The Dink Network

A cure for cancer found

August 1st 2011, 12:37 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Probably old news to some by now, but I just read a certain person's blog and found out about an interesting thing. Or more like, a disgusting thing. You see, apparently Canadians have found a way to cure cancer very simply, but it's tried to be kept a secret so hospitals would have patients, which would increase (or at least keep) their income. Very sick. Money is not worth of hundreds and hundreds of human lives. If this new method would have been taken instantly into use (like it should) even our good friend Dukie might still be alive. Here's directly from this certain person's blog:

" Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

*Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can access the original research for this cancer here .

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

All I gotto say is... I don't know...
August 1st 2011, 12:41 PM
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Absolution
Peasant They/Them
The Dark Lord of the DN. 
Yes!! We can finally cure BIEBER FEVER
August 1st 2011, 02:23 PM
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Its shocking what people do for money. If this was publicised Dukie would have been alive
Really sad world we live in, i dont understand why people want money so much when theyre just gonna die and leave it behind
August 1st 2011, 02:35 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
They came up with this cure early May this year, and if they would instantly have spread it across the World, they would already have saved hundreds of lives, including Dukie's. But as it said, they do not *want* to spread it around and/or save lives.
August 1st 2011, 02:37 PM
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Absolution
Peasant They/Them
The Dark Lord of the DN. 
Money grubbing whores.
August 1st 2011, 03:03 PM
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KrisKnox
Peasant He/Him United States
The site's resident Therian (Dire Wolf, Dragon) 
I gotta show this to my Dad and my aunt Jean
August 1st 2011, 03:52 PM
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metatarasal
Bard He/Him Netherlands
I object 
Not sure how people could possibly see perceive the article you linked to as a cure for cancer. What it mentions are 'treatment of cancer' and 'regression of many cancers'. It merely writes about cancer treatment, not about a cancer cure. Those two are very different things in fighting cancer. And there is definitely nowhere any mentioning of researchers having cured cancer anywhere on that page. This DCA is not a cure for cancer, just a potential extra aid in fighting cancer.

But your point about pharmaceutical companies having no interest for it is valid. Pharmaceutical companies will only invest in something that brings in money, and DCA doesn't really seem to have that potential. This is a problem for many classes of drugs, especially when they are only administered a single time. (Antibiotics for example are hardly being developed anymore.) The problem is just that it is really costly to develop and test a medicine (around 100 million dollar is what I heard).

And really, universities won't have that kind of money ready either. The only way for such drugs to be developed is with government subsidies. And that takes a long time. It isn't really bad will but companies just have to make money, that's what they do. Otherwise they just go belly up, which doesn't cure anyone either.

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

That might be the problem people aren't understanding right there. You can't just start producing drugs. You need to develop them first, unless you feel like another Thalidomide drama...
August 1st 2011, 03:57 PM
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Mrgantoe
Peasant He/Him Cuba
I'm simply a distraction. 
They must have seen I am legend.
August 1st 2011, 04:20 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
A cure for cancer? A treatment for cancer? It's all the same in this case. It's a cure-so-you-won't-die-in-the-next-fifty-minutes-because-of-cancer. And I'd say if someone has money to experiment these kinds of things, they will have the money to create these drugs too. PLUS, if they actually stopped wasting money on all the unimportant things in this world, then we would have money for these kinda important things.

What I'm mainly implying here, is that money shouldn't be worthy of hundreds of human lives. Yet, in the World we live in now, it seems to be above human lives and everything else for that matter.
August 1st 2011, 05:27 PM
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metatarasal
Bard He/Him Netherlands
I object 
A cure for cancer? A treatment for cancer? It's all the same in this case.

A cure means: First you have it, afterwards you don't.
A treatment means: First you have it, afterwards you have it less.

When my death is postponed by a year that's better than when its not, but its not nearly as good as being cured. And if a doctor calls me cured but I die six months later anyway I'd be quite disappointed. (Though being disappointed while dead might have some technical difficulties.)

