Killing Cancer With a Virus 662
just___giver writes "The U.S. National Cancer Institute has just decided to fund multiple human clinical studies to test the reovirus. This naturally occuring virus has a remarkable ability to infect and kill cancer cells, without affecting normal, healthy cells. Here is a before and after picture of a terminal patient with an actively growing neck tumour that had failed to respond to conventional treatments. This tumour was eliminated with only a single injection of the Reovirus. Researchers at Oncolytics Biotech have shown that the Reovirus can kill many types of cancer, including breast, prostate, pancreatic and brain tumours. Human clinical trial results indicate that there are no safety concerns and that the reovirus shrinks and even eliminates tumours injected with this virus. Numerous other third party studies show that the reovirus should be an important discovery in the treatment of 2/3 of all human cancers."
Okay, lets try it then... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hope is better than nothing.
How do they know? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How do they know? (Score:2, Insightful)
Surgical strike medicine (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised to see nanotech get involved in the action at some point.
Anyone looking to invest in companies for the long term should pay attention to companies that do this type of work.
Re:Okay, lets try it then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Resistance (Score:1, Insightful)
Nanotech (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to me to BE nanotech. It's just produced by nature instead of someone in a lab coat.
The really cool thing to do with this virus (assuming it really is harmless to normal human cells) would be to create an implant with a hospitible environment that 'feeds' it and keeps a minimum population of viable viruses in your body for an extended period of time to whack cancers as they start.
Re:Okay, lets try it then... (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, you're dying, it's a given, 3 months huh? Well, sorry, but you'll have to wait a few years for us to approve this, because it could kill you.
The virus is found naturally in shallow pools of water, I guess you could go around drinking from those...
Get it to the terminally ill patients now! (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of my friend he only found out nine months before his death that he even had cancer. They tried every treatment available, but it had spread too far.
Something like this would have been wonderful. Once they had found out that it was far too wide-spread for normal treatments Ronnie would have jumped at a chance for this.
Some may say that we should try it without knowing the long-term effects, I disagree. With terminally ill patients there is no hope. This provides a double solution -- not only should the virus kill the cancer, it provides the patient with a reason to keep on fighting.
I hope they get this to all the terminally ill patients that they can ASAP.
Re:Okay, lets try it then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nanotech (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe a twice a year innoculation against cancers.
Now if they could program these things to seek and destroy cells infected by various VD's and put an end to one of the biggest dangers of sex then the world would be a very interesting place indeed.
Re:Why do they try to find a cure? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's fashionable to be so cynical, but some people do occasionally do things JUST to help society. Scary, huh? Some people do things for reasons other than money... Look at Linux
Re:SMOKE THEM IF YOU GOT THEM! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Then it gets patented. (Score:4, Insightful)
However, how many cancer patients caught the common cold and were thus cured? Right, none. The virus that they're using in the trials is definitely genetically manipulated, not native. And that's patentable (and rightfully so).
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Okay, lets try it then... (Score:3, Insightful)
For any particular type of cancer there are probably hundreds of promising treatments. Which ones do you put your hope in? Whose advice do you take? How do you know that it will help and not hurt? What if you pick the wrong one and waste your time when there was a better choice?
There is a reason for clinical trials and all of the procedures that a treatment has to go through for approval. If nothing else it forces the drug companies to spend the money on the science to prove that a treatment works. Otherwise they might just decide to spend a bunch of money on advertising and incentives to doctors who recommend the treatment.
The article was posted by an employee of the company developing the treatment. The people working on these treatments want to help people and they hope to make money. In most trials however, the hopes don't pan out. It is important to have the trials because it helps to keep things honest. Researchers and companies might be blinded by greed or passion and commitment to finding a cure.
Why shouldn't it get patented? (Score:2, Insightful)
The purpose of a patent is so these people can get their R&D money back exclusivly for a period of time. Most people who get patents don't sit on them, they sell them. I can assure you there would be no problem getting a hold of the cure.
I don't see any problem with people having to shell out 1,000 or 10,000 for a cure for cancer for a while until these people who developed it get their invested money back. There are real people behind the development of these things, they have families and mouths to feed too.
