Another Cancer Cure?

by metatron 6 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  metatron

  http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=771

  I heard about Gc-MAF years ago. Little or nothing has been developed since then, even though it might be effective against cancer, AIDS, and much more.

  The dose used is in nanograms - very tiny.

  metatron
• 

  snare&racket

  You do reslise there are humans out there looking for cures to save people they love....probably people on this site!

  Take an extra 2 seconds metatron, just do one extra google search....

  Cancer Research UK.....

  "The results appear to be startling – all the patients on the trials are ‘cured’ of cancer. Surely this is an amazing breakthrough?

  Put bluntly, no it isn’t. There are significant scientific problems with the trials. For a start, all the studies are very small, involving fewer than twenty patients in each – rather than the thousands needed to make the sort of claims mentioned above.

  Next, all the patients involved had received standard treatment for their cancer, including surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. This is a somewhat unorthodox design for a trial of this kind, because it makes it very difficult to tell if any successes are due to the new drug, or the more conventional treatments.

  On top of this, the researchers didn’t actually monitor the progress of tumours in the patients, and provide no clinical information about them. Instead they opt to measure levels of Nagalase in the blood, rather than looking at any standard established markers for cancer.

  For example, in the case of the breast cancer patients, there is no detail about their “TNM” (tumour, node, metastasis) status. This is a standard measure of how far a patient’s cancer has spread, and is used to calculate the likelihood that it will return.

  Furthermore, the researchers didn’t do any tests to show that injected Gc-MAF was actually activating macrophages in the patients’ blood, or even working in the way that they expect. There is no information about levels of cytokines – the proteins produced by immune cells when they are activated – or analysis of the patients’ immune cells.

  Perhaps most significantly, there are no controls – untreated patients for comparison – and the studies only followed the patients for a few years. We have no way of telling whether their cancers were growing again, or had been successfully treated, and whether this was due to Gc-MAF or the other treatment they had received.

  Given that 80 per cent of all women with breast cancer survive for at least 5 years, an uncontrolled study showing that 16 women of unknown TNM status survive for at least 4 years is no great shakes, scientifically speaking.

  Further problems
  Another telling point is the type of journal in which the research was published. If this research was truly groundbreaking, and pointed the way to a cure for cancer, then the research would likely be found in top-tier ’high-impact’ medical journals journals like The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the American Medical Association.

  And finally, virtually all the references in the papers are to other papers published by Yamamoto and his team. If Gc-MAF was indeed a promising candidate for a successful cancer treatment, you’d expect plenty of other research to show the same thing. Scientists are usually quick to spot promising, emerging fields of research and jump on the bandwagon.

  Is there hope?
  Although this particular approach isn’t all it’s hyped up to be, harnessing the power of immune system could be a very potent way to treat cancer. We’ve blogged many times already on high-quality research into immunotherapy (for example here, here , here and here)

  And many Cancer Research UK-funded scientists are also working in this field. For example, Professor Fran Balkwill and her team are working on ways to trick macrophages and other immune cells into attacking cancer cells.
  To sum up
  The advent of the internet has led to a wild proliferation of stories of ‘miracle cures’ for cancer – virtually all of which are based on shaky (or zero) science."
• 

  metatron

  It is based on small studies. I put a question mark next to 'another cancer cure'.

  It says "Scientists are usually quick...... and jump on the bandwagon" - which means they don't know one way or the other. I think they are 'quick' if they get a grant, if the treatment shows it could be highly profitable, if it doesn't interfere with a present revenue stream....

  I hope for a day in which scientists idealism wins out over corporate needs. The system is designed to help create reliable revenue streams, not save lives. Hard to say how that changes.

  metatron
• 

  cofty

  I wonder how many miracle cures for cancer Metatron has flagged for our attention over the years.
• 

  metatron

  A great many potential miracle cures. I thrive on gratuituous, mindless replies coming from bored skeptics who believe it is their religious duty to halt discussion of any potential positive speculation.

  With that goal, my posts work very well.

  metatron
• 

  cantleave

  Metatron, there is no cancer cure conspiracy. Even if the pharma giants in the US are avaricious multi-nationals organisations like Cancer Reasearch UK are not (another great thing about the UK health system, which I believe you think is "communist").

  You do talk total crap at times, and need to stop reading shite without actaully doing thorough research.
• 

  JeffT

  What snare&racket and cantleave said. This sensationalist crap does not need any more promotion. Any study that does not involve a significant number of patients, a control group, and long term follow up is sel-promotion, not science. As a point of comparison, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center tracks its former patients until they're dead.