Lung cancer vaccine...from Cuba.
j0z3r
Posts: 9,403 ✭✭
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/cuba-releases-worlds-first-lung-cancer-vaccine
Interesting short article.
Interesting short article.
0
Comments
Not bad for a backwards commie country. I do love labels:)
it is exactly like saying one cold or hot day or week is any indication on if global warming is or is not happening.
on that note, i do hope the embargo is lifted and this treatment is the catalyst that sparks that.
That is an excellent point Kuzi and spot on . I don't think a countrys government in this age is necessarily a reflection of its people and their intelligence . If it was most people in the world would think us Americans sure are some dumb as_ses huh ???
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-last-idUSTRE65M0SU20100623
I know your all about private health care however it doesn't work. Well let me put it this way, private companies taking money for care by private doctors. Which is basically like the MOB. I mean we pay more and more to these companies only to be screwed more and more. When its a fact that the govt can do the insurance's job much more efficiently and cheaper. I mean wow, pay less for health care or pay more...? Not a hard choice. Oh and I don't see any for profit health care countries making the best lists for health care.
on a recent personal note, I have a good insurance plan through atena, and my wife has a so-so one through... I think united healthcare. Anyhoo she has allergies so the doctor wanted her to take these shots which are suppose to take care of a lot of it. Well certain allergies need different shots, so she needed three. Now these are suppose to be done frequently and they are damn expensive. Some like 400 or even higher a piece. So my insurance has a 150 dollar co-pay. Hers has 3000 dollar co-pay. Now one would think, she can use mine, as she is secondary. Well no, my insurance company bumped up the co-pay to 1500! so the 150 co-pay went up to 1500 because she has access to another health insurer.
Now wtf? I mean we pay these companies every month so we should be able to use both or at least chose which one as some have better prices on certain things. But no!, we are F-d and some A-holes who rake in billions of dollars a year are laughing at us while they fly around on jets and light cigars with 100 dollar bills (yeah I embellished a bit there).
And then some of the greatest minds in the history of the world where from the lower class of uneducated.
I think the point being made was that from listening to say, the arguements put forward during the Medicare debate in the U.S. one would think that a great number of important Americans do indeed believe that Private Health Care is the BEST health care available, for all the tired old reasons.
It was just nice to be able to point to an example of creative and inovative thinking coming from a country that many here believe do not possess those traits.
Sorry Pheebs for your wife's allergy problems . And the insurance hassel as well . Allergys are a pain in the butt , my wife is bothered by them every summer . Hope you guys are able to get it under control at a reasonable cost .
EDIT - you're **** me - "****'s" without the apostrophe is censored?
A crown and purple vest on a monkey don't make it a king/You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig (pick your preferred metaphor)
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
If you google it, Cuba has been claiming since 1995 that they've "discovered" the cure to cancer with scorpion venom.
Terminal lung cancer patients are living longer thanks to the world's first registered lung cancer vaccine, a leading Cuban scientist says.
Dr. Gisela Gonzalez has spent years researching the vaccine which the Cuban government approved for the use of the general public last year.
Gonzalez and her team have worked on developing the CimaVax EGF vaccine at the Cuban Center of Molecular Immunology since the early 1990s.
She says all those years of hard work have finally paid off as trials show that Cubans with lung cancer are living a little longer after having the vaccine.
"One of my early patients was a 32-year-old man when he started taking the vaccine. I had a son that age," the scientist told CNN.
"Now he's 35. He's living and working. He visited us the other day and said he's thinking about having kids."
Gonzalez says that more than 700 patients have received the vaccine over the years, many of them in seven clinical trials in Cuba, Canada and the UK.
More than 400 advanced lung cancer patients received the Vaccine CimaVax EGF in the trials, according to the Latin American News Agency.
The trials showed that the drug extended the life of terminal patients by an average of four months, and in some cases several years, compared with those patients who only received traditional therapies. Younger patients tended to fare better.
"It has the potential to be very important," according to Dr. Howard Burris, director of drug development at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tennessee.
