cancer
terrasig | March 16, 2007I hope Orac won't mind but with him in a surgical conference in DC right now, he may not have seen Matt the Heathen post in the comment thread at Respectful Insolence about a superb article that appeared in today's Edmonton Journal, "Possibly fatal at $2 a pop," by Jodie Sinnema.
Jodie's interview with the University of Alberta investigator and author of the original DCA anticancer paper illustrates the level of interest in this public-domain chemical:
Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, the cardiologist and researcher whose academic paper sparked the worldwide fervour surrounding DCA, said people…
terrasig | March 8, 2007We've spoken here before about the premature extrapolation of in vitro data on curcumin to the misleading human use of the spice-derivative for a whole host of cancers. Unfortunately, curcumin is not absorbed into the bloodstream at concentrations necessary for anticancer effects, even when combined with a black pepper-derived compound called piperine (sold under the brand name, Bioperine). In fact, piperine/Bioperene may present a risk of drug interactions and potentially increase the side effects of some types of chemotherapy if taken unwittingly along with certain drugs.
However, a…
oracknows | March 6, 2007One byproduct of blogging that I had never anticipated when I started is how it sometimes gets me interested in scientific questions that I would never have paid much attention to before or looked into other than superficially. One such scientific question is whether dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule that was shown to have significant anti-tumor activity against human tumor xenografts implanted in rats, media reports about which caused a blogospheric hysteria in late January representing DCA as a "cure" for cancer that "big pharma" doesn't want you to know about, mainly because it's…
oracknows | February 27, 2007I should know better. I really should. I'm referring, of course, to my having forgotten my usual avoidance of purely political posts yesterday. I'm beginning to remember why I so seldom blog about political matters in general and why I've never in two years discussed abortion on this blog in particular. I don't know what came over me. Given all that, I think it's high time for a straight science post, don't you? After all, I could beat up on Dr. Egnor again or do another dichloroacetate post, but what would be the point? Dr, Egnor's clearly an ideologue who is not likely to stop pushing "…
oracknows | February 24, 2007Remember how I alluded to the fact that perhaps I've been doing a little too much blogging about dichloroacetate and the unscrupulous "entrepreneurs" who are taking advantage of desperate cancer patients to sell the stuff to them? Well, I can't resist mentioning something truly amusing that I just noticed.
The "health freedom" warriors and "entrepreneurs" responsible for The DCA Site and BuyDCA.com appear to have noticed me and my humble efforts.
How do I know that they've noticed me? Remember the long exchange between Heather Nordstrom and two people questioning the ethics and legality of…
oracknows | February 22, 2007I've probably beat this one into the ground over the last couple of days; so this will be uncharacteristically brief, because it's time to move on. Also, it was fun to see DaveScot go into paroxysms to try to justify the dangerous, unethical, and reckless actions of Heather Nordstrom and her stepfather in setting up The DCA Site and its sister site, BuyDCA.com, where Heather et al are selling "Pet-DCA" in a ludicrously obvious (and probably ineffective) ploy to be able to claim to the FDA, "Hey, we're not selling this for human consumption." One wonders, perhaps, if DaveScot may actually have…
oracknows | February 21, 2007Yesterday, I wrote about how anti-science pro-"intelligent design" kook extraordinaire Dave Springer (a.k.a. DaveScot) has taken to promoting dichloroacetate as a treatment for cancer and one website in particular, The DCA Site that claims to exist to "help inform people of the exciting research done on DCA [dichloroacetate] by scientists at the University of Alberta. In January 2007 a team of scientists at the University of Alberta published a paper in the scientific journal Cancer Cell describing the discovery that a simple, cheap molecule, DCA, worked to reactivate the apoptosis mechanism…
oracknows | February 20, 2007I hadn't planned on writing about dichloroacetate, the inexpensive compound whose success in treating experimental cancer in rats that provoked a blogopheric storm about a "cancer cure" that would supposedly never see the light of day because it's not patentable. After all, I've done about seven posts on the topic, give or take a couple, in the course of the last four weeks or so. That's saturation blogging, and, really, nothing new has happened on the news front that merits a new post.
Or so I thought.
Then, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III, just when I thought that I was out…
oracknows | February 14, 2007[Note: There is a followup to this post here.]
I've been writing a lot about dichloroacetate (DCA) lately, perhaps even to the point of becoming repetitive and risking boring my readers. Fortunately, this post is not primarily about DCA. Unfortunately, it's about a question that is related to the recent hype over DCA in that it pits the desperation of dying cancer patients who want to try out the latest drugs, even if they haven't been demonstrated to be safe or efficacious, versus the what remaining ability the FDA has to regulate drug safety and, some might argue, the scientific method…
oracknows | February 12, 2007Yes, I know that my blog buddy Abel wrote a post with almost exactly the same title as this. No, I'm not mindlessly aping him. I'm doing it because of what Abel revealed in his post: That most of his referrals lately have been Google searches looking for information on where to buy dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA.
