Semi-OT: Iowa College of Medicine working a specialized treatment for DIPG

Submitted by Wolverine In Iowa 68 on August 29th, 2019 at 10:12 AM

Saw this article in the Iowa Now newsletter at work this morning.  It hits close to home, both for #ChadTough and because a friend of mine in town has an 11-year old son who was diagnosed with DIPG earlier this year (fuck cancer!).

The Iowa College of Medicine is working in tandem with the Yale Cancer Center on a treatment that targets specific cell metabolism to go after the gene that causes the specific cancer.  Early results are promising.

Medicine research in the B1G is the best in the world!  We will stop this monster!

#TaterTough

https://medicine.uiowa.edu/content/drugs-target-cell-metabolism-may-lead-new-treatment-childhood-brain-cancer

MGoStretch

August 29th, 2019 at 2:05 PM ^

Wow, that's a scorching hot take right there.  Care to elaborate? 

Put aside the biological differences between different cancers that makes a single universal cure for all cancers essentially impossible, individual types of cancer are cured all the time.  Do you know what oncologists told parents in the 60s who had a kid with leukemia?  They said, "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do".  Do you know what I tell parents who come into the hospital with the same disease?  "I know you're scared, and this IS scary, but we have a better than 90% chance of curing your kid".  You think Big Pharma (or whatever Illuminati crackpot theory you happen to ascribe to) wanted to stop that?

Also, your take also does a great job of ignoring basic economics.  Drug companies don't have a "cure" they're keeping from people.  Even if you want to take the most cynical stance possible, can you imagine what the stock price would do and what profits they could make if a drug company came out and announced they had a universal cure for all cancers?  They could charge whatever they wanted and everyone (EVERYONE) would buy it.  They'd be the richest company in history.  GTFO out with that conspiracy nonsense.
~A pediatric oncologist

MGoStretch

August 29th, 2019 at 4:08 PM ^

I can help clarify, if you "treat" the disease with well researched medications you absolutely can "cure" many types of cancer.  If your point is that those regiments don't constitute a "cure" because not everyone is healed, that would demonstrate a profound lack of biology understanding.  Further, your definition of cure would exclude every treatment for every condition known, as there would be no "cures" for any disease (nothing in medicine, absolutely nothing, is 100%).

If you're using google as your primary research, try searching for CD19 CAR-T cells [or CD22 if you're so inclined and want to be super edgy], or perhaps imatinib and CML, or AALL0932.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the information you find.  Or you could click https://www.cancer.gov/types/leukemia/patient/child-all-treatment-pdq and learn a few more things.

Apologies for the mini-rant, but I encounter conspiracy crap like that with some regularity and while it is personally insulting, more importantly, it's damaging for patients and their families who come across that sort of nonsense. 

MGoStretch

August 30th, 2019 at 9:24 AM ^

Please, enlighten us with your profound conspiracy insights. I’ve spent over a decade trying to find a cure for a particular pediatric cancer and I honestly had no idea the Illuminati have been trying to keep me down the whole time. If you have any specifics, please do let me know.  At the very least, I can start wearing a tinfoil hat to the lab/hospital if you think that’ll help.