New Treatment From Australia For All Cancers 217
New submitter FirephoxRising writes "A new, protein-based treatment from the University of NSW breaks down cancers by destroying their internal protein structures. The approach has been tried before but always resulted in too much damage to muscles and the heart. The new approach allows the new class of drug to attack tumors without damaging normal cells. Professor Peter Gunning said, 'Our drug causes the structure of the cancer cell to collapse — and it happens relatively quickly.'"
Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
Another daily cure for cancer.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, and the headline even contradicts the poorly written news article(which is already far too removed from the research to be safe). It specifically was engineered to treat one kind of cancer, they think it will effects on a similar cancer, and have a little hope for "many others". That's a far-cry from "curing all cancers".
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Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it only goes to prove my axiom "The only thing worse than science journalism are /. summaries."
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
Surprisingly, the full text [aacrjournals.org] is available without registering or going through a paywall. Must be a leak into a different universe or something.
Just scanned it quickly - all cells have a cytoskelaton, a framework that allows a cell to maintain a three dimensional shape. Cytoskeletons are controlled, in part, because of a class of proteins called tropomyosins. These proteins are turned over quite rapidly in cancer cells yielding the hypothesis that targeting those molecules could selectively kill cancerous cells. Unfortunately, the chemicals that have been used previously also targeted non cancer cells and caused a lot of systemic toxicity (they cured the cancer, but unfortunately, the patient died).
The new compound, TR100 (sounds like a toy truck), specifically targets a type of tropomyosin presumably found only in cancer cells. Leaves normal cells alone.
IF this remains true in testing and IF the compound doesn't have other, unintended and typically deleterious effects it MIGHT be a good drug. Grandstanding by the PR idiots notwithstanding.
The road to Big Pharma Hell is paved with effective in vitro cures for cancer.
What is this stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if it's real or some really horrid chemical they can't quite get safe enough to use without dissolving your veins. That's the problem with that "discovery" in Sask. that cured cancer in rats. That's because rats can't scream as their veins dissolve.
Put on your thinking caps, why has cance shot up since 1900? What changed?
In 2007 or so, a Cytochrome B enzyme was found - CYP1B1 that only occurs in cancer cells. Fresh off the end of a successful prostate cancer drug, the first one with a new paradigm - something other than "kill ALL of the cells and pray" (See: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F06%2F02%2FMNI11ORI84.DTL [sfgate.com]) that exploited CYP17, Potter then set out to make a more generalized one based on the nearly universal CYP1B1. He designed the molecule then set about to make it and while looking for precursors noticed the exact same molecule occurs in fruit, made in response to mold.
So they tried it, and it worked. Every time. It gets converted in cells with CYP1B1 to picotaneol which is fatal to cancer cells but not regular cells. If you google "Salvestrol case studies" you'll find three clinical trials where cancer was reversed in every case. It's not patentable...
So, the current hypothesis is, since we began spraying anti-fungals, there's no mold so the plant doesn't make this chemical in response to mold, so non-organic fruit contains only 10% of what unsprayed fruit has. And it's a very bitter chemical and we breed bitterness out...
Cancerous cells can be found in any animal at any time, the body takes care of them. The problem arises when it can't, and we find Gene P53 is deactivated in those people. This reactivates it; once the body has the correct raw materials it gets down to work.
It's always better to help the body do what it does naturally and has for millions of years compared to some synthetic noxious substance. If nothing else understand that with a chemical that's already in the body all the time, the body knows what to do with it. With man-made drugs there are always side effects in every case as the body has no idea what to do with the molecules it doesn't recognize and they latch on to places they shouldn't and hellooo side effects.
There are 30,000 deaths a year from these side effects.
This chemical is found in tangerines and prune plums, strawberries, asparagus and so on. Tangerines have the most. Which raises an interesting question. Do areas that grow a lot of tangerines have a lower cancer rate. That would be Morocco.
It's not on the list of per capita cancer rates WHO keeps, that's quoted in Wiki. That list ranges from South Africa as the lowest (about 250) to Denmark with the highest at 387 or something. Note also that poor countries have less, developed countries have more... poor people grow their own food and can't afford chemicals.
But, if you poke around on the Moroccan government website long enough, you find their per-capita cancer rate: 100. Less than half the lowest stat WHO has for any country. And besides having all the tangerines, they pretty much invented chain smoking there. But still: 100.
