The Cure for Cancer Might be: HIV 668
RGautier writes "Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells). The impact of genetic research on cancer research is in and of itself amazing. To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance! Research will continue, obviously, but they are already reporting success on living creatures." Just think: between HIV and carrots we'll be all set.
Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:5, Insightful)
battlefield (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:battlefield (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not talking about the safety of recipients once this goes into the real-world (although that can be alarming), but about the research itself.
I'm pretty far removed from science in any practical setting, but what are the procedures for this kind of research? I've seen too many movies like 28 Days Later to not imagine some accident or oversight to cause some sort of mutant airborne HIV.
Also, does HIV even infect mice? I know there's a human/ape HIV and a feline HIV but I had not hear of mice HIV. Think of some sewer rat biting you...
That's just my mid-day alarmist self. Note I'm not against the research, just wondering about it...
Admiration for Scientists (Score:2, Insightful)
Even doctors and nurses who are not focused on research but who are focused on caring for HIV patients are, in my opinion, heros. They are willing to accept the risks that others shun. There have been occasional stories of nurses who accidentally prick themselves with needles used on HIV patients. Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
Re:battlefield (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. You better believe it.
After seeing my mother die from cancer I would give anything to make sure no one else would ever have to go through what me and my sister did.
In short, hell yeah. Bring it on.
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:5, Insightful)
An old phrase comes to mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Best to be as open as possible right from the start to avoid any misconceptions. (Or media backlash.)
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:2, Insightful)
If you have inoperable brain cancer and given the option to die in about a month or a 1% chance at the treatment mutating into HIV...
oh dear (Score:3, Insightful)
So "scientists" is capitalized now?
I guess that's fair, but not everyone believes in science so it might upset some people.
Check you gramm'er (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as they arent foolish enough to market it as modified HIV.
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that, exactly? Think of the other dreaded word which invokes a guaranteed knee-jerk reaction from just about anyone: radiation. What's the worst thing you can put in your body? Poison. Our current treatments for cancer involve heavy doses of radiation and heavy doses of toxic chemicals.
As a society, we're pretty familiar with using some amazingly deadly tactics against cancer, and yet, you don't see a whole lot of healthy people screaming about their exposure to those deadly glowing, poisonous cancer patients.
Re:Admiration for Scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
Working with HIV is actually a lot less dangerous than a lot of other infectious agents. HIV is fairly hard to contract, compared to airborne or contact-transmitted diseases. For example, it dies pretty quickly when exposed to plain old air. It's only HIV's incurability and eventual fatality that makes it so hazardous.
Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
That seems pretty unlikely, because AZT is pretty damn toxic. You wouldn't want to take it just as a precaution. It is true that health care workers who've been exposed (e.g. needle prick from an HIV patient) go on a short-term drug cocktail intended to weaken the virus enough for their immune systems to handle it before it gains a foothold.
Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)
28 Days Later had zombies. Is that what you are afraid of? Zombies?
You want scary? Take a look at the front section of any major newspaper and do some indepth research into its topic. Zombies are an entertaining distraction in comparision.
Kinda like Osama vs USSR (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:3, Insightful)
But does it really matter to the people who would benefit from this?
Doctor: You're going to die from cancer. However, we have this cure that uses the HIV virus. It probably won't kill you.
Patient: Hmm, so you're telling me I'm going to die painfully from cancer, or I can take my chances with HIV with pretty damned good results. Let me think... Let me think... Nope, I think I'll take the cancer. Thanks though.
If you're going to die anyway, you're going to grasp at just about any straw you can, even HIV.
Trying to hide the fact that it's HIV derived would just be ASKING for lawsuits out the wazoo.
Re:Melanoma is cancer. It is NOT ALL cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
I would much prefer being treated with a virus if I knew it had one function and did it well, rather than 100 different funtions that it may or may not do well.
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that may be true for the dozens of pharmaceutical companies that made polio-reducing drugs, but Lederle, the company which marketed the (oral) polio vaccine made KILLING by selling 3 or 4 doses to all 6 billion people on the planet!
Same thing for an HIV cure/vaccine. Dozens of companies would no longer have a source of income, but the ONE company that creates (and patents) the vaccine will guarentee to sell 50 billion units over the next 40 years (assuming, like most vaccines, that it takes a few doses and booster shots to achieve the desired effect).
Plus, as a medical student, I happen to know for a FACT that people in my school are working on HIV vaccines. "They" aren't preventing this type of research.
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:1, Insightful)
It doesn't work in reverse: because people selling fake cancer remedies are making money, that DOESN'T mean their product works. Please, please, please, do your research.
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I thought, when I was working on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ( NMR ) which was changed to Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( MRI ) because too many people were afraid of the word nuclear.
Re:Cheap Prescription Drugs (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just wondering if anyone has an educated guess how many medical and drug breakthroughs are happening in publicly funded institutions, the NIH being another example, and how many are actually developed inside the big drug and healthcare companies using private funding.
