Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
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Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#2Yep, 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 the minimum necessary period of time, which is 10 years for US laboratories accredited by the College of American Pathologists.
You heard it right, the lawyers won. We spend medical administration time filling out medical administrative paperwork to spend medical care dollars burning most of the cure to cancer. Every year.
Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#3The book "Tripping over the truth" is a great history of the failure of the genetic mutation theory of cancer to cure cancer. It argues that it's a dead end and we should go back to exploring Otto Warburg's metabolic theories.
Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#4Many cancers are heterogeneous. Once a malignant community forms the established organized population deteriorates into chaotic competition.
Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#5The book "Tripping over the truth" is a great history of the failure of the genetic mutation theory of cancer to cure cancer. It argues that it's a dead end and we should go back to exploring Otto Warburg's metabolic theories.
Mutations impact pathways. Studying genetics and epigentics is fine. Metabolism is another angle but the brain itself consumes a lot of energy... it’s not just dividing cells. If you target metabolism you run a huge risk of killing the patient before the cancer does.
Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#6Yep, 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…
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Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#7The book "Tripping over the truth" is a great history of the failure of the genetic mutation theory of cancer to cure cancer. It argues that it's a dead end and we should go back to exploring Otto Warburg's metabolic theories.
Warburg's metabolic theory is an important part of current cancer care and many prospective efforts. However, tumor metabolism is an effect, not a cause. The simple-as-possible-but-no-simpler model of cancer is that mutations occur, breaking the blueprint code for cellular processes. In most cases this leads to cell death. In rare cases, the mutant survives and either fails to interpret a death signal or over-interprets a growth signal, or the growth switch is constitutionally activated. This leads to more mutations and some number of daughter lineages also survive. This all stems from very straight forward underlying rates of mutation predicted by the laws of thermodynamics, requiring no other input. There are plenty of example problems available to work through on Rosalind.info.
That is, cancer is a disease of information. And this is extremely compatible with the genomic evidence in every cancer we've encountered, many, many times over. Viruses you say? They insert into the genome and interfere with normal cell processes. UV radiation. Chemical exposures, oxidative stress, etc, etc. Those are intermediary chains of causation. Interesting for specific examples (wear gloves, wear sunscreen, be careful about sex, etc).
One of the blueprints that tends to fall apart is the complex aerobic respiratory pathway, including the Kreb's cycle, etc. But there are other, usually latent energy pathways, like glycolysis, that are available. It is the loss of aerobic respiration that unmasks the glycolysis pathway and all its associated inefficiencies and metabolic stress effects.
Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#8Many cancers are heterogeneous. Once a malignant community forms the established organized population deteriorates into chaotic competition.
Wait, are we back to talking about how to organize programming teams again?
Re: Every Cancer Patient Is One in a Billion
#9Many cancers are heterogeneous. Once a malignant community forms the established organized population deteriorates into chaotic competition.
Wait, are we back to talking about how to organize programming teams again?
Well, you do hear humanity likened to a cancer fairly often. Look at what we do to other species, and we're even trying to metastasize to other planets. Lucky for us that this universe doesn't go in for it's millennial checkups, huh?