So, if these guys are using this mechanism and trying to make a patent end run, bad. If it's something else, some noxious chemical, it's equally worthless. If however they have a new agent that also uses the pro-drug paradigm Potter found, then that would be good.
But there's a reason they don't give any details on this compound and I'd really like to know what it is.
Re:What is this stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If Morocco was the only poor country where people died early that would be a good point.
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In large part, it hasn't. What has shot up is our ability to detect it.
Apart from that, a lot of it has to do with increased overall life expectancy. You die of cancer at 80 because you didn't die of heart failure at 60.
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You need to read medical history. Cancer was virtually unseen prior to 1900. But it has been known for 7000 years at least.
The first notice of work/toxin related cancers were chimney sweeps in the late 1800s. Enough of them got testicular cancer that a causative link was established. This was the first of the industrial cancers. Come 1900 and radical modernization of industry and the rate just starts shooting up culminating with the post-WWII idea that without antifungals (which turn out to be the thing tha
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Actually there have been studies regarding why aspirin seems to significantly reduce cancer rates. Some doctors are starting to think, similar to what you're saying, that many of the chemicals contained in Aspirin are also found on plant molds and that our current access to fresh vegetables combined very little contact with food molds and chemicals plants produce when damaged may be related to recent increases in cancer rates. Wouldn't it be ironic if the cure for cancer was bruised moldy tomatoes?
Re:What is this stuff? (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be ironic if the cure for cancer was bruised moldy tomatoes?
Ridiculous. Next you'll be claiming that moldy bread is a cure for bacterial infections.
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In the off chance, someone misses the sarcasm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin [wikipedia.org]
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Bingo. There's a huge lag in the discovery and acceptance of new ideas.
In the 1600s Jaques Cartier sailed from France to Canada and a planned return to France in the fall was delayed and they were forced to stay on the ship in a Montreal winter (notorious for being extra cold; you always want to buy a winter coat made in Montreal, not Toronto). They of course began getting ill from scurvy and when close to death the natives were finally asked for help. One them went to look at the men, shook his head, scrap
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ASA controls inflammation which is often the source of mutagenesis.
Like all NASIDS they impede the formation of E2 series prostaglandins which control inflammation, so there's a short-term/long-term component to think about.
ASA hasn't been shown to do much here afaik, cite 'em if ya got 'em.
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I am a cancer biologist.
There's a huge problem with the statement that Salvestrol can "reactivate" P53: P53 is irreversibly inactivated in most cancers by direct deleterious mutations.
Source data from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center:
http://www.cbioportal.org/public-portal/cross_cancer.do [cbioportal.org]
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I'd point out it works, and your team has no clue. At this point the number of cancer cures from intravenous C exceeds those cured by radiation and chemo combined[1] - which often cause more cancer than they cure.
Enjoy your high salary while you can.
[1] Brian Sparkes, pers. comms. 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Sparkes [wikipedia.org]
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the rats in my country hold public office
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If you're trying to suggest it doesn't work (without actually knowing what it does) you have the problem of explaining what it is than that reversed the cancer in the 11 people in those three clinical trials.
And you also need to explain this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F06%2F02%2FMNI11ORI84.DTL [sfgate.com]
"I don't have time to debunk your misunderstanding about science"
Translation: "I haven't read anything you're talking about but I know it's wrong" - the logical fallacy of the argument
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The poor grow their own food. That's why. I don't have much sympathy for whites complaining in areas notorious for systematic oppression of blacks. Move if you can't take the karmic payback.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
The specific combination will not be important to all cancers, but it's possible that the STRATEGY of targeting individual tropomyosin combinations might be broadly applicable. They used the structure of the tropomyosins in question to identify drugs that would block it specifically. That could be used in other combinations. You get a sample of the tumor, find it's using combination X and Y. Y is used by the heart and is no good for targeting, but X is, so you attack that. Another cancer, combo AB and Y might be upregulated, so you look into A or B. One would likely also use it in combination with other chemotherapy. If Y combo, is the only one the cancer is using, and again that one is needed for the heart, you might give a low dose of that with a lowered dose of taxol, which targets all dividing cells. That one-two punch will have two sets of side effects to worry about, but if you give low doses of both, you might target the cancer more effectively with reduced side effects.
I'm not a clinical doctor, so maybe that's not the idea, just that more tools are better, and the strategy is what seems to be a bigger story.
