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Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

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Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#281

Post by JumpCrisscross »

d--b wrote: post #228
y33t wrote: post #183

Don't bother, if you're in a position to do so, help them find a first-class brain surgeon. Get them into Sloan Kettering, Mayo, Duke or OHSU or whoever. Help them look for clinical trials to get chemo past the blood-brain barrier (I've heard some promising things in this area, though I'm not sure if it's being tested on humans yet). If they have a family that's taking care of them, offer to help them. Even just a gr…

See the problem with this disease is that the general treatment is shit. With two inoperable tumors the chances that chemo and radiation alone do anything more than giving him a week or two are zero. So in that respect, going to a first-class brain surgeon is no less a moonshot than any other bio hacks I can find online. You're just recommending the "most-accepted" moonshot.

> going to a first-class brain surgeon is no less a moonshot than any other bio hacks I can find online

American "physicians received significantly less intensive care than the general population" at the end of their lives [1]. (Canadian physicians "used both intensive and palliative care more than nonphysicians" [2].)

The lesson seems to be yes, go ahead and pursue your moonshots, but don't let that cloud the reality of the situation and don't let the moonshots debilitate what little time you have left.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2482318

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6659139/

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#282

Post by seniortaco »

I'm not sure why all the hate. This is entirely up to your friend. If they want to spend their remaining time trying moonshots, then by all means do it, and blog the results online and share with others. Make it into something fun. It literally does only increase their chances of survival even if by some extremely small amount.

Otherwise, if they prefer to spend their time in other ways, support them in that.

"False hope" is kind of an oxymoron. Hope is never easy to have. Fortunately it's not required. You can accept death and still find enjoyment/distraction in self-experimentation.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#283

Post by JumpCrisscross »

egorfine wrote: post #243
cj wrote: post #91

My best friend died of brain cancer. Although not from the cancer itself. He died of an opioid overdose. He was prescribed pain killers for cancer-related pain, and got hooked. His doctors stopped prescribing, so he found it elsewhere, and got a bad batch with fentanyl. (He was a VC living in SF, well to do, he had all the treatment money could buy, but cancer ended up not being what killed him) I know this isn’t wha…

> He died of an opioid overdose I'd say this is quite far away from the top entries in the list of worst ways to go.

> this is quite far away from the top entries in the list of worst ways to go

Genuine question: is it? I would have thought it's quite peaceful. Particularly since pentobarbital overdose is how we put down our pets [1]. (Not an opiate, but also renders you unconscious.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentobarbital#Euthanasia_and_a...

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#284

Post by wesapien »

d--b wrote: post #26
lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #20

Have you looked into ivermectin and fenbendazole? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3158014/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7505114/

No, thanks a lot for pointing out.

Goodluck to you and your friend. I only know about PEMF and will read about sOMF. I bought an ICES-PEMF a few years ago just to try it out for my back pain and it did help in reducing it and healing it. It's small and battery operated and was designed as a wearable but you need to come up with your own way of holding it close to your body. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnGpibdAoic

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#285

Post by isleyaardvark »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #201
nikisweeting wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is explicitly asking for hacks and "out there" solutions, I think this is a reasonable place to post anecdata, papers, personal theories, etc. as long as people state their confidence level and link to sources when possible

> OP is explicitly asking for hacks and "out there" solutions, I think this is a reasonable place to post anecdata, papers, personal theories, etc. as long as people state their confidence level and link to sources when possible As long as OP and their friend know this is spinning wheels for fun and is pretty much certainly not going to extend their lifespan, sure. There can be satisfcation in knowing you never truly…

The post reads a bit like one of those stackoverflow questions seeking a solution to x when that’s not the problem they should be solving.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#286

Post by admissionsguy »

deegles wrote: post #43
IAmGraydon wrote: post #32

The occurrence of GBM is about 3 out of every 100,000 people. If you happen to know 4, is there some commonality? Do you all work together in the same industry? Do they all live in the same town?

My aunt is in her 70s and has 5 friends currently with cancer. My belief is that it's downstream effects from Covid wrecking people's immune systems and their ability to naturally fight cancer. Time will tell.

