Vaccine for Cancer
This is London is reporting that a US research team has made some serious progress in developing a Vaccine for Cancer . The vaccines have produced dramatic results against the most virulent of cancers, such as pancreatic and kidney cancer. Typically, there is a 95% mortality rate over two years for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, over a third of those receiving the treatment were alive after three years, and one was disease free after five.
The new treatments are tailor made for each patient, using materials from the patient's own body to create the vaccine. Researchers also have reason to believe that the technique might also make possible vaccines against other infectious diseases as well.
Given cancer's place on the list of leading causes of death, this is promising news indeed.
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Wow.... wow.
Wow.... wow.
Now if they could only create a cure for stupidity.
Hey, and by the way (off topic), starvation still seems to be a leading cause of death among the world's population. Why are environmentalists still dead-set against GMO's, ALL GMO's, when some of them demonstrably do some good with minimal impact to the rest of the ecosystem? Is it another case of ideology getting in the way of common sense?
In a word, yes. Also
In a word, yes. Also remember that for the last two hundred or so years, famine is exclusively a political phenomenon. Yes, there are bad harvests, droughts and monsoons, but the real issue is the distribution of food, not the production of it. The starving people of Somalia were surrounded by fields of cash crops raised for export. Ethiopia, China, Russia and all the others were the result of Communism. The Biafrans were the victims of their tribal enemies who happened to rule Nigeria.
GM foods make it easier to feed the masses with less impact on the environment - because you need less arable land to grow the same amount of food. This leaves more room for endangered species, rainforests and wilderness. Also, GM foods can be packed with vitamins that can ameliorate the effects of malnutrition. Best example is the Golden Rice which is enriched with Vitamin A and could prevent millions of cases of childhood blindness every year. Of course, the EU blanket prohibition on the import of GM foods means that many third world countries will not grow them, because they could not export them to their largest market, and therefore lose the potential benefits to their own people.
Buckethead, you're right. I
Buckethead, you're right. I should have brought that up.
This also speaks to our recent discussion on overpopulation. If more food can come from fewer acres, pollution and water rights become the most pressing problems ahead of having enough to eat.
There is one sure cure for
There is one sure cure for pollution - wealth. Pollution has declined across the board in every country where per capita incomes grow above (semi-random number) $10,000 a year. The greatest polluters are India and China (exempted from Kyoto, btw.) People rich enough to bother about pollution instead of such trivial issues as survival, political terror and starvation tend to force solutions.
Water can be a real problem, though it is localized to nature's bizarre insistence on not distributing fresh water equally across all parts of the Earth.