7 replies to this topic

[Wallcrawler]

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

snip<It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.>snip

[maineman]

I look forward to the results of the clincal trials. mm

[Rogerdodger]

The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.

Money is the problem.
My wife got a generic perscription filled last night for $4 at Sam's.
She was taking a patented drug which was well over $100 a month.
Who would bother testing a drug which retails like asprin?

I've heard that some chemotherapy drugs cost over $1300 per treatment.
Now there's some good money.

[maineman]

The answer is that contrary to the paranoid -conspiracy "big pharma" suspicious group here, most medicine is done by people who CARE and want to fight illness. MANY of our drugs are DIRT cheap, they work and we use them. We've been using digitalis for 100s of years. Basically free. Comes from a plant. (foxglove). I couldn't practice medicine without it. I have no idea how drug companies make money from it. They probably don't. A one month supply cost about 2 t 3 dollars. Its a life saver. Some cancer therapies cost quite a bit, but if you've been reading the news the last few days you've seen how we are winning this battle with a sharp drop in cancer mortality. 12 years ago we "won" the battle of Prostate cancer. Licked it (as long as you let us diagnose it early). The back bone of treatment is a chemotherapy that is hormonal. It used to cost 1500 bucks a shot, and we'd give it 4 times a year. ALL of the patients I treated are alive with no sign of disease. The treatment now cost 400 a pop and the price will continue to fall. mm

[OEXCHAOS]

MM, My dad had a bout with prostate cancer and it was amazing how minimally INCONVENIENT treatment was. He's cancer free and fully functional. Not long ago, he'd be sick still and worried about dying. Probably incontinent or suffering from e. d. I'd say that's a huge success for medicine. But to get to a more difficult point...folks are saying that it'll have to be somone other than big pharm who will bring this product to the public because there's no money in it for them. It's true. When it costs tens of millions to bring a drug to market, it would be IRRESPONSIBLE to develop a drug that didn't have a margin in it for the drug company. This is the difficult reality that we have to work around. It's not wrong, it just is and it requires a bit of creative thinking, not finger pointing nor pretending that because a drug company won't do something that it shouldn't be done by someone. Mark

[maineman]

That's great news about your father. It is pretty cool what's going on out here. As for the business end of the pharmaceutical industry, beats me how it all works. I do know they have really good scientists and most of them are pretty ethical and interested in human health. (i'm not talking about the silly drugs for cosmetics or whatever, but serious drugs for serious issues). Good drugs stand the test of time. Bad drugs are discarded as we discover either better ones or we discover side effects that we consider unaccepatable. There are enough people on the planet who want to be well, that the profit margin can be small and ethical companies will still make a profit. Most of the drugs I use on a daily basis can be had, in generic form, for 4 bucks a month at Wal Mart. Some of the newer ones, still on patent, obviously cost more. But, if they turn out to be vital drugs, the cost will drop. mm

[J.Bilkins]

The answer is that contrary to the paranoid -conspiracy "big pharma" suspicious group here, most medicine is done by people who CARE and want to fight illness. MANY of our drugs are DIRT cheap, they work and we use them. We've been using digitalis for 100s of years. Basically free. Comes from a plant. (foxglove). I couldn't practice medicine without it. I have no idea how drug companies make money from it. They probably don't. A one month supply cost about 2 t 3 dollars. Its a life saver.

Some cancer therapies cost quite a bit, but if you've been reading the news the last few days you've seen how we are winning this battle with a sharp drop in cancer mortality.

12 years ago we "won" the battle of Prostate cancer. Licked it (as long as you let us diagnose it early). The back bone of treatment is a chemotherapy that is hormonal. It used to cost 1500 bucks a shot, and we'd give it 4 times a year. ALL of the patients I treated are alive with no sign of disease.

The treatment now cost 400 a pop and the price will continue to fall.

mm

Interesting information. Thanks. What species exactly and how much?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis

[J.Bilkins]

The answer is that contrary to the paranoid -conspiracy "big pharma" suspicious group here, most medicine is done by people who CARE and want to fight illness. MANY of our drugs are DIRT cheap, they work and we use them. We've been using digitalis for 100s of years. Basically free. Comes from a plant. (foxglove). I couldn't practice medicine without it. I have no idea how drug companies make money from it. They probably don't. A one month supply cost about 2 t 3 dollars. Its a life saver.

Some cancer therapies cost quite a bit, but if you've been reading the news the last few days you've seen how we are winning this battle with a sharp drop in cancer mortality.

12 years ago we "won" the battle of Prostate cancer. Licked it (as long as you let us diagnose it early). The back bone of treatment is a chemotherapy that is hormonal. It used to cost 1500 bucks a shot, and we'd give it 4 times a year. ALL of the patients I treated are alive with no sign of disease.

The treatment now cost 400 a pop and the price will continue to fall.

mm

Awesome job with your dad. Thanks.

Do have any advice to protect yourself from insurance when needing SSRI's such as the particular one that Jim Cramer uses? I have bi-polar disorder and the Lexapro only helps with depression. I have an apointment tomorrow(Sunday) to go thru all of this.
http://www.lamictal.com/