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Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

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Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#51

Post by wasdfff »

refurb wrote: post #13
killjoywashere wrote: post #2

Yep, if we really want to cure cancer, we need to go back into the tissue archives and study every single cancer that's ever been diagnosed, at the molecular level, to start getting our heads around what really happened to all those people. 10 million people a year. Every year. For a the last 6-7 decades of chemotherapy. Meanwhile, there's this perverse medicolegal incentive to retain the excised tissue samples for t…

What would be the value in finding a cure for cancer for a patient who is already dead if that patients particular mutation is unlikely to be found in another person?

These rare mutations are actually do come up in other patients and are worth studying to work out a molecular mechanism that explains the cancer. Mutations that drive cancer usually affect the same couple of pathways, and different mutations could bring about the same phenotype.

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#52

Post by wasdfff »

rjf72 wrote: post #47
gmueckl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this paper account for the increase in life expectancy? Many types of cancer appear in people of older age and reaching that age was not nearly as common in ancient societies.

Two ways. By looking at the causes of death of those that did live to old age as well as by considering cancers (such as bone) that tend to occur disproportionately in young people.

I think the study is biased towards cancers that are visible in the remains. If you died from leukemia, would that be evident based on your skeleton?

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#53

Post by wasdfff »

leafeewick wrote: post #19

Would open sourcing all cancer research and allowing anyone to contribute and share in the open source community... would that assist in potentially finding a cure/treatment for various cancers or would the profit motive be required for these research to be successful?

If its NIH funded its automatically open sourced 1 year after publication.

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#54

Post by breck »

killjoywashere wrote: post #33
breck wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was unaware of this 10 year rule. Here at UH Cancer Center I know there are teams with samples in the freezer from decades ago. Any links where I can learn more?

You can keep samples as long as you want. The CAP requires accredited labs to keep them 10 years. Attorneys simply want a record retention policy, which creates a natural tension many lab directors respond to by getting rid of the blocks after 10 years. See (1) for the checklist, the specific line item is ANP.12500. In theory things can get kicked to a biorepository, but the standards for a CAP-accredited bioreposito…

I see. I guess on the bright side collecting new data is becoming exponentially cheaper. For example, this year the world will collect more heart rate data than it did than all previous years in human history combined. So even if we lost all heart rate data from decades past, we generate that quite quickly now. You certainly lose a lot of longitudinal value, but perhaps that won’t turn out to be too critical? (Or perhaps it will)

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#55

Post by droithomme »

> Since there are some 1,000 cancer-related genes and each cancer requires up to three distinct gene alterations to succeed, every cancer patient is literally one in a billion.

Errors in his math:

- not every combination of any of the 3 genes (1000999998 = "1 billion" ordered combinations) causes cancer

- the order doesn't matter

- the occurrence rates of each mutation are not the same and don't appear in the same rate among various populations

Thus, the number of kinds is much smaller than 1 billion, and many people do have the same type genetically.

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#57

Post by Roritharr »

gmueckl wrote: post #44
thiago_fm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer who has been living for 4+ years in Germany. Does that mean that it is a good idea to perhaps change to private insurance? I thought that when I get old here, as I pay all those fucking taxes, I would get a good treatment for whatever diseases I may have until it's my last day. That sucks. I feel ripped off.

I think the OP is confusing a few things here. Public health insurance will always pay for whatever treatment you need. Age is only a factor in very few cases. What matters is that the doctor or hospital is also in Germany. The system allows you a huge amount of freedom in choosing who to get care from. But the system doesn't cover getting care from foreign facilities. Private health insurance policies have the same…

That's precisely my point.

I don't get much freedom when it comes to international healthcare and won't be able to save enough to pay out of pocket/take a loan for something as dramatic as this. The only insurance answer to this is a Dread Disease insurance which pays out once specific illnesses appear, but the amount and illnesses are completely dependent on your financials aswell, so you're still worse off in this case compared to simply earning more in the US.

It's great that I don't have to fear going to the hospital for normal stuff, but everything extraordinary is very scary as our public healthcare system is simply crumbling, getting appointments for specialists can take months, hospitals are overcrowded (my mother was taken by an ambulance to a hospital due to a heart condition, only to be ferried further as all beds were full that night) and doctors and nurses are working themselves to the bone or simply leave the country outright.

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#58

Post by xenonite »

Roritharr wrote: post #57
gmueckl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is confusing a few things here. Public health insurance will always pay for whatever treatment you need. Age is only a factor in very few cases. What matters is that the doctor or hospital is also in Germany. The system allows you a huge amount of freedom in choosing who to get care from. But the system doesn't cover getting care from foreign facilities. Private health insurance policies have the same…

That's precisely my point. I don't get much freedom when it comes to international healthcare and won't be able to save enough to pay out of pocket/take a loan for something as dramatic as this. The only insurance answer to this is a Dread Disease insurance which pays out once specific illnesses appear, but the amount and illnesses are completely dependent on your financials aswell, so you're still worse off in this…

I don’t know about the German insurance, but for example the Swiss insurance makes a specific exception: in case there is no adequate treatment or expertise available within Swiss borders, the insurance must cover a foreign treatment.

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#59

Post by xenonite »

thiago_fm wrote: post #42
Roritharr wrote: post #40

Ironically, living in Germany makes me scared that I won't be able to pay for a therapy by someone like Dr. Nagourney as our governmental health insurance providers are very eccentric when it comes to paying for treatments. That combined with my high tax-rate and only slightly above average salary means I won't be able to save enough money to afford it to send a loved one to him when it becomes necessary. That is cra…

I'm a developer who has been living for 4+ years in Germany. Does that mean that it is a good idea to perhaps change to private insurance? I thought that when I get old here, as I pay all those fucking taxes, I would get a good treatment for whatever diseases I may have until it's my last day. That sucks. I feel ripped off.

Well the private insurance is indeed a problem if the insured cohort gets old, i.e., all the clients that signed up for a certain insurance product in around the same time frame, and when it is cheapest: mostly at age 25-40. After a while, the clients get older and the product becomes more expensive for the clients, and won’t attract new clients anymore. Then, all remaining clients become old „together“, hence the old aged themselves need to share ever raising costs.

Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion

#60

Post by rjf72 »

wasdfff wrote: post #52
rjf72 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two ways. By looking at the causes of death of those that did live to old age as well as by considering cancers (such as bone) that tend to occur disproportionately in young people.

I think the study is biased towards cancers that are visible in the remains. If you died from leukemia, would that be evident based on your skeleton?

I do not know the answer for leukemia but this is another issue that was considered in the paper.

If people are put off by the paywall: https://sci-hub.tw/#about

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