11 ms·

Developing a cancer drug without Big Pharma: this hospital shows it can be done

197 points by yread 2y ago

JSR_FDED 2y ago
Translated, unpaywalled: https://www-ftm-nl.translate.goog/artikelen/ruzie-tussen-ziekenhuis-en-farma-industrie-over-goedkeuring-kankermedicijn?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-ftm-nl.translate.goog/artikelen/ruzie-tussen-zie...
ALittleLight 2y ago
That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/news-events/dialogue-blog/2020/yun-cantley-vitamin-c https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/news-eve... From what I can tell there are several things like this - that have promising anti cancer effects, that just don't really get that much attention because there's not a patent possible. Really makes me think much less of medical science. Even if you couldn't patent any thing you'd think you could get fame and fortune by devising a useful therapy.
- ben_w 2y ago
  IIRC medical research is really expensive, hence money-seeking is to fund it within capitalism. Also IIRC the rewards are oversized compared to the costs, but that doesn't change that the costs are also huge. Does mean I'm generally in favour of getting every government to quadruple public spending on this though. Whatever the current spend is, we can do more.
  - ALittleLight 2y ago
    I don't see how something like high dose vitamin C IV is very expensive. I would assume a handful of oncologists could do the whole thing themselves. We get X patients a year, we randomly suggest the vitamin C IV to half, the half with vitamin C did better or worse by these metrics. Vitamin C is not expensive and they have to collect the outcome data for everyone involved anyway - so where is the expense coming from? If it has benefits then more doctors will start to do it and more data will become available. If not, onto the next thing.
    - ericmay 2y ago
      I'm not a physician and not in the medical field, but I would hazard a guess that a lot of the expense comes from just doing the work. What specific doctor will administer the vitamin C and monitor the patients? How do you isolate that the vitamin C dosage increase is effective? Who is going to create the vitamin C in the proper dosages? Who is going to write about it to make sure that it's legally approved? The human body is very sophisticated. The trials have to be done in a scientific way, following the established procedures of ethical medical treatment, peer reviewed, etc. And let's say you start giving vitamin C to some of these patients and they start having bad reactions and it makes their disease worse? Who covers the hospital stay? Who pays for their care? Just looking at a few things there I'm guessing that's a few million dollars at the very least.. and even so you have to look at opportunity cost. Is this the best and most promising path of research for the physicians and researchers? Are there more promising compounds? Etc.
    - cen4 2y ago
      It happens already. You just have to find the docs who do it. Which usually means attending conferences which focus on specific diseases.
      - andy_ppp 2y ago
        You mean the sort of conferences that attract charlatans and conspiracy theorists?
  - adamredwoods 2y ago
    Rare diseases fund research through philanthropy. And let's not forget Biden's Cancer Moonshot program! https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  One must wonder if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say. Rarely are these things straightforward and clear cut. That being said, I recently broke my ankle, and found that the protocols still often include 6 weeks off it, despite modern evidence largely showing zero downsides (and some benefits, especially in terms of early recovery) to weight bearing immediately - Probably costing possibly billions of dollars in lost productivity and unnecessary PT every year. I probably shouldn't get too high on my horse about random unexplored therapies - plenty of things in medicine that are just done some way because that's how it's always been done.
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  When my wife was alive, some people in her group tried it. There's not much evidence. >> that have promising anti cancer effects I don't know why people gravitate towards the "simple" remedies for cancer, or pose that money making is a barrier for these remedies. Remember, research costs money! DO the funding yourself if you think there's a miracle cure here. (hint: there's not.)
  - jdhendrickson 2y ago
    I am sorry for your loss, you lived through my biggest fear. It must be so frustrating to read this kind of thing over and over.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again. Vitamin C at high doses is cytotoxic, so it works against rapidly dividing cells. Cancer cells also preferentially concentrate vitamin C because they are under oxidative stress. However, just like with most of other generally cytotoxic treatments, cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. And the overall toxicity of vitamin C makes it uninteresting as a treatment.
  - akoboldfrying 2y ago
