Canadians Cure Cancer - Nobody Cares?

Channizard

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Canada, eh?
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...and other alliteration. :awesome:

I was browsing fb today when someone posted this article about students in UofA who had actually found a cure for cancer. It boils down to a simple drug that's already used and widely distributed to treat metabolic disorders, hardly any side effects have been found when tested. But does anybody care? No, because this drug already exists and can't be patented. The Pharmaceuticals aren't interested in something they can't make money off of yet, so nobody's raised any awareness of it.

Here's the whole article, complete with diagram. Watcha think? If this is full on legit, shouldn't we be jumping for joy that we have a potential cure here?

40764_f520.jpg


"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."
sauce
 
Ill say this for this discovery,

Natural selection and Human Greed go hand in hand like death and taxes.

Of course people will care, its just that the people in charge of the world are those who have the most money. If they cant increase there own wealth or influence from something they would discard it.

Its a shitty way of doing things.

It could also be because canandians made the discovery:lew:
 
I think people have become to concerned about the abundance of human beings in the world to really care about something that will save their lives. I find it very hard to believe that this has also been sitting in front of people for so long and other people have not noticed it.
 
I had a quick glance at the website mentioned in that article and it would seem as though it is still being tested (their latest update was May 12 2010).

Researchers emphasize that use of DCA by patients or physicians, supplied from for-profit sources or without close clinical observation by experienced medical teams in the setting of research trials, is not only inappropriate but may also be dangerous.

http://www.dca.med.ualberta.ca/Home/Updates/2010-05-12_Update.cfm

“We have only assumptions and theoretical excitement,” Dr. Michelakis [I think he is the head researcher] said. Still, he added, “there’s no question that this is a new direction that is logical and very appealing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30cancer.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Additionally a found a few links on that site which indicate that it has had media coverage. http://www.dca.med.ualberta.ca/Home/Media/articles.cfm

Sorry if I burst anyone's bubble :sad3:
 
....Typical.

We have a possible cure. thats not being excepted. and Now its being tested again.

This would have helped way before My aunt Died of Cancer.

PHALE life. PHALE.
 
Yeah, I think it was about 15 or so years ago that some Scandinavian college student found something in human breast milk that cures cancer, but yet no one has bothered to develop it for commercial use. It's sad, but the reason is that people are profiting from cancer, and so they will drag their heels about curing it for as long as they possibly can. Also, it might be that those in power see allowing cancer to kill people, as the most disguisable method of population control they can come up with. We need population control really badly, and IMO the responsible thing to do would be limiting childbirths per household; but because many people see that as a violation of human rights, the only thing that really acts as population control right now is the death of sick or old people. So I could totally see those in power being accepting of population-controlling diseases, and wanting to put off the cures' availability for as long as possible.

And sure, the argument could come up of, "oh, well that doesn't make sense because the cure companies could make tons selling it." But for them to charge enough to recoup the losses from not keeping people on treatments for years and years, which they are making so much money with now, would probably be seen as unhumanitarian. Like if they said "Hey, we'll cure your cancer, just give us 1 million dollars please," then they would be accused of catering only to the super-rich, and that would be extremely bad for their reputation. Or it might even be illegal, honestly I'm not sure.
 
Whats amazing is how cancer has been a plague for humans for as many years as it has and how with all of the technology and intelligent scientists there are out there...there is STILL no cure for people who have cancer.

AIDS...I understand how it is taking so long to cure it because you have to kill the hosts cells to kill the disease...but cancer...it should be easier.

It would be nice if they could find something while I'm still alive and start using it. I don't know about everyone else, but cancer has obliterated a large portion of my family. They are getting better with chemo and everything and prolonging the survival rates ...but a cure...would be nice.
 
I don't buy the argument that big pharma won't develop a cure for cancer simply because they're making a profit off people having cancer. Considering how many people are diagnosed with cancer every day throughout the world, what could possibly be more profitable than a cure for cancer? Is there a patient that wouldn't request the cure? Is there a doctor that wouldn't prescribe it? Is there an insurance company that would deny cover-... All right, don't answer that last one.

I think the reason it isn't huge news is because it hasn't been put through a full battery of tests. No sense in giving terminal cancer patients false hope.

Or it may be because saying Canada cured cancer is like saying my pet unicorn ended world hunger. Neither Canada nor the unicorn exist. :hmph:
 
Ok first of all there are literally tons of different types of cancers that are caused by a variety of different mutations and gene defects etc. so there will never be one universal cure for it. Then there are actually quite a lot of problems with it even in the lab rat tests, some of which even increased risk of cancer. Also they said that they had a clinical trial on five humans that ended with no significant conclusions. As for the evil phrma-capitalist corporations not being able to sell something that they can't patent it, tell me the last time you were in a store that didn't sell bottled water(a much more available resource)
 
Who cares about Cancer we killed Osama Bin Laden. Take that Canada. Everyone knows a disease that kills millions in an extremely painful way, pales in comparison to killing a terrorist who was probably going to die soon, and wasn't even in charge. :trollface:

But seriously, like Licky said, there are so many strains of cancer, it's sort of like the flu isn't it? There is never going to be a cure all for it, and it's likely that even a cure wouldn't work too long because cancer evolves doesn't it?
 
Well no cancer isn't evolving really, I think you're thinking of bacteria that become immune to general antibiotics becoming super viruses kind of that are incredibly hard to kill. As far as I'm aware none of these are carcinogenic though, and even if they were they'd most likely cause an established cancer.
 
sensationalist thread title channykins.

aberdeen university does a lot of cancer research and there are scientists all over the world who will tell you one month that something prevents cancer, the next month its causing cancer. they dont seem to know very much about it at all.

i could do a clinical trial with baby oil and conclude that rubbing baby oil into cancer patients' hair is a potential cure for cancer except that i tested it on very few people and there were no significant improvements to any of the patients.

JIM CURES CANCER etc.
 
The biology in the article sucks. It's one thing to dumb down the technicalities of science for the masses, it's an entirely different thing to get it wrong. Mitochondria aren't cells, glycolysis doesn't cause cancer and you don't "switch off" mitochondria, either. Cancer's all to do with genetics (particularly the genetics that control cell growth, division, and cell death), NOT glycolysis...which ALL cells use as a means of providing energy to carry out cellular work.

The picture and the explanation in the article are wrong. THAT is probably why drug companies aren't patenting the drug for treatment of cancer.
 
Yea, the title doesn't say much for Canada except make them sound like pompous assholes. 1) No cure found, still in the testing phase. 2) If you have to announce it on the internet, most likely it isn't true 3) Might as well wrote this up in a "People"'s magazine due to the claims being overly incredulous.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but as a person who's had family wrought by this disease, I hate claims like this. If it was tested on humans (not lab rats like what they on the back of a sugar packet) and it was found to be true, there would be a lot more buzz than this.
 
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