Altered Immune Cells Help Girl Beat Leukemia 130
An anonymous reader writes "For decades, one of cancer's most powerful weapons has been to corrupt the human immune system. Finally, researchers in Philadelphia have developed a way to turn that weapon against certain cancers, and potentially open the door to a whole new generation of therapies for all manner of cancers. From the article: 'It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options. Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.'"
Re:Balancing potential deaths with real-today ones (Score:5, Insightful)
The world is not changed by timid men. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I understand your concerns, every medical breakthrough has involved risk.
The polio vaccine could have backfired, but it didn't. You and I have grown up without the fear of a disease that plagued every generation up to our parents.
Re:Balancing potential deaths with real-today ones (Score:2, Insightful)
A virus is not lethal. It is merely a vehicle, a means of reprogramming cells. Its hardware. The lethality is in the software.
In other words, viruses don't kill people, people kill people.
Re:AIDS vs. Cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
It was to me, but I didn't die from aids, nor did anyone I knew.
My neighbor, who had AIDS, died a week ago.
While this doesn't matter to you (it's cool.), it does show that AIDS still affects people and others around people with AIDS.
He ended up with cancer in his bone marrow, was given kemo, but when told he wasn't going to be able to go home again (would require 24 care which he couldn't afford), he chose to stop taking treatments, and died a couple days later. And I don't blame him.
So even it AIDS virus took 50 years off the timeline to finding a cure for cancer, it doesn't matter to my neighbor, because he's dead regardless. But I think he'd be happy to know that even while AIDS was bad for him, it might be doing some good for others.
Re:Balancing potential deaths with real-today ones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's all be honest... (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize that it costs insurance companies about half a million dollars to treat a cancer patient? And most of that money goes to all kinds of different companies many of them struggling on low margins making an assortment of drugs, medical services, and other stuff. Now let's say a company comes out with a cure for cancer .. They can charge $100,000 for it as pure profit .. Insurance companies would gladly pay. 10 million people a year get cancer .. That means the profit will be an absolutely insane $1 trillion dollars a year.
Or forget that .. Steve jobs had cancer and died of it .. All a company that had the cure had to do was call him up and charge him $5 billion cash plus 50% ownership of Apple for the cure.
Re:Balancing potential deaths with real-today ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy crap. Imagine if they could make sexually-transmitted cancer cures?
Unfortunately, the population of slashdot will STILL be decimated by cancer. But the rest of the world would have a field day!!
Your cliche is out of date.
We're now all getting separated or divorced.
Re:Balancing potential deaths with real-today ones (Score:5, Insightful)
The DNA/RNA that a lethal virus injects into cells kills people. That DNA/RNA doesn't need to be lethal, though, for it to be a virus. It will reprogram the cell, in this case to help the person.
Re:Balancing potential deaths with real-today ones (Score:5, Insightful)
I said explaining to the layman. They don't care about those details anyway. Certainly they're not going to just grab some rat poison and self-treat based on what I say. It gets to the point and there's few enough details that they can follow the thought process.