    Thanks for providing a plausible explanation. Do you know of any links (ideally peer- reviewed research) supporting the quick evolution of resistance to vitamin C? If not I'll google around.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      That's a generic cancer resistance mechanism. That's why most of cancer treatments fail eventually, the cancer cells evolve to tolerate the levels of chemotherapy agents that are lethal to regular cells. In the articles linked in this thread, large-dose vitamin C prolonged survival, but didn't clear the cancer. It's exactly what you'd expect from a chemo treatment.
  - mahkeiro 2y ago
    This was just published by UI showing a potent effect of high dose vitamin C + chemotherapy: https://medicine.uiowa.edu/content/high-dose-iv-vitamin-c-plus-chemotherapy-doubles-survival-advanced-pancreatic-cancer https://medicine.uiowa.edu/content/high-dose-iv-vitamin-c-pl... and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231724003537 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221323172...
    - cyberax 2y ago
      That's actually pretty interesting. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers, and without many therapeutic options. Vitamin C is basically another drug to complement the existing standard-of-care drugs. Not a silver bullet, but definitely helpful.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  It’s pretty unlikely that this is true for a few reasons: - Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective - Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish - Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor it’s unlikely for an effective treatment to exist and be ignored by the medical community for decades just because something can’t be patented
  - DrScientist 2y ago
    > Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish However often the work required to prove something is effective is beyond a capacity of a single Doctor. Also in terms of wanting the best outcome for themselves - sometimes that involves not putting their career at risk by trying unproven treatments on patients ( you are focussing on the outcome when it works, not the more likely outcome and consequence of it not working ). So sure 'miracle' cures are unlikely to lay undiscovered - but most improvements in medicine are incremental, rather than miraculous.
    - shepherdjerred 2y ago
      I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. But it sounds like the parent said there’s a miracle treatment that the medical community is ignoring for lack of a financial incentive (and they then go on to mention a financial incentive?)
      - ALittleLight 2y ago
        That's a ridiculous reading of my comment. Vitamin C induces cell death in a variety of cancers. That's what I wrote and it's not controversial, it's documented in dozens of studies. I went on to link an article by medical doctors and cancer experts (on cancer.gov) who explain how this works and also explicitly state that it's not being researched due to lack of financial incentive. I can't stop you from refusing to read sources - but you should know that you're totally wrong here. I can, and have in this thread, cited multiple high quality sources.
- alphan0n 2y ago
  Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well. https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
- pjc50 2y ago
  This dates back to Linus Pauling: https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-recommendation https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-r... It seems that once you exceed a certain level the body just dumps it, making megadoses unviable.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    You get nicely expensive urine, though.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  >That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it, and I think had published a book on it. You should be able to check the Linus Pauling Institute and find literature on it. I probably did it over a decade back. Predictably he was ridiculed (IMO wrongfully) for it by people who did a very shoddy job of looking into the nuances. The last I checked in the US the Riordan clinic offers Vit C for Cancer. There are probably several other practitioners who will not publicize that they treat patients for cancer (and several other chronic conditions) for obvious reasons.
- ALittleLight 2y ago
  Deeply disappointed by the comments replying to this. I would reply to each individually, but feel like I'd get throttled by hackernews, so I'll just reply to everyone here. --- shepherdjerred writes that this is unlikely because doctors want what is best for their patients and would notice a cure were it available. This is kind of true. Some doctors do know about and prescribe vitamin c with typical therapy. Here is an umbrella review of hundreds of such cases documenting positive results from using vitamin C. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812486/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812486/ The issue is not whether doctors will prescribe it - I expect anyone could ask their doctor for it. Vitamin C is safe, well tolerated, and shown to mitigate symptoms of chemotherapy. Doctors can and do prescribe it. The issue is why an apparently promising therapy isn't getting better testing to establish whether or not it is effective despite it being known for decades. --- adamredwoods writes that while his wife was still alive people in her group tried it. I'd love to know more - especially type of cancer and whether the vitamin c was administered orally (no effect expected) or by IV (depending on type of cancer possible effect expected) and at what dosage. Here's a randomized controlled trial showing substantial benefits of high dose IV vitamin C for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer - they live longer, the cancer progresses slower, and their quality of life is generally better. