i call bullshit

It's like with the flu, there's a cure but its not revealed because the money used on flu/cancer treatments helps the companies to get more cash for whatever they do with it.

i call bullshit

I question the legitimacy and facts of the article that in the opening post, but yea the $$$ money making when it comes to medicines and cures is fucked up shit.

DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer.

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors.

Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastien Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell.

Scientists and doctors have used DCA for decades to treat children with inborn errors of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria, the energy producing units in cells, have been connected with cancer since the 1930s, when researchers first noticed that these organelles dysfunction when cancer is present.

Until recently, researchers believed that cancer-affected mitochondria are permanently damaged and that this damage is the result, not the cause, of the cancer. But Michelakis, a cardiologist, questioned this belief and began testing DCA, which activates a critical mitochondrial enzyme, as a way to "revive" cancer-affected mitochondria.

The results astounded him.

Michelakis and his colleagues found that DCA normalized the mitochondrial function in many cancers, showing that their function was actively suppressed by the cancer but was not permanently damaged by it.

More importantly, they found that the normalization of mitochondrial function resulted in a significant decrease in tumor growth both in test tubes and in animal models. Also, they noted that DCA, unlike most currently used chemotherapies, did not have any effects on normal, non-cancerous tissues.

"I think DCA can be selective for cancer because it attacks a fundamental process in cancer development that is unique to cancer cells," Michelakis said. "One of the really exciting things about this compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of cancer".

Another encouraging thing about DCA is that, being so small, it is easily absorbed in the body, and, after oral intake, it can reach areas in the body that other drugs cannot, making it possible to treat brain cancers, for example.

Also, because DCA has been used in both healthy people and sick patients with mitochondrial diseases, researchers already know that it is a relatively non-toxic molecule that can be immediately tested patients with cancer.

"The results are intriguing because they point to the critical role that mitochondria play: they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy"
Dario Alteri
Director University of Massachusetts Cancer Center
Investing in Research

The DCA compound is not patented and not owned by any pharmaceutical company, and, therefore, would likely be an inexpensive drug to administer, says Michelakis, the Canada Research Chair in Pulmonary Hypertension and Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program with Capital Health, one of Canada's largest health authorities.

However, as DCA is not patented, Michelakis is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test DCA in clinical trials. He is grateful for the support he has already received from publicly funded agencies, such as the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and he is hopeful such support will continue and allow him to conduct clinical trials of DCA on cancer patients.

Michelakis' research is currently funded by the CIHR, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Research Chairs program, and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.

"This preliminary research is encouraging and offers hope to thousands of Canadians and all others around the world who are afflicted by cancer, as it accelerates our understanding of and action around targeted cancer treatments," said Dr. Philip Branton, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Cancer.

DCA and Cancer Patients

The University of Alberta's DCA Research Team is set to launch clinical trials on humans in the spring of 2007 pending government approval. Knowing that thousands of cancer patients die weekly while waiting for a cure, Dr. Michelakis and his team are working at accelerated speed, condensing research that usually takes years into months. Fundraisers at the University of Alberta are determined to raise the money to allow this next phase of research to begin. Once Health Canada grants formal approval, the University of Alberta's Research Team will begin testing DCA on patients living with cancer. Results with regards to the safety and efficacy of treatment should be known late this year.

I thought you were making a joke thread about my comment about people celebrating the death of Bin Laden, but how I doubted that people would dance in the street if we cured cancer. Strange timing for the crazieness of the way my mind works.

[..]

PS. Those of you that said you would dance for cancer cures in the Bin Laden thread, must film yourself and put it on youtube and give us a link.... Otherwise you are a hypocrite. 

mitochondria produces energy and as far as I've hard doesn't kill anything inside your cells

I read that right? Physical activity is a risk factor for cancer? 

One third of all cancer deaths are related to diet and activity factors.

A lack of activity is a risk factor.

YOU'RE 6'5'' ?!?!

I don't see any numbers given. What the hell constitutes "tall"? I'm 5'9".

fuck the inches!

Enormo
These stories are complete mindfucks for so many cancer patients and caregivers out there. Watching my wife cry because of the fear, angst, and guilt that we're not doing all we can to keep her alive gets me so very angry. And the quacks that profit by perpetuating the myth that we actually have the ability to cure cancer but it's being suppressed by some vast global conspiricy of doctors... oh... i'm shaking I'm so mad right now.

My uncle died from throat cancer a few years ago. It's infuriating to think that nothing is being done about these developments when the opportunity is at hand.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/dichloroacetate_dca_and_cancer_deja_vu_a.php

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/19/there-is-no-miracle.html

In case you didn't read the thread, the cure WASN'T found. It's a ludicrous exaggeration from a few experiments done with a drug tested on a single type of cancer.

Are you dropping your work and giving your 100% effort to search for a cure for cancer ? if not you are hardly qualified to complain.

Riptide said, May 21, 2011, 10:00:42 am

So did I.


anyway it's so said your family dies from cancer. I'd rather have a more awesome death.

  hey, you just said my dad, grandpa, his brothers, and basically anyone in my bloodline non awesome

Immortality sucks dude. I wouldn't want to be immortal, it has too many consequences. Your memory's going to be shit because time is relative, so like a thousand years of life will distort your perception of time.