The road to Big Pharma Hell is paved with effective in vitro cures for cancer
It's also the road to better basic research tools. You can't jump from the stone age to the space age obviously. If this were the stone age, I might want to develop a better chisel. If people funding (?) research back in the stone age were the same people that are funding biomedical research today, I probably would suggest that a better chisel would be better able to cut metal for the rocket engine. I'd know in reality, it would just make it easier to carve stones to make a house, but if I don't promise big, the research money will go to some guy rubbing sticks together suggesting it was a novel source of combustion energy for reaching that big bright thing in the night sky.
I won't say it in my grant applications, but I doubt we have the technology to cure cancer at this point. That doesn't mean my research won't be essential to the eventual cure for cancer, nor does it mean that cancer research is wasted.
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The road to Big Pharma Hell is paved with effective in vitro cures for cancer.
So true. If that were all there is too it my bleach cure for cancer would have made me rich already. It kills cancer cells, after all.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
There is reason to think that a drug like this would be broadly effective against different kinds of cancer. TR100 disrupts the actin cytoskeleton vital to all cells, and specifically disrupts its formation by targeting an isoform of the protein tropomyosin. Isoforms are different structures for the the same protein- every cell needs tropomyosin to regulate their actin filaments, but cancer cells preferentially use a certain structure of tropomyosin. Compounds with anti-actin activity have been looked at for a long time as anticancer compounds, but the known ones have been nonspecific. TR100 also has the advantage of being a relatively simple small molecule instead of a complicated biomolecule, which could make its development as a commercial drug much easier.
It is however, still (potentially) just a new chemotherapy agent, one of many out there. From what has been observed from other chemo agents, just because a compound targets a basic cellular function doesn't mean a cancer can't develop resistance. The taxanes and the Vinca alkaloids arrest mitosis (by targeting microtubules), and are excellent, widely used drugs, but are not the The Cure for Cancer. I'd imagine this compound to be along those lines- another weapon in the oncology arsenal, but not a magic bullet.
Exciting Times (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether this new cure is a true breakthrough or not, it is really exciting to live in a time where things such as CURING CANCER are possible (even living on the verge of such a time is breathtaking). The places science and technology are taking us are out of a science-fiction novel. We might not have flying cars or jetpacks (except we /do/!), but we truly are living "in the future". A thousand years ago what we take for granted would have seemed magic or even godlike. And who knows what tomorrow will hold for us - a cure for death, perhaps?
Even knowing that no such advance comes without its unforeseen darkside, it is still enough to give me a childlike glee and hope again.
Re:Exciting Times (Score:5, Informative)
A cure for death [wikipedia.org] would wreak unbelievable chaos on the world.
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The degree of chaos really depends on a lot of the characteristics of the cure, chiefly cost and effect on various aspects of senescense especially intelligence and reproductive capability. Much of the craziness in the world happens in spite of the futility of mortal existence, not because of it.
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I was linking to a TV Mini-series that explored the possibility where death simply wasn't possible for some mysterious reason. Overpopulation, overcrowded hospitals, lack of food - all within a matter of only days. Sure, it's just TV. But it seemed realistic.
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I don't know. If the cure rendered people permanently sterile and had to be applied before puberty, then perhaps it wouldn't be a huge issue, zero population growth would be assured from the immortals, and everybody else could enjoy replacement-level reproduction. Or if it were inherently expensive enough that only the richest would ever had access then the chaos would likely be due to uprisings against the folks that permanently locked themselves into the halls of power, but if they were smart and generou
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Wouldn't that be a vaccine against death? A cure for death would make dead people come back to life.... Oh, great. You just started the Zombie Apocalypse.
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In the miniseries I linked, people just stopped dying. Nobody came back from the dead. No apparent side effects. And it was still an ugly mess. Real interersting to watch.
Re:Exciting Times (Score:5, Informative)
Whether this new cure is a true breakthrough or not, it is really exciting to live in a time where things such as CURING CANCER are possible (even living on the verge of such a time is breathtaking).
Actually, most cancers are curable. I can cut out most tumors....the problem is getting to them early enough. Solid tumors [wikipedia.org] are mostly responsive to surgery first, chemotherapy [wikipedia.org] and, for some cancers, radiotherapy [wikipedia.org] are best left to "mop up" residual cells be it tumor-in-situ or micrometastases or out metastatic disease, now there are a few exceptions - especially the "liquid tumors" or hematologic malignancies.