And I'd say if someone has money to experiment these kinds of things, they will have the money to create these drugs too.

No.

Just because you have a working experiment doesn't mean you have a drug. That's the starting point. From there on you still have many millions of dollars in development cost ahead of you. Drug legislation is pretty strict in the western world, scientist aren't just allowed to feed random substances to patients just because it happened to work in rats. There's a lot of rules you need to abide to. You could say the rules should be relaxed, but it wouldn't be the pharmaceutical companies that would be hurt. It would be the drug user who might get all kinds of toxic side effects (such as with Thalidomide case I mentioned earlier).
August 1st 2011, 09:20 PM
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Mrgantoe
Peasant He/Him Cuba
I'm simply a distraction. 
I have to disagree with you meta possibly knowing the time of my death would drive me more insane then I already am.
August 1st 2011, 09:59 PM
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I'm skeptical of this article.
August 1st 2011, 10:02 PM
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Someone
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
Meta's right. There's no great conspiracy but stuff like this is an unfortunate consequence of how society functions right now. It takes a LOT of money to develop drugs. Private institutions (e.g. pharma companies) are only interested in things they can make money from. If the drug can't be patented, you can't make much money from it, so the pharma companies won't be interested. This is true for all forms of research... the private institutions only do research to benefit their own company and products. Although everyone recognises the importance of general research for the purpose of the progress of science or the betterment of society, it's generally expected that governments will fund these endeavours through grants to universities. Unfortunately the amount of money through government funded research is often relatively small compared to the money available to private institutions. So you get unfortunate consequences such as much more money being available for certain things and not for others depending on how much profit can be made.

So two things can be done about this:
a) tone down the culture of selfish, profit-seeking capitalism, and expect companies to be more socially responsible (e.g. IBM used to do general research)
b) increase government funding for research

I don't think what I wrote above it particularly controversial.. it appears to be generally accepted among researchers to be true. eg from the university release about it:

"However, as DCA is not patented, Michelakis is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test DCA in clinical trials. He is grateful for the support he has already received from publicly funded agencies, such as the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and he is hopeful such support will continue and allow him to conduct clinical trials of DCA on cancer patients."

Note that I'm just replying based on the release from the university. The blog post is nonsense. The researchers have no conflict of interest whatsoever to motivate them to 'keep secret' a cure for cancer. Yet they don't say it is a cure or even a treatment. They say they need to do more research:

"When will DCA become a treatment option for cancer patients?

When more clinical trials in more than a few centres show DCA does not hurt patients and helps them more than a placebo.
Until then, its use from unregulated and "for-profit" and without medical supervision is both inappropriate and dangerous, because at the wrong doses and in the wrong patient DCA can be toxic."
August 2nd 2011, 01:21 AM
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Someone
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
To elaborate, since I admittedly oversimplified the motives of the pharma comapanies: it's somewhat understandable that the pharma companies don't want to do research on a drug they can't patent. Considering the amount of money it takes to develop a drug, the pharma companies need to make that money back through sales. But if some other pharma company can also legally produce the drug, that pharma company can price their drug cheaper since they don't have to make research money back, and take the market. As a result, it's not sustainable business model for pharma companies to be researching drugs they don't have patents for. (I think meta implied this point as well in one of his replies.)
August 2nd 2011, 05:01 AM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
Forget about solution A that Someone provided, not gonna happen

I also read the FAQ and other information on the university site. I think they do imply that it could lead to a cure and not just delaying the inevitable, but they need to go to Phase 2 of their research (more controlled human testing in particular cases) which does require the assistance of hospitals around the world. These doctors/hospitals are usually very hesitant to have their patients be test subjects because it's their career on the line. So, they'll trust rich companies more than university studies. That's because the doctors in a hospital, skilled as they may be, didn't study biochemistry or anything required to truly understand the workings of the diseases so whatever they administer in good faith is always a risk. And they'll be more willing to take that risk when a rich pharmaceutical company is backing the product.
August 2nd 2011, 06:35 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
It's technically a cure. Because you can use it to end the cancer for a while, and when it comes back you can use it again.

