers and viruses evolve very rapidly in the human body; in many cancer patients, a particular treatment grows less effective over time because the cancer evolves to be less susceptible. Adding a virus that may just quickly evolve to infect all the cells in the body to the mix seems rather risky.
- Mz 15y ago
  This is basically the plot for the movie "I am Legend", starring Will Smith. In that movie, yeah, things go terribly wrong with this approach. (EDIT: And I mention the movie to say that as a thought experiment this has been done before and drew the same conclusion: This has potential to go very, very wrong.)
  - rvkennedy 15y ago
    It's a general law in fiction, going back to Frankenstein, that any development that challenges the status quo will prove harmful. Mary Shelley didn't call it "The Modern Prometheus" for nothing - the implication is that to challenge our limitations offends the gods, or God, or Nature. It's a great way to make people feel OK about mortality or failure. And a guaranteed trope - when a TV episode or movie starts with a new development in science with great promise you know 100% by the closing credits that the scientist will have been punished and the status quo ante restored. I would guess that when the first crazy experimentalist tried putting seeds in the ground instead of foraging for fruit, there was a cave painting about how the Spirits would punish the whole tribe for its arrogance.
    - Mz 15y ago
      Well, I'm kind of familiar with that firsthand since my hobbies include getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. So I get called a liar, charlatan, and snake-oil salesman...blah blah blah... by folks who think it just cannot be done. Still, the idea of intentionally introducing a virus to cure cancer doesn't sit well with me. :-)

reasonattlm 15y ago

You want to fix cancer, don't wait for the scientists. They are hobbled by regulation. Be an engineer: get out there and make one of the viable solutions work, and make it work outside the US, because you'll never get approval from the FDA for a reasonable amount of money - money that could to towards making something work rather than the normal nonsense. The best present tack for dealing with cancer is granulocyte therapy. It works very, very well, but because researchers can't yet say why it works it's pretty hard to get trials going in the US. I think there's only one right now. But somewhere out there, for as far as we can see near every cancer, there's someone with an immune system that can kill it. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/the-state-of-leukocyte-or-granulocyte-transplants-to-kill-cancer.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/04/the-state-of-leuk... But at a cost of $100k per patient in a formal trial, and with researchers willing to go to bat on this one, getting something going in Asia shouldn't be out of the possibility for a few million dollars. The philosophy of all new medical development should be "get it done outside the US". Seriously. See: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/05/31/open-cures-an-initiative-to-speed-clinical-development-of-longevity-science/ http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/05/31/open-cures-an-initiative... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-world-without-the-fda.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-worl... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2007/03/whose-life-is-it-anyway.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2007/03/whose-life-is-it-...

carbocation 15y ago
> because researchers can't yet say why it works it's pretty hard to get trials going in the US That can't be right. We use plenty of drugs with unknown mechanisms of action. Here's a list: 4-Aminosalicylic acid Alendronate Ambroxol Arsenic trioxide Becaplermin Bexarotene Chloral hydrate Clofazimine Dactinomycin (RNA synthesis inhibitor) Dapsone (folic acid synthesis inhibitor) Diethyl carbamazine Diethyl ether Diloxanide Dinitric oxide Ethambutol Gentian violet Ginkgolides Griseofulvin Halofantrine Halothane Hydrazinophthalazine Limefantrine (antimalarial; prevents haem polymerization) Levetiracetam Mebendazole Methyl-(5-amino-4-oxopentanoate) Niclosamide Pentamidine Podophyllotoxin Procarbazine Selenium sulphide Source: http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v5/n10/full/nrd2132.html http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v5/n10/full/nrd2132.html

rsheridan6 15y ago

There's nothing stopping docs from using customized therapies that haven't been through clinical trials. Once a drug is approved, doctors can pretty much do whatever they want with them. If there is an approved drug with the mechanism that the computer program wants, the doc can prescribe it. But bear in mind that the doc may have trouble with malpractice liability, and insurance probably won't pay for it.

ryanmarsh 15y ago
"There's nothing stopping docs..." Oh yes there is, the strongest entropy I've ever witnessed in any field of science.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

ryanmarsh 15y ago

This is a great article and while Daniel may be on to something, the sad truth is: It doesn't f*ing matter. Here's why: When my wife and I lost our two year old daughter to cancer we started a nonprofit to raise money "for research" we thought. What we found when we got very prominent doctors behind closed doors is a system of bureaucracy that has led to the ineffective local maximums in research that have left heavily funded diseases such as Neuroblastoma (MYC-N amplified) with an increase in survival rate that amount to a rounding error. I'll keep this short so it doesn't turn in to a tirade. 1. Doctors tend to want to study, and grant advisory committees tend to want to fund INCREMENTAL research. Anything that is not incremental on something that is being done prominently is considered "high risk". Good luck with your out of the box thinking. You'll be labeled a hack and your career will end. 2. Many doctors who apply for and receive grants from cancer research foundations do so only because it is a good source of funding for their life's work if they can construe it to in some way have an angle on cancer. A real life example would be studying the immune systems of Zebra fish because: an immunotherapy discovery in the similarly functioning immune systems of Zebra fish might create a model that is applicable to humans. I've been told behind closed doors that it's flat out bullshit, he probably has studied the immune systems of fish his whole career. I was flat out asked by the director of a major US cancer research center to just give them money so that the could continue to keep certain researchers on salary. Lastly, we want to fund a study into using THC (yes, from Marijuana) as an option for children with cancer because it positively affects three major areas of children with cancer: pain, nausea, and appetite. Right now we pump them full of IV nutrition, anti-nausea meds, and morphine. All of which is very hard on their little bodies. Top cancer research doctors are horrified of the light this kind of research will cast them in so good luck finding someone who will do it, much less sit on your board. I could go on forever but I'll leave you with this. My wife and I lived on PubMed and Wikipedia while our daughter was sick. We wanted to understand everything, and you know what we found? The very first question that every single parent who has a child that is diagnosed with cancer asks: "What can I feed my child?" They have to say "we don't know.". Search PubMed, you won't find a single study related to nutrition and solid tumor cancers in pediatric patients. That's fucked up, and its because of the bureaucracy and entropy in the research community. We'd like to break that mold, but first we'll need to raise a lot of money. Shameless plug http://laylagrace.org http://laylagrace.org

