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New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

economist.com

61–70 of 182 posts

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#61
post #49
post #6

As is often the case, the title is hyperbolic. The discovery applies to 20% of tumors, and "one of cancer's significant defenses" or "a key weakness of cancer" would be more accurate. That said, I'll happily take "we discovered a key weakness in 20% of cancers," please and thank you.

Only on HN can you get content like this. What a community.

You should be thankful that they're posting about a real drug that is in human trials and yet another "in mice" pipedream

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindly share more details

1. Trump has been trying to cut Science budgers by larger percentages for a while now. Congress has not let them. 2. NIH funding notice of awards has slowed to a crawl since Trump did not get his wish to cut Science funding. 3. Putting scientific funding under political control, instructing them to ignore the reviews conducted by peer scientists. 4. Have practically made international collaborations on grants impossi…

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Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#63
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you get to the second order effects. If we want to find a cure for some disease, but we don't have enough people to do experiments on (maybe a lot of eligable prisoners died in previous trials) judges now have an incentive to hand out life sentences to people with that medical condition Even just subconsciously that would have an effect

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Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#64

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Unfortunately, anecdotes are not data, and although a patient can try anything they want, there is no way to know that such dietary changes are beneficial or potentially harmful for most patients without doing a randomized controlled trial and hoping for strong adherence from the participants.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#65

I’m surprised Michael Levin’s research hasn’t expanded much beyond a certain YouTube media bubble. They’re able to start and stop cancer growth with only voltage changes between cells, likewise they can also trigger regeneration or anatomical changes using voltage changes. His research seems to suggest a lot of important anatomical plans are stored in an electric field around the body, not in the DNA. This model’s ex…

I love his work (even though I know little more than what he says in interviews). I am also surprised it's not more widely known / applied. I am very skeptical of conspiracy-minded thinking, so I'd much rather assume his and his team's work hasn't reached escape velocity from obscurity. Especially with larger industries, it takes time and significant breakthroughs to become "a household name", so to speak.

They are working on getting in vivo studies going from what I remember - it's going to take a positive result in a trial on real patients to get attention - that's just how medicine works. You have to show it actually improves longevity and/or patient quality of life before anyone has a reason to care.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#66

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Unfortunately, anecdotes are not data, and although a patient can try anything they want, there is no way to know that such dietary changes are beneficial or potentially harmful for most patients without doing a randomized controlled trial and hoping for strong adherence from the participants.

> anecdotes are not data

It's 2026, this is SOP.

It's why I referenced the metabolic pathways derived from data backed research, linked to a data driven study, and used language like "we had significant success with our loved one" and "if you want something that you can do to try".

Honestly this reads like an "aHCkTualLy!1!" from someone without experience of having a loved one suffering from a cancer diagnosis.

Perhaps you've yet to realize but shallow skepticism against every idea is also distinct from data.

While you chose make this comment without providing links or data to support your claim I will do the real work of finding even more data for you: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#67
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Trump has been trying to cut Science budgers by larger percentages for a while now. Congress has not let them. 2. NIH funding notice of awards has slowed to a crawl since Trump did not get his wish to cut Science funding. 3. Putting scientific funding under political control, instructing them to ignore the reviews conducted by peer scientists. 4. Have practically made international collaborations on grants impossi…

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Can you cite any stats or studies that show that this is happening in any substantial amounts? This seems to be one of those "it just makes common sense" when the underlying data is ignored or assumed.

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the similarities of cancer to normal cells. We have penicilin that works against all human cells. We call that poison. Now, "no, i mean poisons that attack the special chemistry of cancer," oh yes, those we call chemo.

For chemo it's often "these chemicals kills cancer cells faster than they kill regular cells".

Which is why we got ecchemo.. where the cancer affected pathways get seperated from the regular ciculatory system via shunt and then get fed the chemo seperately and get a little wash before reconnection to the full circulation. It would be even more ideal if you had the whole navel setup in two entirely seperated systems.. sorry, a man can dream..

Re: New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times

#69
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you get to the second order effects. If we want to find a cure for some disease, but we don't have enough people to do experiments on (maybe a lot of eligable prisoners died in previous trials) judges now have an incentive to hand out life sentences to people with that medical condition Even just subconsciously that would have an effect

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That won't create justice, only judges that forever encode current prejudices
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