I hope this pans out (Score:3, Insightful)
Mother diagonsed with a rare form of Breast Cancer, and caught in stage 4 despite regular check ups and mamagrams.
Very ill due to chemo treatments. Made an effort to see my marching competitions, but couldn't be around large crowds.
Had to drop out of several activities because she was in and out of the hospital including an audition for a music scholarship to college.
Day of prom, rushed to the hospital, discovered the tumor has spread to her brain. Spent my senior prom in an emergancy waiting room.
Made it through graduation, but couldn't walk without a walker and after my graduation party went into the hospital that night. Found the cancer in her spine, didn't respond to any more treatments and watched my mother waste away for the next month at home until she died exactly 1 month after my high school graduation.
Some how I managed to regain enough will to enter college just over six weeks later.
I hope this isn't some marketing/investment blitz and that this might be a giant leap forward in cancer treatment. Sometimes I wonder if these companies want to find a cure. I mean, research is profitable business. Just look at the March of Dimes. Their orginial goal was to help find a cure for Polio and after one was discovered, they had to find a new mission.
Research develops in an international sea of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the kind of misinformation we often hear from the IP/investment-led corporate bullshit classes, but hopefully most technical people can see through it.
As an ex-researcher, let me tell you about research. Researchers do not develop ideas in a vacuum, and their pay packets do not magically transform into inventions. And the stuff from which ideas are made is not created by dumping invester's money into labs.
Ideas come when good researchers interact with other clever people working in that area across the world. In part it's interactive, but of vastly more significance is the continuous process of staying on top of the massive torrent of world literature, which is a treasure chest of untapped riches. It's a sea of ideas out there, with everyone's contributions pushing the wavefront of knowledge along just a little bit further. Sometimes just a quaint turn of phrase or even a linguistic mistake spurs a line of thought. How many dollars have been invested in one's lab figures far far down the lists of important contributions.
It's typical company bullshit to try to take all the credit for research done in a company's labs by one's paid employees. It just shows how most company people are totally clueless on how the scientific creative process works.
No matter how brilliant the person that records a new scientific discovery is, and no matter how much his company is paying him nor how many trillions they have spent on his lab, that idea arose only in very small part from his own work. 99% or more is a direct result of his standing on the shoulders of a world full of very bright people, and it's largely immaterial who delivers the final brushstroke.
Re:Physician perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
They can raise the rates, then cut off payoffs via the "torn reform" bullshit, and finally refuse to lower the rates even after the "reform" has taken place as their stock investments are soaring!
PROFIT!
And Americans fell for it. The insurance companies are looting us.
We are so stupid, we all deserve to lose health coverage.
Re:Okay, lets try it then... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Research develops in an international sea of id (Score:3, Insightful)
All of whom would be flipping burgers if people weren't paid to do research.
what really sucks about this (Score:1, Insightful)
he developed all sorta of crap and ultimately died of complications..
well, at least there will be more people who wont have to deal with what I've had to go through.
and maybe my mom wouldnt have had to have that surgery either, but of course, she wouldnt have stopped smoking if she hadnt... and if my dad hadnt died, I wouldnt be using a computer right now (he was afraid of them) so things happen for a reason I guess.
It's amazing that a virus, something that often plagues us, kills off another problem that plagues us.
another classic case of fighting fire with fire.
Re:Then it gets patented. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now realize that until the late 19th century the average life expectancy was in the early to mid 30s. People didn't die of cancer because something else got them first -- mostly disease, accidents, or (for women obviously) childbirth. As we started reducing those incidents we started seeing more people die of other conditions -- generally attributed to "old age", but most likely heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia, and so forth. As we've slowly beaten back those diseases we're seeing cancer become more prevelant. And when we beat cancer we'll still have to deal with dementia, alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other central nervous system afflictions. And I'm willing to bet that when we tackle those we'll find other issues too. Eventually we may get to the point where one of the old killers becomes the most prevalent cause of death once again.
Accident.
Re:Okay, lets try it then... (Score:3, Insightful)
Naturally occuring doesn't seem to count as prior art.