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Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

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Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#91

Post by GhostVII »

gregwebs wrote: post #67
GhostVII wrote: post #31

If you are interested in more of the history behind the different cancer treatments that we have today, "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" is a fantastic book about it. Probably my favourite book of all time, a lot of parallels with the themes in this article about prevention being a huge contributor, and how recently we've had some success in very targeted cancer drugs.

If someone wants a different take on why cancer treatment has progressed very slowly, there is "Cancer, Incorporated" by Ralph Moss.

Treatment has progressed slowly because it turns out that it is extremely hard to find drugs that kill cancer cells and not regular cells, given that they are almost identical. It's not some big conspiracy, there is an incredible amount of money being spent on trying to find and develop these drugs.

I'm sure there are some instances where drugs to treat very rare cancers were not entered into trials because the company didn't think it was profitable - the book actually lays out one of the examples of this. But that isn't really relevant to the overall fight against cancer. The reality is that we have limited resources to develop and test new drugs, and how profitable a new cancer drug will be is a somewhat reasonable proxy for how important it is to develop.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#92

Post by gregwebs »

GhostVII wrote: post #91
gregwebs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants a different take on why cancer treatment has progressed very slowly, there is "Cancer, Incorporated" by Ralph Moss.

Treatment has progressed slowly because it turns out that it is extremely hard to find drugs that kill cancer cells and not regular cells, given that they are almost identical. It's not some big conspiracy, there is an incredible amount of money being spent on trying to find and develop these drugs. I'm sure there are some instances where drugs to treat very rare cancers were not entered into trials because the compa…

You might try reading the book before arguing against a straw man of it.

With respect to drugs we have a big issue that we have a fundamentally flawed system where we only fund proper studies for drugs with patents. There are many cancer treatments with much more promising data behind them than the latest drug company drug. But these treatments can never get a large clinical trial funded to really prove that they work since there is no way to pay for the study.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#93

Post by chefkoch »

Gatsky wrote: post #56

The changes in melanoma and lung cancer are mainly due to immunotherapy, which is a bona fide revolution in cancer treatment. It's almost embarrassingly simple, just turn off one receptor ligand interaction (PD-1 and PD-L1) that suppresses anti-cancer immunity. Nobel prize was given for the discovery. Importantly it works in earlier stage and later stage disease, and the same drug works in multiple different cancers…

There are now way more types of immunotherapy than what you mentioned. Monoclonal antibodies, CAR-T cells, BiTes, cellmods etc.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#94

Post by chefkoch »

gregwebs wrote: post #92
GhostVII wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treatment has progressed slowly because it turns out that it is extremely hard to find drugs that kill cancer cells and not regular cells, given that they are almost identical. It's not some big conspiracy, there is an incredible amount of money being spent on trying to find and develop these drugs. I'm sure there are some instances where drugs to treat very rare cancers were not entered into trials because the compa…

You might try reading the book before arguing against a straw man of it. With respect to drugs we have a big issue that we have a fundamentally flawed system where we only fund proper studies for drugs with patents. There are many cancer treatments with much more promising data behind them than the latest drug company drug. But these treatments can never get a large clinical trial funded to really prove that they wor…

Do you have an example for this?

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#95

Post by chefkoch »

andy_ppp wrote: post #25

I do wonder if there will be trials of doing short chemotherapy or senescent cell clearing drugs in your 40s in the future. It might be better to kill these things before they even become noticeable as diseases…

You develop what could becomecancer cells every day, but your immunesystem gets rid of them. More important would be tests to detect cancers early in before there are symptoms.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#96

Post by Gatsky »

chefkoch wrote: post #93
Gatsky wrote: post #56

The changes in melanoma and lung cancer are mainly due to immunotherapy, which is a bona fide revolution in cancer treatment. It's almost embarrassingly simple, just turn off one receptor ligand interaction (PD-1 and PD-L1) that suppresses anti-cancer immunity. Nobel prize was given for the discovery. Importantly it works in earlier stage and later stage disease, and the same drug works in multiple different cancers…

There are now way more types of immunotherapy than what you mentioned. Monoclonal antibodies, CAR-T cells, BiTes, cellmods etc.

None of which are proven in solid tumours. Talimogene laherparepvec, a viral immunotherapy is another one in actual use, but is much less impactful than nivo/pembro/atezolizumab.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#97

Post by dennis_jeeves »

bladefire wrote: post #82

Cancers are decreasing since 2019 Covid death rates are up Nothing to see here...

Also the survival rate is calculated based on a 5 year survival after diagnosis. Since detections are made earlier patients will survive well past 5 years even if the treatments don't improve. so it would appear that survival rates are also getting better.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#98

Post by gregwebs »

chefkoch wrote: post #94
gregwebs wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might try reading the book before arguing against a straw man of it. With respect to drugs we have a big issue that we have a fundamentally flawed system where we only fund proper studies for drugs with patents. There are many cancer treatments with much more promising data behind them than the latest drug company drug. But these treatments can never get a large clinical trial funded to really prove that they wor…

Do you have an example for this?

In the mentioned book some examples that are given are Coley's toxins (a 100 year old treatment) that is highly effective for some patients. You can download a report on a particular cancer at mossreports.com and there are many pages detailing complementary treatments and the level of evidence for each of them. For example the supplements with the best evidence behind them for helping to treat most cancers are EGCg, Curcumin, Genistein, Resrevatrol, and Sulforaphane.

Re: Death rates are declining for many common cancers in the U.S., report finds

#99

Post by hanniabu »

pcorsaro wrote: post #42
hanniabu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there no downsides to Avastin? How long is a cycle?

Your wounds won’t heal. It also costs a fortune. I don’t think it clinically makes a difference in survival rates either. My wife had stage 4 colon cancer and they used it in conjunction with her standard chemo treatments for a couple of sessions. The incision where her port was installed never fully healed so they took her off of it. Edit: when they took her off the avastin, her oncologist just said it was no big de…

Once she came off it her wound healed?
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