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39369582/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39369582/ Adam goes on to suggest I should do the funding myself if I think there is a miracle cure here. There are a couple ideas here. If I or a loved one ever develop cancer - then of course (depending on type of cancer) I would take high dose IV vitamin C, along with similar therapies that are well established as safe and potentially useful. As far as "Doing the research myself" - honestly, I might. My path would be to construct a website compiling the research, explaining why people with cancer should try this, explaining how you can get your doctor to prescribe it to you (or, since you don't need a prescription to take vitamin c, how you can DIY), and have functionality to support people registering that they are a cancer patient who has decided to take vitamin c (or not) and give updates. The hope with the website would be that it could compile enough raw data to become compelling to medical professionals. --- Panzer04 asks "if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say" - why isn't it being done? Vitamin C is sometimes used. That's why we have hundreds of case studies and, in some cases, randomized controlled trials and other experiments documenting its use and efficacy. My comments here aren't based on what I say or think - my original source was an article explaining the research on cancer.gov. Vitamin C (again: high dose and IV administered) is known to have potential benefits for cancer patients. --- cyberax says "Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again" and then offers a partial explanation of the mechanism for how vitamin C causes cell death in cancer cells - which is better explained in the link I originally provided. cyberax then claims, without evidence, that cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. I don't believe there is any such evidence, having read several papers on this and never seeing it mentioned - nor, by my understanding, is it plausible that cancer cells could fundamentally change how they work to get immunity to this. Perhaps I'm wrong though and cyberax could supply some evidence. I notice in the replies to cyberax pfdietz says "There is evidence that high doses of antioxidants can make cancer worse" - and then links 2 papers exploring the use of vitamin E as a cancer treatment. Vitamin E, despite sharing quite a few letters with Vitamin C, is a different thing. --- dennis_jeeves2 writes that "Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it". This is not correct and explained in the first few paragraphs of my original link. Linus Pauling used orally administered vitamin C which results in weaker blood concentrations and therefore less impact on cancer. The modern method uses IV administered high dose Vitamin C (which I was careful to write in my comment). While Pauling's method shows little effect in randomized controlled trials, high dose IV Vitamin C does show benefits. --- insane_dreamer writes that "Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out." Pretty meaningless comment. The safety of vitamin C is already well established. --- pjc50 also cites Linus Pauling - which, again, is explained in the first couple paragraphs of the link I originally posted. High dose orally administered vitamin C doesn't work - there are limits on how much you can increase blood concentration through oral administration, so most of the high dose is lost. That's why, as explained in my original comment/link, the modern protocol uses IV administered vitamin C. --- alphan0n quotes an XKCD strip saying "Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well." A bad comment because the tests I've been linked to have been in vivo, and my original link explains why this kills cancer cells and not healthy cells. --- That's my review of the comments. I would characterize them as exceptionally uninformed - which is odd. Why would people feel the need to comment on a subject they don't know about and simultaneously refuse to read the outline I originally linked which answers all the questions and criticisms posted here?
baranul 2y ago
Case in point, Cuba's lung cancer vaccine[1]. Which a company has brought to the U.S. as CIMAvax-EGF[2]. [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/09/cuba-has-lung-cancer-vaccine-many-u-s-patients-cant-get-without-breaking-law/1019093001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/09/cuba-ha... [2]: https://www.roswellpark.org/cimavax https://www.roswellpark.org/cimavax
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  https://aacrjournals.org/clincancerres/article/22/15/3782/79235/A-Phase-III-Clinical-Trial-of-the-Epidermal-Growth https://aacrjournals.org/clincancerres/article/22/15/3782/79...
- onionisafruit 2y ago
  As an aside, what makes this a vaccine vs a treatment?