Unlikely to be COVID. The mRNA vaccine on the other hand...

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#287

Post by graemep »

_yb2s wrote: post #199
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

↑This. Stop. No. Don't go down the false hope path. It's cruel AF and puts off acceptance, wasting time that they can put to better use post acceptance. Maybe let your friend explore what they want to do and you just give support. Celebrate what they celebrate and cry with them when they cry. Find(or better make) them some comfy/cute hats. If you want to research the things about the hospital, the procedures they are…

Personally, if I were dying and someone kept saying fake nonsense like "you are getting the best care" I'd probably cut off contact with them, or at least wish they would stop. I'd know I'm getting mediocre care like everyone else, that's also part of accepting the reality of the situation. I'd know my doctor probably graduated at the bottom of his/her class or else he/she wouldn't be an authorized provider on an HMO…

Definitely true, and I know that its common for people who are terminally ill to feel the same.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#288

Post by ryandrake »

lambdaphagy wrote: post #280
ryandrake wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you try someone else's "broscience", you're not really experimenting with the unknown, so it's unlikely you're going to stumble into a "result". They know it doesn't work. If it did work, they'd have patented it and licensed it to Merck or Pfizer. Choosing quackery is not experimenting.

Elsewhere in the thread I argue why efficient market hypothesis arguments are unlikely to fully apply in this case.

I think your argument is that developing cancer treatments is really hard and the clinical trial process has problems. I can believe it. Do you think the mainstream epistemological process produces more false negatives or more false positives? What's the proportion of cases where a chemist finds a compound that really works, but the process incorrectly rules it out, vs cases where something that doesn't really do much still comes out the other end as a marketable drug?

I'm not in the industry, so what do I know? But I kind of doubt there are actual, effective treatments just sitting there unmonetized in Merck's basement library because the company is slow and the process makes things difficult. Especially the kinds of things that get mentioned in HN threads that don't require any chemistry research and are pretty straightforward to test, like fasting, meditation and yoga.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#290

Post by _yb2s »

Earw0rm wrote: post #239
_yb2s wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, if I were dying and someone kept saying fake nonsense like "you are getting the best care" I'd probably cut off contact with them, or at least wish they would stop. I'd know I'm getting mediocre care like everyone else, that's also part of accepting the reality of the situation. I'd know my doctor probably graduated at the bottom of his/her class or else he/she wouldn't be an authorized provider on an HMO…

The best care is not necessarily the best bleeding-edge treatment. Most medical jobs are only possible at all (without burning out and destroying the person doing them) through them mostly acting in accordance with best practice and training. The ultra-rich don't have markedly better survival from nasties like GBM than the rest of us, unfortunately, so if better exists, it's not something money can buy. And where som…

> The best care is not necessarily the best bleeding-edge treatment

It's mostly a conceptual thing for me. As a technical person with a hacker/nerd/scientist mindset, I will not be able to trust someone that blindly follows official protocols from some authority they don't personally understand the reasoning or evidence behind.

For example- I do have a doctor that is a hacker/nerd/scientist that also teaches college biochem courses for fun on the side and he was about to prescribe me a medication, but then based on an offhand comment I had made, realized I've had a number of bad reactions to medications that he knew off the top of his head were metabolized by the same liver enzyme as this new medication. This guy keeps a book about drug metabolism biochemistry on his desk, and the cover is nearly worn off from use.

I most likely have a SNP in that enzyme, that would have given me another bad reaction. This is deep nerdy biochem knowledge he was not going to get from any official protocol that led to better and safer care. The biggest problem here is we like geeking out on this stuff so much, he almost forgets to actually treat me when I visit him.

I've had other doctors that even if I had noticed the potential P450 enzyme issue myself, would refuse to listen because they have a fundamentally non-technical mindset, combined with ego issues about being the expert- that are usually made worse not better if I mention that I have professional expertise and training on the underlying biology.

In truth, I'll admit it is both quite rare to get any real benefit, and legally risky for the doctor to deviate from guidelines based on direct knowledge or understanding.

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