They tested it on human subjects, as that blog said. If money's the problem, just send all the needed things and tutorials on how to make the drug to the cancer patients. I'm sure they would care more about their sickness than money. And I'm also sure they'd have the proper inspiration to make those drugs.

Someone, I consider it keeping a secret, when there's no news report, almost NOTHING AT ALL about this. Why are these news not posted around the World? Because that would only cause chaos all around the place. Those with cancer want the drugs, friends/relatives of those want the drugs, but everyone else doesn't, they only care about money. So they are definitely keeping it a secret on purpose, to avoid things like these.
August 2nd 2011, 07:36 AM
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Someone
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
Money is not a problem when it comes to manufacturing the drug. Money is a problem because the research showing drug efficacy and safety hasn't been completed. That must be done before the drug can be approved by government bodies for medical use.

Read more from decent sources, e.g.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100512/full/news.2010.236.html

Notably:
'The results are preliminary, but may be enough to get the attention of pharmaceutical companies, says Lewis Cantley, a cancer researcher at the Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. "It's very difficult with such a small number of patients to conclude what's going on, but it's certainly encouraging," he says.' [note: small number of patients because they can't afford a large study]

'Michelakis [head of research team] remains opposed to self-medication of cancer patients with DCA, given how little is known about the effects of the drug [my emphasis] and how it may interact with other medications: "If there is even a little bit of hope, should we be providing it to people? No, because there is a chance you might hurt them and make them even worse." '

You talk about "they" keeping it secret as if all these people (university researchers, pharma researchers, pharma business people, media, doctors, etc.) are one entity. They're not. Some of those people have conflicts of interest, but most don't. Those that don't have conflict of interest, and are experts in the area, will speak up when it is appropriate. Until then stop trashing your mind with rubbish blogs.

Along with the nature article, here is another respectable source:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php

(btw does a NY Times article count as "almost NOTHING AT ALL"?:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30cancer.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all)
August 2nd 2011, 11:32 AM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
It was actually on the news here too, but that was in May or something.

"If there is even a little bit of hope, should we be providing it to people? No, because there is a chance you might hurt them and make them even worse." '

I hate this train of thought. Try telling that to someone who's dying and is suffering day in day out.
August 2nd 2011, 11:39 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
They are not one entity, Someone. However, they are controlled by one entity. Also, all we know about these drugs is that they help those who have cancer, at least momentarily. We don't need further research. If a cancer patient says "I want this drug that can help me right NOW" they should be able to get it right now, just like me and you can take a painkiller whenever we want to.

Oh, and please don't try to command me on what blogs I should read and which of them are rubbish. These "decent" sources are much less reliable than one-man blogs because they are being controlled from the outside.
August 2nd 2011, 12:25 PM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
Nah Skull, researchers at a university pretty much chose their field because they have a passion. Maybe that changes due to money later on or when they are hired by a moneygrubbing company, but trust me when I say you get paid a LOT less at a university research facility than you do elsewhere, so these people are the closest you can trust.

I would say those articles Someone linked explain it well and objectively, I don't see any outside control being excercised. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say The New York Times is a good source to link to if you want pure truth, because sure enough there have been many false reports in there, intentionally and non intentionally.

But in these case, it's all good. Nobody seems to be against it, it will just take time to get researched further. And when I say it will take time I mean it will take 15 years -_- Or more if there's not enough funding or interest.
August 2nd 2011, 12:29 PM
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Think this way: if I find out the cure of cancer, I would make an enterprise and start selling it cheaply around the globe, which actually would make me twice the rich that you would be if you had the sum money of bill gates and steve jobs.

Therefore, they didn't found the cure of cancer.

And thinking little more: if it's THAT simple, why no one else found out?

Even more usage of brain. Imagine I can save your life for 300 dollars in only one attempt. Imagine that for saving you, I spend 150 dollars (it's a simple cure, ain't it?). Imagine also that there are 150.000.000 people on your situation (I am trying any random number).