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    > Neither of the vaccines prevents cancer; rather, they are a kind of immunotherapy that prompts the body’s immune system to battle the disease in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Not 100% sure, because I've only heard about vaccines in preventative contexts before, but based on this description my guess would be that "anything that tells your immune system to Do Stuff" counts as a vaccine. Versus something like Herceptin, which also treats cancer, just with ready-made antibodies that were grown in a lab.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      There are also immune modulators that aren't vaccines. Interferon, for example, or more recently the famous checkpoint inhibitors that take the brakes off immune attack of cancer cells.
  - quantumwoke 2y ago
    My wife (MD) tells me that vaccine refers to anything that induces an immune response against a pathogen or disease. In this case the vaccine causes anti-EGFR antibody production
EternalFury 2y ago
Anyone can mix chemicals in a test tube and claim it’s the cure for something. That’s the easy part. Proving it’s safe and effective, that’s what requires a lot of capital expenditure. This statement is a drastic characterization, but you could say “half a dozen PhDs can form reasons to believe they may have found a cure for something”, and the paragraph would end the same.
- cchi_co 2y ago
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- vasco 2y ago
  Since these are cancer trials I'm assuming no test subjects get paid, and university PhDs research for free, like in every other field, so what necessarily has to be expensive about it? If you have to pay 200 homeless to take your 0.0001% better than placebo antidepressants in the context of a huge corporation, and maybe redo the trial a few times, I can see how that gets expensive, but I don't see why it's a de facto rule. But even the big trials it's weird how expensive people say they are. Most other products require a lot of high paid labor to produce, think of a video game studio for example, also without any guarantee it won't flop, and it certainly takes longer to develop than to do a clinical trial.
  - rahkiin 2y ago
    PhD candidates are paid salary in the Netherlands. Less of course than the senior trial researchers at pharma. I also would not assume there is no compensation for subjects as thats part of the medical-ethical process and not just ‘it helps the subject so no money’.
    - vasco 2y ago
      The €30k to €35k per year they make in this context approximates to free. Any normal company has to pay much more than that for less. A non-phd software engineer will get paid much more to change button colors for example. So that can't be the reason they are expensive and a PhD candidate is doing many other things than just helping to run trials.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
>Drawing up such a dossier is a profession in itself. An important detail: the EMA is asking for around €350,000 to assess the book. This is a massive understatement of the regulatory hurdles at play. I have worked on dossiers that took 200 man-years at 400k per person. This is the development part of pharma R&D. The dossier might be a thousand pages submitted, but that can easily be 100,000+ pages on the backend. There's a reason that even billion dollar companies crumble and fail under the documentation complexity.
anthk 2y ago
You will always need peer review, health safety, some insurance in case of serious damages and so on.
magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
If federal funds are used to develop a medication or vaccine, it must not be patentable, otherwise it is a corporate welfare giveaway trading lives and poverty for money.
- downrightmike 2y ago
  But that is 100% the Pharma industry. How did we get an Ebola vaccine? USA spent $100M. And they were the only ones willing to despite <1% of cases
Jabbs 2y ago
Looking for a “drug” is part of the problem.
- hooverd 2y ago
  Prevention is worth more than cure, sure, but cancer doesn't discriminate like that. You can still get unlucky.
chelseak6 2y ago
I think it's not possible without needed legislativy
bastloing 2y ago
AI will change everything. Especially disrupting pharma, Hollywood, law and lawyers, and medicine. Only question right now is who will win the race and be authoritative?
- bastloing 2y ago
  Even CNBC agrees with healthcare https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/28/these-economists-say-ai-can-improve-the-fiscal-health-of-the-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/28/these-economists-say-ai-can-...
healthyusa 2y ago
Not to break the news, but there are dozens of underground clinical trials. Billionaires are not waiting for the FDA. That’s ridiculous. They hire their own chemists, and make their own drugs. This is not complicated.
pattymanners 2y ago
My husband was diagnosed of Parkinson’s Disease a couple of years ago, he had severe fatigue, difficulty with mobility and sleeping. He was placed on Sinemet 3 times daily, which helped but only for a short while. So, we decided to try alternative treatment and began on PD-5 protocol, it has made tremendous difference for my husband, he had improved walking balance, muscle strength and he is now very active. His Parkinson’s is totally under control, google binehealthcenter. com. This treatment is a breakthrough for PWP!