What I'd really like to see is better screening [wikipedia.org] for cancers - the only universal truth about cancers is that the earlier they are caught, the better the response to treatment. Catch a cancerous growth early before is has spread locally and we can cut it out and you'll likely be cured. When it has a chance to invade locally and especially distally, I can't perform a simple operation to remove it - I have to take out more tissue and sometimes in different places or other organs...sometimes the tumor burden is so great that an operation won't make a difference. This is where chemo can also be used. But responses to chemo are almost universally poorer than surgery. And please bear in mind, most people use "cancer [wikipedia.org]" like its a single entity. It is not. There are a multitude of cancerous transformations for each cell line in the body, each with its own peculiarities.
Don't get me wrong, any improvement in chemotherapy will increase survivor hood of cancer, but I doubt that this will do much to change the initial treatment of most cancers.
Re:Exciting Times (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly I agree wholeheartedly. A close relative has survived colon cancer (one of the most survivable cancers today), in no small part because it was diagnosed and removed in time.
But, it seems that screening has some pretty tough limits. You have some cancers such as glioblastoma that seem to still be pretty much uniformly fatal no matter how early you find them. And breast cancer seems to be less promising for screening than it seemed at first; the aggressive type seems to be liable to have metastised almost no matter how early it is detected, while the other types are fairly unlikely to do so, even with late detection.
This seems to partly explain why breast cancer survival hasn't budged nearly as much as expected with the advent of wide-spread screening.
Screeining _is_ important. Surgery is the main means of cancer cure. And both have improved hugely over time. But for all that, cancers still collectively comprise the second most common cause of death, behind cardiovascular issues. And arguably a much more difficult and prolongued death for most sufferers. I'd say any improvement in treatment is both urgent and welcome.
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My mother had surgery for liver cancer more than 20 years ago and has been cancer free since. It was however terrifying and took a close to two years for her to really fully recover not to mention the couple of years of slowly declining health before the tumor was found. Today she is retired and involved in all kinds of cancer related charities.
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One of the hardest things for lay people to understand about screening is that false positives are a HUGE problem. If you offer somebody a painless $10 test for brain cancer which has a 1% false positive rate, they think that seems really useful and take it. Maybe a million people take your screening test. At least 10 000 get told they were positive. Virtually NONE of those people have brain cancer, but now they're scared shitless and will probably get a load more tests done, some of which are invasive or e
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False positives is as you say a huge issue. It ties in to the ridiculous airport screening programs, to the daft idea of facial recognition for street-side cameras, as well as recent developments in common screening programs such as for breast cancer.
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Answer me this: why not routinely remove moles? Its always mystified me. If they are benign, then they should be safe to remove for cosmetic purposes, and if they are potentially dangerous, why not get rid of them ASAP?
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Answer me this: why not routinely remove moles? Its always mystified me. If they are benign, then they should be safe to remove for cosmetic purposes, and if they are potentially dangerous, why not get rid of them ASAP?
Most "moles" are benign. The suspicious ones (ABCDE [melanoma.org]s) are removed and sent for pathology to detect if they are cancerous. It would not be possible to remove and pathologically screen all moles on every person.
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So wouldn't the same be said for a lot of internal growths? Early detection would waste resources?
Re:Exciting Times (Score:4, Informative)
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I just read up on that...that's actually really disturbing! Many peer reviewed studies supporting that finding...eek!
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the only universal truth about cancers is that the earlier they are caught, the better the response to treatment.
Except that this isn't even remotely true. That was a nice hypothesis a couple of decades ago, but it's turned out to be much more complicated than that. Some cancers can be treated very late in the game, some early, some it doesn't seem to make a difference when you do it. It's a very reasonable supposition, just happens not to be a correct one.
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the only universal truth about cancers is that the earlier they are caught, the better the response to treatment.
Except that this isn't even remotely true. That was a nice hypothesis a couple of decades ago, but it's turned out to be much more complicated than that. Some cancers can be treated very late in the game, some early, some it doesn't seem to make a difference when you do it. It's a very reasonable supposition, just happens not to be a correct one.
