Here are two stories the mainstream media isn’t jumping all over themselves to report. Continue reading
Category Archives: Cancer research
IBM puts supercomputer to work on cancer
Much less awesome than it sounds. Curing a cancer is not a function of crunching data of dubious quality. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research
Shock study: Chemotherapy can backfire, make cancer worse by triggering tumor growth
Well, no a really a “shock.” Scientists have known for decades that chemotherapy drugs are carcinogens themselves. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research
Beware the spin in research reporting
Go to the original source and read the full study for yourself. The actual findings are often far different from what the headlines and abstract report. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research, Scientific method
DNA Co-Discoverer: Antioxidants cause cancer?
We never believed the antioxidant hypothesis… Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research
Texas cancer agency facing probe
The “war on cancer” is a 40-year old failure that is evolving into fraud. “Racing for the cure” may have made you feel better, but it and its genre of “research” and activism have been a colossal waste of time, effort and money. You don’t need sunglasses to see its future, but a good prosecutor might help. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research
More epidemiological bunkum
This past week, two startling admissions came out of Harvard. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research, Diabetes, Obesity, Scientific method
Rep. Brian P. Bilbray and Dr. John C. Reed: ‘We choose to end cancer’
As laudable as their aims may be this is misguided. The “war on cancer” has been a major failure and the money for the most part could have been far more effectively applied elsewhere. Worse, much of the available research money and effort is squandered on fashionable maladies (big voting block, women, better really care about breast cancer, even though it’s a lousy way to allocate funding and effort). As it happens the “choice to end cancer” was made several decades ago but the problem has proven less tractable than the relatively simple engineering challenge of going to the moon. Continue reading
Daily aspirin reduces cancer risk and slows its spread, study confirms
“Overall risk of dying from cancer was reduced by 16% among people who took daily dose of aspirin when healthy“
Hmm… RR 0.84 for those taking aspirin prophylactically. RR <0.5 might be something but a null result even on 100K patients isn’t really compelling given they had no history history of cancer nor obvious risks. What non-cancer morbidities did these people suffer? Were they exacerbated by this prophylactic treatment? Continue reading
The way to reduce prostate cancer rates? Diagnose it less
Expert says up to 10,000 men a year at low risk of the disease in the UK get no benefit from treatment Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research, Medicine, Public health miscellany
Mutant gene linked to skin cancer
SCIENTISTS have identified a gene mutation found exclusively in deadly skin cancers caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Continue reading
Posted in Biotechnology, Cancer research
Ian Frazer: Catch cancer? No thanks, I’d rather have a shot!
A couple of years ago, I contributed to a documentary with the intriguing title Catching Cancer. We don’t normally regard cancer as an infection, so it often comes as a surprise to learn that more than 20% of the global cancer burden can be attributed to infections, and that most of these infections are viruses.
To understand this link, we first need a basic understanding of cancer. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research, Public health miscellany, Vaccines
Tagged essential research, medical research
Experts say science lacking on 9/11 and cancer
Call it compassionate, even political. But … scientific? Several experts say there’s no hard evidence to support the federal government’s declaration this month that 50 kinds of cancer could be caused by exposure to World Trade Center dust. Continue reading
Junk Science Week: CT scans are the real risk, not plastics
The Institute of Medicine in the U.S. recently released its comprehensive review of environmental causes and risk factors for breast cancer. Continue reading
Posted in Bisphenol A (BPA), Cancer research, Chemophobia, Radiation
Tagged medical imaging, plastics
‘One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infection’
One in six cancers – two million a year globally – are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, new estimates suggest. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research
Could this virus cure cancer?
Australian scientists are leading a global charge to combat one of the world’s worst killers with a surprising secret weapon – the common cold. Continue reading
Posted in Biotechnology, Cancer research
Herbal remedy blamed for cancer
A toxic ingredient in a popular herbal remedy is linked to more than half of all cases of urinary tract cancer in Taiwan where use of traditional medicine is widespread, said a US study. Continue reading
Dental X-rays can double brain tumor risk, study finds
Dental X-rays could double the risk for the most common brain tumor, according to a study released Tuesday from scientists and doctors at Yale, Harvard and other prestigious institutions published in Cancer, a scientific journal of the American Cancer Society. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research
Claim: Fingers face cancer risk under nail lamps
Just how long are people toasting their hands under how much UV that this claim is even made? Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research, Radiation
Josh Bloom: Two Faces of Cancer
According to a paper in yesterday’s Journal of Clinical Oncology, the 5 year survival rate of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (the most common form) has continued its upward trajectory, and now stands at 90 percent–fairly amazing considering that it was almost always fatal as recently as the 1960s. Continue reading
Posted in Cancer research, Medicine, Public health miscellany