197 points by yread 2y ago

Translated, unpaywalled: https://www-ftm-nl.translate.goog/artikelen/ruzie-tussen-ziekenhuis-en-farma-industrie-over-goedkeuring-kankermedicijn?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-ftm-nl.translate.goog/artikelen/ruzie-tussen-zie...

ALittleLight 2y ago

That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/news-events/dialogue-blog/2020/yun-cantley-vitamin-c https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/news-eve... From what I can tell there are several things like this - that have promising anti cancer effects, that just don't really get that much attention because there's not a patent possible. Really makes me think much less of medical science. Even if you couldn't patent any thing you'd think you could get fame and fortune by devising a useful therapy.

ben_w 2y ago
IIRC medical research is really expensive, hence money-seeking is to fund it within capitalism. Also IIRC the rewards are oversized compared to the costs, but that doesn't change that the costs are also huge. Does mean I'm generally in favour of getting every government to quadruple public spending on this though. Whatever the current spend is, we can do more.
- ALittleLight 2y ago
  I don't see how something like high dose vitamin C IV is very expensive. I would assume a handful of oncologists could do the whole thing themselves. We get X patients a year, we randomly suggest the vitamin C IV to half, the half with vitamin C did better or worse by these metrics. Vitamin C is not expensive and they have to collect the outcome data for everyone involved anyway - so where is the expense coming from? If it has benefits then more doctors will start to do it and more data will become available. If not, onto the next thing.
  - ericmay 2y ago
    I'm not a physician and not in the medical field, but I would hazard a guess that a lot of the expense comes from just doing the work. What specific doctor will administer the vitamin C and monitor the patients? How do you isolate that the vitamin C dosage increase is effective? Who is going to create the vitamin C in the proper dosages? Who is going to write about it to make sure that it's legally approved? The human body is very sophisticated. The trials have to be done in a scientific way, following the established procedures of ethical medical treatment, peer reviewed, etc. And let's say you start giving vitamin C to some of these patients and they start having bad reactions and it makes their disease worse? Who covers the hospital stay? Who pays for their care? Just looking at a few things there I'm guessing that's a few million dollars at the very least.. and even so you have to look at opportunity cost. Is this the best and most promising path of research for the physicians and researchers? Are there more promising compounds? Etc.
  - cen4 2y ago
    It happens already. You just have to find the docs who do it. Which usually means attending conferences which focus on specific diseases.
    - andy_ppp 2y ago
      You mean the sort of conferences that attract charlatans and conspiracy theorists?
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  Rare diseases fund research through philanthropy. And let's not forget Biden's Cancer Moonshot program! https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out.
Panzer04 2y ago
One must wonder if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say. Rarely are these things straightforward and clear cut. That being said, I recently broke my ankle, and found that the protocols still often include 6 weeks off it, despite modern evidence largely showing zero downsides (and some benefits, especially in terms of early recovery) to weight bearing immediately - Probably costing possibly billions of dollars in lost productivity and unnecessary PT every year. I probably shouldn't get too high on my horse about random unexplored therapies - plenty of things in medicine that are just done some way because that's how it's always been done.
adamredwoods 2y ago
When my wife was alive, some people in her group tried it. There's not much evidence. >> that have promising anti cancer effects I don't know why people gravitate towards the "simple" remedies for cancer, or pose that money making is a barrier for these remedies. Remember, research costs money! DO the funding yourself if you think there's a miracle cure here. (hint: there's not.)
- jdhendrickson 2y ago
  I am sorry for your loss, you lived through my biggest fear. It must be so frustrating to read this kind of thing over and over.
cyberax 2y ago
> That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again. Vitamin C at high doses is cytotoxic, so it works against rapidly dividing cells. Cancer cells also preferentially concentrate vitamin C because they are under oxidative stress. However, just like with most of other generally cytotoxic treatments, cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. And the overall toxicity of vitamin C makes it uninteresting as a treatment.
- akoboldfrying 2y ago
  Thanks for providing a plausible explanation. Do you know of any links (ideally peer- reviewed research) supporting the quick evolution of resistance to vitamin C? If not I'll google around.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    That's a generic cancer resistance mechanism. That's why most of cancer treatments fail eventually, the cancer cells evolve to tolerate the levels of chemotherapy agents that are lethal to regular cells. In the articles linked in this thread, large-dose vitamin C prolonged survival, but didn't clear the cancer. It's exactly what you'd expect from a chemo treatment.
- mahkeiro 2y ago
  This was just published by UI showing a potent effect of high dose vitamin C + chemotherapy: https://medicine.uiowa.edu/content/high-dose-iv-vitamin-c-plus-chemotherapy-doubles-survival-advanced-pancreatic-cancer https://medicine.uiowa.edu/content/high-dose-iv-vitamin-c-pl... and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231724003537 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221323172...
  - cyberax 2y ago
    That's actually pretty interesting. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers, and without many therapeutic options. Vitamin C is basically another drug to complement the existing standard-of-care drugs. Not a silver bullet, but definitely helpful.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
It’s pretty unlikely that this is true for a few reasons: - Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective - Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish - Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor it’s unlikely for an effective treatment to exist and be ignored by the medical community for decades just because something can’t be patented
- DrScientist 2y ago
  > Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish However often the work required to prove something is effective is beyond a capacity of a single Doctor. Also in terms of wanting the best outcome for themselves - sometimes that involves not putting their career at risk by trying unproven treatments on patients ( you are focussing on the outcome when it works, not the more likely outcome and consequence of it not working ). So sure 'miracle' cures are unlikely to lay undiscovered - but most improvements in medicine are incremental, rather than miraculous.
  - shepherdjerred 2y ago