He said the results were comparable to those being produced by two other lung cancer vaccines, GVAX and BLP 25, being developed in the United States.
"Larger trials will show there are subsets that it's very good for and for others it's not relevant," he said.
CimaVax EGF does not prevent or cure lung cancer. It is a therapeutic vaccine which stimulates the patient's body to make an antibody against the epidermal growth factor (EGF), which is a key driver causing lung cancer cells to grow.
It is used in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiation therapy which reduce the size of the initial tumor.
"With this kind of product, maybe cancer, advanced cancer, can be treated like any other chronic disease like diabetes," Dr. Gonzalez said during a recent tour of her modern laboratory in Havana.
Medical services, even the most costly, are provided free of charge in communist Cuba. CimaVax EGF is now part of routine treatment for advanced lung cancer patients.
If you'll take careful note, none of these "miracle cures" have ever been demonstrated to work OUTSIDE of Cuba - not in Europe, Canada, Australia, China, India, Russia, Iran - anywhere. Don't you think that it's just a LITTLE funny that one of the most repressive nations on earth finds a "miracle" cure, but for an unexplained reason, the only people who say it works are ones inside Cuba?
UPDATE - the new "cure" being peddled this past week is indeed the same water+scorpion venom from the 2003 story: http://havanajournal.com/culture/entry/scorpion_concoctions_escozul_cancer_treatment
Like I said before, show me one scintilla of evidence that this "cure" works outside an area controlled by the Castro's, and I'll take it more seriously. But when every story about this is coming from people who could "disappear" at the whim of the Castro's, I hope you'll understand if I have trouble believing any of it
Gonzalez says that more than 700 patients have received the vaccine over the years, many of them in seven clinical trials in Cuba, Canada and the UK.
I would also like to point out to you the irony of your first statement...Well, if someone says it on the tv, it must be true. Like this CNN story - 60,000 Cuban people cured/lives improved, with a miraculous potion of distilled water and scorpion venom.
Do you have ANY idea the number of "cures" or vaccines in the world already which do derive from just such natural sources? Are you so foolish to believe that it isn't "real medicine" unless it is synthethized and reduced to it's lowest chemical compounds?
Talk about wanting to sell me a bridge. Man I have rarely met anyone as fully indoctrinated as you. Trying to have a serious, adult discussion with you is just impossible. You can safely put your blinders back on now, nothing to see here.
Take note of this Laker - I may call you a fool because I disagree with your opinions, but I've never questioned your good intentions or called you a liar or a hyperpartisan like you call me.
I'm asking for evidence that this "cure" works outside an area controlled by a guy with the last name Castro, and you're calling me a hyperpartisan with blinders on.
What is so difficult about this concept that you keep missing? You're believing a story from a communist nation in which all dissent is dragged out into the street and shot.
Like I said - show me one scintilla of evidence that it has worked in a clinic NOT in Cuba, but in a Western (FYI - America, Europe, Canada, etc - the Western nations) clinical setting and I'll be inclined to believe it; they can say it's been done in a clinical setting in the UK/Canada all they want, but show me some proof of it first. Until then, this "scorpion venom + water" cure is nothing more than snake oil from a regime that shoots anyone who tries to escape and fails; there's no evidence outside Cuba that it works - and you're ready to swallow the entire hoax hook line and sinker because you think the cure to a disease that's very likely genetic, is to be found in poisoning oneself with a scorpion.
If North Korea "found" the cure to AIDs from tree sap, and said they cured 100,000 people with it, none of whom you could medically examine, would you believe it? What if they said "everyone who doesn't believe we can cure AIDs with tree sap is an indoctrinated hyperpartisan who's unwilling to have an adult conversation or believe in the healing power of nature"?
That's your argument in a nutshell - you not only believe a story with no evidence, but you're attacking me personally, calling me a child and a hyperpartisan, for asking for evidence. Children believe in Santa and the Easter bunny without any proof; adults know to ask for evidence before believing a fat man in a sled can fly.