Let's see how many I would earn:
300 - 150 = 150 earnings per person.
150 * 150.000.000 = more money then you will ever see in your whole life, your son's whole life and even your grandson's...

If everything is related to money, then why they wouldn't do it? A simple cure cannot be expensive to apply in a person, so it can be sold cheap like water, and people who sell water wins $$$$$$/day.

This "humanity is putrid and greedy, all that matters for them is money and we all sucks" thing is mere romantism of 20's century. This is a poorly scam for making people saying that.
August 2nd 2011, 01:32 PM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
Hell no, it most definitely is a crooked world due to moneywhoring. That you would even push that aside boggles my mind. Plus, your whole example goes out the window because the point is this medicine can not be patented to profit from the way most subscription medicine do.

Seriously, have you looked at the world news lately (read: past decades)? Every sector and every category of life suffers under greed. Can we change it? Not a chance.
August 2nd 2011, 01:54 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Seriously, it's about hundreds and hundreds of human lives per year. It's not about money! You can bet your ass if I found a cure for cancer, I would give it all around the World for free, starting the minute I found the cure. People can trust it or not trust it, the patients can trust it or not, but I'm sure most of them would rather try this drug, rather than die in the next year or so.
August 2nd 2011, 07:47 PM
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Someone
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
How are they all controlled by one entity? Pharma companies have no control over the majority of university/public sector academics. You argue that the academics are not reliable, yet where do you think that blog got his information from? Here's a hint: the academics. If the academics were part of some conspiracy to keep DCA for cancer secret they would never have published their findings.

I didn't mean to imply I was commanding you to do anything. It was merely a suggestion to read better sources. I don't think it's reasonable to really expect to convince someone of anything on an internet forum, but continuing exposure to proper reasoning and actual knowledge on the subject helps to develop sensible conclusions.

Your reasoning is faulty for two reasons:
1) you assume somehow this 'one entity' controls everything
2) you believe that the drug has been proven as a cure for cancer

Ths is from the research team: (you know, the one that the blog post claims to have proven that cancer can be cured)

"No patient with cancer has received DCA within a clinical trial." (2008)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567082/?tool=pubmed

The study with tissue culture doesn't prove clinical safety and efficacy. Read more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trial#Phases

All drugs have to go through the phases of testing. Even big pharma's patented ones
August 2nd 2011, 07:51 PM
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Mrgantoe
Peasant He/Him Cuba
I'm simply a distraction. 
By "entity" do you mean "god" or the "CEO of wallgreens"
August 3rd 2011, 05:12 AM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
The universe.
August 3rd 2011, 06:39 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
How are they all controlled by one entity? Pharma companies have no control over the majority of university/public sector academics. You argue that the academics are not reliable, yet where do you think that blog got his information from? Here's a hint: the academics. If the academics were part of some conspiracy to keep DCA for cancer secret they would never have published their findings.

Good, keep it that way. It will save you from a lot of headache.

you believe that the drug has been proven as a cure for cancer

It has. I think it's better than the nothing we have currently. This drug can destroy the cancer momentarily, and could be used again and again so the cancer will not be able to come back.

No patient with cancer has received DCA within a clinical trial.

First, that was from 2008. Second, this has been tested on human cells. It's basically the same if you tested it on humans.

And no offense, but if one of the sites you're gonna direct me into, is Wikipedia, you're making me trust even less in your sources.

It almost seems you want all the cancer patients to die rather than at least have a drug that can give them a small glimpse of hope.
August 3rd 2011, 07:12 AM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
It almost seems you want all the cancer patients to die rather than at least have a drug that can give them a small glimpse of hope.

That's not what he said, it's just some article line he quoted Big difference
August 3rd 2011, 07:22 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
I can't help but feel that way, when he argues that this drug shouldn't be given to cancer patients.
August 3rd 2011, 07:51 AM
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metatarasal
Bard He/Him Netherlands
I object 
you believe that the drug has been proven as a cure for cancer

It has. I think it's better than the nothing we have currently.