    I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. But it sounds like the parent said there’s a miracle treatment that the medical community is ignoring for lack of a financial incentive (and they then go on to mention a financial incentive?)
    - ALittleLight 2y ago
      That's a ridiculous reading of my comment. Vitamin C induces cell death in a variety of cancers. That's what I wrote and it's not controversial, it's documented in dozens of studies. I went on to link an article by medical doctors and cancer experts (on cancer.gov) who explain how this works and also explicitly state that it's not being researched due to lack of financial incentive. I can't stop you from refusing to read sources - but you should know that you're totally wrong here. I can, and have in this thread, cited multiple high quality sources.
alphan0n 2y ago
Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well. https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
pjc50 2y ago
This dates back to Linus Pauling: https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-recommendation https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-r... It seems that once you exceed a certain level the body just dumps it, making megadoses unviable.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  You get nicely expensive urine, though.
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it, and I think had published a book on it. You should be able to check the Linus Pauling Institute and find literature on it. I probably did it over a decade back. Predictably he was ridiculed (IMO wrongfully) for it by people who did a very shoddy job of looking into the nuances. The last I checked in the US the Riordan clinic offers Vit C for Cancer. There are probably several other practitioners who will not publicize that they treat patients for cancer (and several other chronic conditions) for obvious reasons.
ALittleLight 2y ago
Deeply disappointed by the comments replying to this. I would reply to each individually, but feel like I'd get throttled by hackernews, so I'll just reply to everyone here. --- shepherdjerred writes that this is unlikely because doctors want what is best for their patients and would notice a cure were it available. This is kind of true. Some doctors do know about and prescribe vitamin c with typical therapy. Here is an umbrella review of hundreds of such cases documenting positive results from using vitamin C. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812486/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812486/ The issue is not whether doctors will prescribe it - I expect anyone could ask their doctor for it. Vitamin C is safe, well tolerated, and shown to mitigate symptoms of chemotherapy. Doctors can and do prescribe it. The issue is why an apparently promising therapy isn't getting better testing to establish whether or not it is effective despite it being known for decades. --- adamredwoods writes that while his wife was still alive people in her group tried it. I'd love to know more - especially type of cancer and whether the vitamin c was administered orally (no effect expected) or by IV (depending on type of cancer possible effect expected) and at what dosage. Here's a randomized controlled trial showing substantial benefits of high dose IV vitamin C for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer - they live longer, the cancer progresses slower, and their quality of life is generally better. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39369582/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39369582/ Adam goes on to suggest I should do the funding myself if I think there is a miracle cure here. There are a couple ideas here. If I or a loved one ever develop cancer - then of course (depending on type of cancer) I would take high dose IV vitamin C, along with similar therapies that are well established as safe and potentially useful. As far as "Doing the research myself" - honestly, I might. My path would be to construct a website compiling the research, explaining why people with cancer should try this, explaining how you can get your doctor to prescribe it to you (or, since you don't need a prescription to take vitamin c, how you can DIY), and have functionality to support people registering that they are a cancer patient who has decided to take vitamin c (or not) and give updates. The hope with the website would be that it could compile enough raw data to become compelling to medical professionals. --- Panzer04 asks "if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say" - why isn't it being done? Vitamin C is sometimes used. That's why we have hundreds of case studies and, in some cases, randomized controlled trials and other experiments documenting its use and efficacy. My comments here aren't based on what I say or think - my original source was an article explaining the research on cancer.gov. Vitamin C (again: high dose and IV administered) is known to have potential benefits for cancer patients. --- cyberax says "Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again" and then offers a partial explanation of the mechanism for how vitamin C causes cell death in cancer cells - which is better explained in the link I originally provided. cyberax then claims, without evidence, that cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. I don't believe there is any such evidence, having read several papers on this and never seeing it mentioned - nor, by my understanding, is it plausible that cancer cells could fundamentally change how they work to get immunity to this. Perhaps I'm wrong though and cyberax could supply some evidence. I notice in the replies to cyberax pfdietz says "There is evidence that high doses of antioxidants can make cancer worse" - and then links 2 papers exploring the use of vitamin E as a cancer treatment. Vitamin E, despite sharing quite a few letters with Vitamin C, is a different thing. --- dennis_jeeves2 writes that "Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it". This is not correct and explained in the first few paragraphs of my original link. Linus Pauling used orally administered vitamin C which results in weaker blood concentrations and therefore less impact on cancer. The modern method uses IV administered high dose Vitamin C (which I was careful to write in my comment). While Pauling's method shows little effect in randomized controlled trials, high dose IV Vitamin C does show benefits. --- insane_dreamer writes that "Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out." Pretty meaningless comment. The safety of vitamin C is already well established. --- pjc50 also cites Linus Pauling - which, again, is explained in the first couple paragraphs of the link I originally posted. High dose orally administered vitamin C doesn't work - there are limits on how much you can increase blood concentration through oral administration, so most of the high dose is lost. That's why, as explained in my original comment/link, the modern protocol uses IV administered vitamin C. --- alphan0n quotes an XKCD strip saying "Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well." A bad comment because the tests I've been linked to have been in vivo, and my original link explains why this kills cancer cells and not healthy cells. --- That's my review of the comments. I would characterize them as exceptionally uninformed - which is odd. Why would people feel the need to comment on a subject they don't know about and simultaneously refuse to read the outline I originally linked which answers all the questions and criticisms posted here?