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

aneth 15y ago

There are two diet changes the best doctors in the world will give you the day you are diagnosed with cancer: 1) Eliminate sugar from your diet 2) Eliminate red meat from your diet This improves survival rates by orders of magnitude. The sugar cancer link is becoming increasingly apparent, and is the elephant in the room. Excessive red meat can be a problem as well, but from everything I gather, sugar is the real culprit. Sugar raises insulin levels, promoting cancer growth, causing metabolic problems, and inhibiting apoptosis, then feeds that cancer with excessive glucose in the bloodstream. Want to avoid or treat cancer with your diet (along with diabetes, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases)? Stop ingesting sugar!

fonosip 15y ago
This is gold info. I found out about this too late to help a family member. Some more links about it: Dying to have known http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=DoUl7F7dWdE&feature=mv_sr http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=DoUl7F7dWdE&feature=mv_sr Gerson Therapy http://gersontherapy.eu/therapy/gerson_therapy http://gersontherapy.eu/therapy/gerson_therapy
- bhickey 15y ago
  The efficacy of Gerson Therapy not supported by the evidence and it can be harmful to patients. Coffee enemas can damage the large intestine. Foregoing demonstrably effective traditional treatments can lead to reductions in life span and quality of life.
powertower 15y ago
The "original cure" to many diseases has always been water fasting (no food for 2-3 weeks).
pfedor 15y ago
Citation needed. Google seems inconclusive, e.g., http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/questions/sugar-and-cancer-is-there-a-connection.htm http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/questions/s... http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-causes/CA00085/NSECTIONGROUP=2 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-causes/CA00085/NSECT... http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/03/do-you-fear-sugar-might-cause-cancer.html http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/03/do-you-fear-suga...

giardini 15y ago

The medical establishment has promised a cancer cure for more than 50 years and has nothing significant to show for it. "Cancer centers" will stop at nothing to get money from cancer victims who apparently will spend their last dime in futile attempts to "survive". "Children's" cancer centers are absolute pits of despair and hypocricy. We should terminate federal funding of cancer research (its a government white-collar jobs program for the medical field) and face the fact that we all die someday. Simultaneously significant effort should be spent ensuring that death from cancer is not painful. That is, give cancer patients the drugs necessary to relieve their pain. For some reason I am reluctant to watch yet another cancer victim writhing and sweating in pain as he/she slips into a 3-week coma and imminent death.

derefr 15y ago
Or, just as validly in my mind, go the other way, and shunt all the money people are spending on managing cancer into trying to cure it.

smharris65 15y ago

Cancer thrives in an environment that allows it to flourish. Dr. David Servan-Schreiber has written a great book that talks about his two successful battles against cancer and how our "modern" western lifestyle and diet(for example, too much sugar as @aneth mentions in another comment) may set the stage for rise in cancer occurrences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDt3AJQ98c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDt3AJQ98c

thisisnotmyname 15y ago

Some thoughts on cancer from a computation biologist working in the field of proteomics: The author of the article mentions "a million different proteins" - The human genome contains about 20,000 genes, each coding for a different protein. Some small fraction of these genes would be involved in cancer, although the exact proportion is an interesting question which we're not entirely sure of. Perhaps with splice variants we're getting into the millions, but obviously you can't consider splice variants to be unique proteins. In any case, the problem is at least 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the author is thinking. Currently, there are 10s of thousands of cancer researchers worldwide, and hundreds of millions of patients, so the studies he talks about are quite feasible. More troubling is the fact that with the huge amounts of money available, cancer biology attracts a gigantic number of researchers, many of whom are not doing especially great science. There are many, many different pathways in the body that can drive cancer generation, so you can study almost any of them and call yourself a cancer researcher, even though the chances are that most of that work won't lead directly to a cure. My opinion: cancer is impossible to cure - people will always get cancer. There are deep, fundamental connections between our ability to evolve and adapt to our environment and the inevitability of getting cancer. My opinion on how to beat the disease: genomic profiling of an individual's propensity to develop cancer, early detection, anti-metastasis drugs and improved surgical procedures. For anyone interested, there is a fantastic review called "The Hallmarks of Cancer", published in Cell that you should check out.

mrvc 15y ago
Someone once argued here that cancer is now just a business. With so many interests vested in keeping the money flowing, their is a significant disincentive to move towards a solution. Instead, it is better to murk the waters and hinder progress, as that will keep the tap flowing for longer, allowing those researches to continue paying their mortgages. It was suggested a better model would be massively rewarding those who create progress in the field (such as yourself) rather than offering large lucrative grants for research irrespective of result.

tintin 15y ago

Some thoughts of another hacker: The story is about a cure, not about the sources of cancer. When a program runs slow on a device you could add memory as the cure, but you could also start with the source. Skin cancer as example: You can find a cure for skin cancer but you could also tell people not to stay in the hot sun for too long.