[citation needed]
I will respectfully disagree. Yes, I agree some cancers can be treated in later stages, but I did not say that they can't. As you will see in almost every cancer, there is a precipitous decline in survival based on major staging (denoted by the roman numeral). There are a few *subtypes* in colorectal cancer that have variable survival (likely multifactorial due to changing definitions, evolving treatment protocols, and lower numbers of patients due to the subdivisions of the group), b
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[...] A thousand years ago what we take for granted would have seemed magic or even godlike. And who knows what tomorrow will hold for us - a cure for death, perhaps?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
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And who knows what tomorrow will hold for us - a cure for death, perhaps?
I'm afraid that information theory and entropy prevents that.
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I'd settle for a young mind and body alive until the heat death of the universe
Well, that's what I had in mind. If you lived for such an extended period of time, what would happen to the "old you"? You can't put that much information into a human brain, even if you extended the physical longevity of all cells in your organism. There would be a completely different person inside after a much shorter period of time than that.
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It's really depressing living in a time when cancer has not been cured, nor the common cold, allergies, warts, and on and on. The depressing thing is that future historians will look back at us and know that at this stage our medicine has not progressed much past the age of bloodletting. [wikipedia.org]
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Citation needed.
Re:Exciting Times (Score:4, Insightful)
Such a claim requires some serious proof.
Unless you mean our current means of food production enable people to live long enough to get these diseases.
Re:Exciting Times (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, one of the dark sides is that our agrochemical food causes many of these cancers in the first place.
He said lacking any justification at all for his statement.
People die of cancer everywhere, and everywhen, it's not unique to "our" food. It's not magically caused by "chemicals". There are carcinogens present in modern society, but the primary causes of cancer aren't your damn food.
Re:Exciting Times (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming there's been an increase in cancer incidence in recent history (not saying there's been one, I just don't feel like looking it up), I'd conjecture that it's primarily due to our greatly increased average lifespan, not any ill effects of whatever foods or chemicals we might have added to our daily diets.
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To say that every part of society has gone though a dramatic shift over the last 2 centuries is an extraordinary understatement.
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A fair point - the death rate has been pegged at 100% since our distant ancestors gave up asexual reproduction billions of years ago. As we stomp out other causes of death the general body failure "diseases" will inevitably become the dominant cause of death.
However IIRC cancer rates within a given age group are also increasing, and that does suggest that something drastic is changing - and among the the obvious candidates are something in the chemicals we're saturating our farming and living environments w
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"but the primary causes of cancer aren't your damn food."
No, just the phytoalexins required to reverse tumors. You are wrong and should read more.
Cancer is caused by a number of things. Cosmic rays can do it. It's quite natural and nearly all the time the body takes care of it' cancerous cells can be fond at all times in all living things, they're just cells that didn't divide properly for whatever reason. You cam never stop that not do you need to. What needs to be addressed is the inability of some people
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Well, one of the dark sides is that our agrochemical food causes many of these cancers in the first place.
Science: a process intended to prevent stupidity like this statement.
Try it. It works.
You do realize that you're talking in fallacies? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onus_probandi [wikipedia.org]
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I haven't seen nor heard of any proof that reptile aliens don't secretly live among us, disused as humans.
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Prove that there are side effects? I haven't seen nor heard of any proof that there aren't.
You do realize that you're STILL talking in fallacies, and adding further fallacies to your "argument"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi [wikipedia.org]
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And I almost forgot this one.
You do realize that using big words doesn't actually make you smart right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem [wikipedia.org]
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Prove that there are side effects? I haven't seen nor heard of any proof that there aren't.
A lack of proof for the negative is not de facto proof for the positive.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You should either sit further back, or turn your monitor brightness down a bit then.
Oblig (Score:5, Insightful)
TV Personality: And how many people have you treated so far?
Dr. Alice Krippin: Well, we've had ten thousand and nine clinical trials in humans so far.
TV Personality: And how many are cancer-free?
Dr. Alice Krippin: Ten thousand and nine.
TV Personality: So you have actually cured cancer.
Dr. Alice Krippin: Yes, yes... yes, we have.
[cuts to post-apocalyptic New York three years later]
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He's making an I Am Legend reference, not a Resident Evil reference.
So it only works on people born June 21 - July 22? (Score:2)
for certain animals (Score:4, Informative)
this has never been tried on a human being and won't be until at least 2015
many cures for cancer have worked very well in animals over the past three decades
Then go next door (Score:2)
I would think Tasmanian Devils would be a worthy candidate.