Uh... What? We have loads of treatments at the moment. You'll probably die of cancer before every treatment has been tried, there are that many of them. The problem is that they are quite destructive for both normal cells and cancer cells so you get quite ill from using them. Many people with cancer, especially when they got cancer at a relatively young age eventually get experimental medication to try to fight the cancer as a last resort. The main problem is that you need to eradicate every single cancer cell to truely stop the cancer. Since cancer cells and normal cells are relatively similar this causes major damage to normal cells too.

This drug can destroy the cancer momentarily, and could be used again and again so the cancer will not be able to come back.

Source? In the university news release there was not a single mentioning of momentarily destruction of cancer, nor any mentioning that it could be used multiple times. The article says: "More importantly, they found that the normalization of mitochondrial function resulted in a significant decrease in tumor growth both in test tubes and in animal models."

Decrease in tumor growth doesn't quite sound the same as momentary destruction of cancer...

First, that was from 2008. Second, this has been tested on human cells. It's basically the same if you tested it on humans.

I think you'll find that real humans tend to be quite a bit more complex than just human cells. Cell studies can be helpful, but they can't really fully predict what's going to happen in a real human.

It almost seems you want all the cancer patients to die rather than at least have a drug that can give them a small glimpse of hope.

As I said there are many forms of experimental medication that can be used at the later stages of cancer. This could be one of them. This is why human clinical trials can be started so soon. If it wasn't a last resort measure there would have to be many more animal tests needed before clinical tests on humans could be started.

But we have to be honest with patients, we really don't know if this works any better than other experimental forms of treatment. Just telling a patient you got a miracle cure for cancer when you haven't is just cruel.

August 3rd 2011, 08:13 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Some of your replies make me wonder did you read the OP at all.

Uh... What? We have loads of treatments at the moment. You'll probably die of cancer before every treatment has been tried, there are that many of them. The problem is that they are quite destructive for both normal cells and cancer cells so you get quite ill from using them. Many people with cancer, especially when they got cancer at a relatively young age eventually get experimental medication to try to fight the cancer as a last resort. The main problem is that you need to eradicate every single cancer cell to truely stop the cancer. Since cancer cells and normal cells are relatively similar this causes major damage to normal cells too.

Yes, we have loads of other treatments. This is the best one so far, so why not take it into use. Also, it clearly said "Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone" which basically means no harm is done to other than cancer cells. And even if done, I bet that the cancer patients would rather take the risk than have the cancer for the rest of their lives.

Source? In the university news release there was not a single mentioning of momentarily destruction of cancer, nor any mentioning that it could be used multiple times.

I told you they hide stuff. Again I'll refer to the small part of the blog's post "Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone". Fine, it doesn't say it can be used multiple times, but if it didn't do any harm to normal cells, then nothing prevents it from being used multiple times.

I think you'll find that real humans tend to be quite a bit more complex than just human cells. Cell studies can be helpful, but they can't really fully predict what's going to happen in a real human.

That didn't stop them from giving the swineflu vaccinations to us, and look where it got us. It caused narcolepsy in humans. They knew this, but still they gave it to people to prevent the greater harm. Before this, they didn't care whether the drug did good or harm. They just instantly began using it after testing it on human cells. But not with cancer. You know why? Because that would take too many patients away from them, causing them to not get money.

As I said there are many forms of experimental medication that can be used at the later stages of cancer. This could be one of them. This is why human clinical trials can be started so soon. If it wasn't a last resort measure there would have to be many more animal tests needed before clinical tests on humans could be started.

But we have to be honest with patients, we really don't know if this works any better than other experimental forms of treatment. Just telling a patient you got a miracle cure for cancer when you haven't is just cruel.


Don't you think the cancer patients should at least be able to KNOW about this medicine? I think it should be up to them to decide whether they want to use it or not, not the others who don't have cancer.