I ask because in the face of the extraordinarily high cost of drugs in the U.S., HIV drugs in particular, the usual retort by Republicans is drug companies need those huge profits to do groundbreaking R&D on new breakthrough drugs. Drug companies have the highest profits and profit margins of ANY major industrial sector in the U.S. or at least they did before they started getting hammered when it turned out drugs they were pushing like Zoloft and Vioxx are potentially dangerous.
I'm also curious how much of the privately funded drug company research is funded by the public through tax breaks, grants etc.
To put it another way how much do drug companies profit on breakthroughs from publicly funded research.
Another question what is the current ratio between drug company spending on advertising versus R&D. The never ending saturation TV ads, designed to compel American consumers to demand drugs from their doctors they may or may not need, must be costing billions and all those advertising costs which do no one any actual good are being tacked on to the cost of drugs and making seniors in particular pay through the nose for saturation advertising campaigns instead of drugs or drug R&D.
My three step plan to drive down the cost of drugs and healthcare:
A. Outlaw drug advertising just like ads for cigarettes and hard liquor. Its totally inappropriate and disceptive to advertise drugs using slick ads, like soda pop or underarm deodorant. Confine them to advertising to doctors and then only in the form of factual dissertations on the pros and cons of the drug, audited by a 3rd party for accuracy.
B. Mandate that drugs and publicly funded health breakthroughs be provided to the public at cost or with a regulated profit margin.
C. Rather than outlawing U.S. agencies, like Medicare, from negotiating fair prices for wholesale drug purchases, make it law that those agencies MUST negotiate fair wholesale prices, like Canada and most other sane nations do.
Re:Nothing To See Here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oblig. Simpsons ref... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa:
But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner:
No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa:
But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner:
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa:
But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner:
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/5F22
And another thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:battlefield (Score:2, Insightful)
If this HIV-derived therapy will make cancer die more easily from chemo and cause you to have to have less chemo (which, from the article, is how it sounds like it works), then really you're just shortening the war.
Re:Melanoma is cancer. It is NOT ALL cancer (Score:2, Insightful)
Some cancers have cure rates of well over 80% - we happen to have found the right mix of drugs for them. Unfortunately, that hasn't helped us much in finding the right mix of drugs for many other cancers, which still have very low survival rats.
You're absolutely right, that's how this problem has to be attacked - but it's not as simple as you make it sound. Maybe modifying a virus to attack a different cancer will be easier than modifying chemo regimens - but probably not.
"she swallowed the spider to catch the fly" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It will never see the light of market shelves . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Might want to downplay the HIV thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Carboplatin isn't infectious.
Now, you and I understand that the HIV used for this therapy would be highly modified from the original plague, but I suspect that the majority of people wouldn't know (or care) about the differences. On the other hand, it's pretty well understood that most poisons are completely localized to the people who ingest them.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amazing! (Score:4, Insightful)
HIV is already widely spread in human populations all over the world, mutating rapidly, and under strong selective pressure from antiviral drugs. If it could easily mutate into an airborne strain, it probably would already have done so. The likelihood that modifying it for therapeutic purposes would accidentally turn it into an airborne strain is probably about the same as the risk that kid down the street customizing his car will accidentally turn it into an attack helicopter.
Re:I have good news and bad news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the same logic needs to be applied to stem cells to deal with auto-immune diseases: MS, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. Reprogram the stem cells and see if they could be less disruptive than chemo and radiation.
Re:Built in vaccine syringe (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:Exercise (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that heart beating and sweating and stuff for easily the recommended 15-30 minutes at a time isn't enough... it overloads the easily-overloaded "fun" receptors on the heart and other muscles and cancels out all of the other benefits. The fact that I'm feeling better is also an illusion brought on by excessive fun, which can of course cause hallucinations.
If you're not slamming you feet on hard concrete and hating every minute of it, unless you let go of your sanity and use the cognitive dissonance of "Why the hell am I doing this?" to convince yourself that, logically, you must be having fun, you're not really getting exercise.
Although, maybe I'm jumping the gun on this post. Having heard of neither Heard Disease nor excercise, maybe I'm accidentally reading into what you were saying. Maybe excercise really is the cure for Heard Disease, probably helps Caner too, which I hear is really vicious. (You haven't lived until you're under attack by a Heard of Caners, either. Damn, man, now that's sickness.)
Thanks for setting me straight, Dr. SoTuA.
New strategy? (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of our prescription medicines are actually poisons if they were in slightly larger doses.
I'm on three antibiotics right now and they are working on the infection, but, damn, I feel as bad as I've ever felt simply from the side effects.
Re:Exercise (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to my wife (a victim of heart desease for the past four years) who suffered her fate due to myocarditis [nih.gov] brought on by a normal case of the flu... and not a poor diet or lack of excercise. Except for her failing heart (now pumping at a whopping 30%) she's the picture of perfect health. Her doctors keep wanting to use her as a poster-child to inform otherwise healthy women of their risks.
Luciferase vis technique (Score:2, Insightful)
I do agree that the article is badly done, but Wired isn't really known for its rigor.
Not new (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever heard of phages?