baranul 2y ago

Case in point, Cuba's lung cancer vaccine[1]. Which a company has brought to the U.S. as CIMAvax-EGF[2]. [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/09/cuba-has-lung-cancer-vaccine-many-u-s-patients-cant-get-without-breaking-law/1019093001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/09/cuba-ha... [2]: https://www.roswellpark.org/cimavax https://www.roswellpark.org/cimavax

adamredwoods 2y ago
https://aacrjournals.org/clincancerres/article/22/15/3782/79235/A-Phase-III-Clinical-Trial-of-the-Epidermal-Growth https://aacrjournals.org/clincancerres/article/22/15/3782/79...
onionisafruit 2y ago
As an aside, what makes this a vaccine vs a treatment?
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  > Neither of the vaccines prevents cancer; rather, they are a kind of immunotherapy that prompts the body’s immune system to battle the disease in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Not 100% sure, because I've only heard about vaccines in preventative contexts before, but based on this description my guess would be that "anything that tells your immune system to Do Stuff" counts as a vaccine. Versus something like Herceptin, which also treats cancer, just with ready-made antibodies that were grown in a lab.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    There are also immune modulators that aren't vaccines. Interferon, for example, or more recently the famous checkpoint inhibitors that take the brakes off immune attack of cancer cells.
- quantumwoke 2y ago
  My wife (MD) tells me that vaccine refers to anything that induces an immune response against a pathogen or disease. In this case the vaccine causes anti-EGFR antibody production