I, too, have noticed a lot of referrals to my original post on DCA, in which I tried to explain why it isn't the "cure" for cancer that some have been touting it as, most recently, a rather annoying troll going by the name of Robert Smith who's been infesting my blog lately in my posts…
terrasig | February 10, 2007...has been the number one Google search term leading people to the blog this week - and that worries me.
As I wrote about a week ago, dichloroacetate, or DCA, is the molecule tested recently by a team at University of Alberta for its ability to slow the growth of human lung cancer in immunocompromised rats. Among DCA's action is the ability to prevent cancer cells from producing lactic acid via aerobic glycolysis, a process used by more than half (but not all) tumors. Scientists continue to debate whether this process is a cause of cancer, or just a byproduct of malignant cell…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2007I want to follow up on a point Amanda made in response to my post about the Texas plan to immune all girls against HPV. (Maybe between the two of us, we'll rub some good points together and come up with an idea...) Amanda writes (italics mine):
...it's true that the opt-out policy does mean that it's going to be a lot harder for vindictive, misogynist parents to refuse to protect their daughters from cervical cancer. It's the difference between neglect and active abuse, really. Without mandatory vaccinations, denying your daughter preventative treatment was easy, since you simply had to…
terrasig | February 3, 2007I've stood at the periphery of the dichloroacetate (DCA) story mostly because my attention has been needed elsewhere as of late. However, I was very interested in the blogosphere attention given to the Cancer Cell paper from a group led by Dr Evangelos Michelakis at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The University of Alberta has now set up a website with links to all press coverage on this report as well as a donation page for those who want to support further clinical studies of DCA for cancer.
Long story made short, DCA is a mitochondrial respiratory modulator that reduces lactic…
oracknows | February 2, 2007I know, I know, I said last time that I probably wouldn't post on dichloroacetate and the hype some of the more credulous parts of the blogosphere are falling for over its being supposedly a "cancer cure" that big pharma is either willfully ignoring or actively suppressing. However, when DaveScot and the sycophants on Uncommon Descent join in with the "cure for cancer" hype and conspiracy-mongering (with apparently only one voice of reason trying to counter DaveScot's cluelessness), it's really, really hard for me to resist the urge to introduce the mutual admiration society over at UD to a…
mikethemadbiologist | February 1, 2007Molly Ivins died this morning at age 62 from her long-running battle with cancer. She was one of the best damn things about Texas. Damn.
oracknows | January 30, 2007At the risk of irritating a fellow ScienceBlogger again, I thought I'd point out this little post forwarded to me by Norm Jenson as yet another example of exactly the inflated hype for dichloroacetate as a "cure for cancer" that will "never see the light of day" because it has little profit potential (and, by the way, that pharmaceutical companies will "probably lobby against it with all their might") that I was talking about in my original post on the subject.
I should have taken a β-blocker before clicking on the link.
Given the level of silly rhetoric in the post above and even despite…
oracknows | January 26, 2007I hate to end the week on a downer, but I came across this last night and, given my attention to the case of Katie Wernecke (the girl whose parents chose dubious alternative medical therapy over the radiation therapy she needed for her lymphoma) over the last several months and the recent news that her cancer had returned with a vengeance, it's hard for me not to mention what I've found now, rather than waiting until the weekend or Monday.
First, Katie's father has posted a story written by Katie on the family blog: Hope. It was really hard for me to read this, as it's a heart-wrenching tale…
oracknows | January 24, 2007The other day, I did a reality check on a story making the rounds through the blogosphere about an alleged new cure for cancer that, if you believe some hysterical bloggers, is being suppressed because it would cut into their profits. I took one blogger to task for what I characterized as the "utterly ridiculous title" of his post (Objectively Pro-cancer). Well, he apparently didn't like that and showed up in my comments claiming that he was joking.
It sure didn't sound like a joke to me, but I thought I'd poll my readers to see if anyone thought I was out of line in my criticism. So, look at…
oracknows | January 23, 2007I came across an interesting tidbit about dichloroacetate (DCA), the compound that the media and all too many bloggers are touting as some sort of cheap "cure" for cancer whose development is being ignored or suppressed by big pharma because it wouldn't be profitable enough. I poured a bit of cold water on all of them yesterday, because most of their comments were based on false hope, given how few drugs that show promise in cell culture and animals actually pan out in human trials, and ignorance of how clinical trials for new cancer drugs work.
This particular tidbit is posted on the…
oracknows | January 22, 2007I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week's YFDoW, didn't you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about it is because the responses to this particular bit of news in the blogosphere grated on me, for reasons that will become apparent soon.
It's about a new cancer drug that I learned about from both fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah and readers who forwarded articles about it to me. If you believe some other bloggers (one of…