Call me cynical (Score:5, Funny)
But all I think they've cured is the need for research funding for a year or two.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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What you've said isn't technically wrong, but your title is horrible. Cancer is usually not "self-inflicted". EVERYONE who lives long enough will get cancer. You can reduce your chances, a bit, not really dramatically, of getting one while you're young by being basically healthy.
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Yes. He was one of the lucky people on the high tail of the bell curve and didn't live long enough, given his particular genetic and environmental makeup, to develop cancer, despite living to an old age.
In his 103 year he was much more likely to have or have had cancer than he was in his 33 year, and a bit more likely than in his 102 year. If he'd lived longer, his chances in his 150th year would be higher than at any previous time. Cumulative density functions are like that, but the probability density
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There is a good chance he had prostate cancer and didn't know it. Most men will get slow growing prostate cancer. The saying has become, "you are more likely to die with it than from it".
Also, his immune system probably killed some cancer cells. As the other poster said, he was at the far end of the curve where everything that prevents cancer worked right.
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Not really. We know a fair amount about the mechanisms behind cancer and we also have a lot of epidemiological data. Cancer can be caused by natural errors in copying DNA, or by corruptions caused by radiation or carcinogenic chemicals. All of those mechanisms tend to occur throughout life at constant (in the case of radiation) or increasing (in the case of copying errors) rates. Some of them can accumulate too, but that doesn't actually matter.
Your immune system normally kills cancerous cells (or they k
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Better information (Score:2)
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/73/16/5169.full.pdf+html [aacrjournals.org]
It was published yesterday...
As an American with an interest in biotech... (Score:2)
... to the UNSW researchers I say, good on you, mates.
Re:Even if this does pan out... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, you're right, curing cancer sucks. This is the worst day ever. :(((
Re:SCIENCE! (Score:4, Interesting)
if we have a global nuclear war, does that mean science won?
Re:SCIENCE! (Score:5, Insightful)
if we have a global nuclear war, does that mean science won?
No. In all liklihood, it will mean religious fanatics in either America, some other region, or both, got their hands on nukes and decided to usher in whatever their version of post-apacalyptic "our religion now rules on Earth as it does in Heaven" millennium. By the time they realize what fools they were, we as a species have joined the other 99% of species in extinction.
Regardless, it will mean the baser side of human nature won, and happened to use a scientificly derived tool as it defeated our better natures, and our species.
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it will mean religious fanatics in either America, some other region, or both, got their hands on nukes
Haven't they already? [wagingpeace.org]
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if we have a global nuclear war, does that mean science won?
No, it means the neutrons won.
Re:SCIENCE! (Score:5, Informative)
that actually was a quote of Vishnu in the Hindu scriptures Bhagavad-Gita.
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that actually was a quote of Vishnu in the Hindu scriptures Bhagavad-Gita.
But only one of the two was talking about nuclear weapons.
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no, a Prince Arjuna is worried about whether to attack an enemy or not. Vishnu appears incarnated as Krishna and converses with him.
(Arjuna): Tell me who are You in such a fierce form? My salutations to You, O best of gods, be merciful! I wish to understand You, the primal Being, because I do not know Your mission.
The Supreme Lord Vishnu said, I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy. Even without your participation all the warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall cease
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You mean living longer and better diagnoses?
Because that is what caused increase in cancer diagnoses. There is no evidence of anything else.
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wrong, there is evidence of what you say in recent decades, but the whole time period of which I spoke tells a different story. Let's use one example, the mass production of cigarettes, before which people hand rolled a few smokes a day....
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Tobacco smoking has been available lots longer than that. Nor does is require rolling. Smoking near constantly has been something people have done, the few who could afford it, for much longer than that.
Try again?
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not in the mass quantities of today's two and three pack a day smokers, and not with the chemicals used for processing
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Way back in 1967 I wrote a term paper for my 11th grade English class on the tobacco industry. I was able to find many references to a "lung cancer epidemic" in the mid-1900s that alarmed the medical community. For example http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807357,00.html [time.com]
Turned out to be caused by tobacco use as pushed by the tobacco companies. Servicemen during WWII got a pack of cigarettes in their daily ration packs, generously donated by the tobacco companies. They knew even then that it
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Because when we used wood fires no one breathed any particulate?
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wood is not leaves from the "nightshade" family of plants
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yes, the processes and machinery used are very much the products of science. do you imagine modern agriculture, machinery and chemical reactors are not?
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you might lose 99% of all patients.
plenty of people don't seek modern cancer treatment, ask Steve Jobs how that went for him