EternalFury 2y ago

Anyone can mix chemicals in a test tube and claim it’s the cure for something. That’s the easy part. Proving it’s safe and effective, that’s what requires a lot of capital expenditure. This statement is a drastic characterization, but you could say “half a dozen PhDs can form reasons to believe they may have found a cure for something”, and the paragraph would end the same.

cchi_co 2y ago
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vasco 2y ago
Since these are cancer trials I'm assuming no test subjects get paid, and university PhDs research for free, like in every other field, so what necessarily has to be expensive about it? If you have to pay 200 homeless to take your 0.0001% better than placebo antidepressants in the context of a huge corporation, and maybe redo the trial a few times, I can see how that gets expensive, but I don't see why it's a de facto rule. But even the big trials it's weird how expensive people say they are. Most other products require a lot of high paid labor to produce, think of a video game studio for example, also without any guarantee it won't flop, and it certainly takes longer to develop than to do a clinical trial.
- rahkiin 2y ago
  PhD candidates are paid salary in the Netherlands. Less of course than the senior trial researchers at pharma. I also would not assume there is no compensation for subjects as thats part of the medical-ethical process and not just ‘it helps the subject so no money’.
  - vasco 2y ago
    The €30k to €35k per year they make in this context approximates to free. Any normal company has to pay much more than that for less. A non-phd software engineer will get paid much more to change button colors for example. So that can't be the reason they are expensive and a PhD candidate is doing many other things than just helping to run trials.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

>Drawing up such a dossier is a profession in itself. An important detail: the EMA is asking for around €350,000 to assess the book. This is a massive understatement of the regulatory hurdles at play. I have worked on dossiers that took 200 man-years at 400k per person. This is the development part of pharma R&D. The dossier might be a thousand pages submitted, but that can easily be 100,000+ pages on the backend. There's a reason that even billion dollar companies crumble and fail under the documentation complexity.

anthk 2y ago

You will always need peer review, health safety, some insurance in case of serious damages and so on.

magic_smoke_ee 2y ago

If federal funds are used to develop a medication or vaccine, it must not be patentable, otherwise it is a corporate welfare giveaway trading lives and poverty for money.

downrightmike 2y ago
But that is 100% the Pharma industry. How did we get an Ebola vaccine? USA spent $100M. And they were the only ones willing to despite <1% of cases

Jabbs 2y ago

Looking for a “drug” is part of the problem.

hooverd 2y ago
Prevention is worth more than cure, sure, but cancer doesn't discriminate like that. You can still get unlucky.

chelseak6 2y ago

I think it's not possible without needed legislativy

bastloing 2y ago

AI will change everything. Especially disrupting pharma, Hollywood, law and lawyers, and medicine. Only question right now is who will win the race and be authoritative?

bastloing 2y ago
Even CNBC agrees with healthcare https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/28/these-economists-say-ai-can-improve-the-fiscal-health-of-the-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/28/these-economists-say-ai-can-...

healthyusa 2y ago

Not to break the news, but there are dozens of underground clinical trials. Billionaires are not waiting for the FDA. That’s ridiculous. They hire their own chemists, and make their own drugs. This is not complicated.

pattymanners 2y ago

My husband was diagnosed of Parkinson’s Disease a couple of years ago, he had severe fatigue, difficulty with mobility and sleeping. He was placed on Sinemet 3 times daily, which helped but only for a short while. So, we decided to try alternative treatment and began on PD-5 protocol, it has made tremendous difference for my husband, he had improved walking balance, muscle strength and he is now very active. His Parkinson’s is totally under control, google binehealthcenter. com. This treatment is a breakthrough for PWP!