Cuba produces lung-cancer vaccine - Soviet-Empire.com U.S.S.R.

Moris

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Soviet cogitations: 3553
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 17 Jul 2006, 00:10
Ideology: Other Leftist
Forum Commissar

12 Sep 2011, 22:38

Quote:
Cuba Announces Release of the World's First Lung Cancer Vaccine

From the island nation known for the quality of its cigars comes some pretty big news today: Xinhua reports that Cuban medical authorities have released the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer. CimaVax-EGF is the result of a 25-year research project at Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology, and it could make a life or death difference for those facing late-stage lung cancers, researchers there say.
CimaVax-EGF isn’t a vaccine in the preventative sense--that is, it doesn’t prevent lung cancer from taking hold in new patients. It’s based on a protein related to uncontrolled cell proliferation--that is, it doesn’t prevent cancer from existing in the first place but attacks the mechanism by which it does harm.

As such it can turn aggressive later-stage lung cancer into a manageable chronic disease by creating antibodies that do battle with the proteins that cause uncontrolled cell proliferation, researchers say. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are still recommended as a primary means of destroying cancerous tissue, but for those showing no improvement the new vaccine could be a literal lifesaver.
The vaccine has already been tested in 1,000 patients in Cuba and is being distributed at hospitals there free of charge. That’s a big deal for a country where smoking is part of the national culture and a leading cause of death. If it proves as successful as researchers say it is, it should give those suffering from lung cancer reason to celebrate--just not with a Cohiba.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... er-vaccine

awesome, let's hope this vaccine proves to be successful! smoke as much as you want

Jugoslavija je bleda slika
premrzlega partizana
zato je njeno ljudstvo navajeno trpeti
zato je njeno ljudstvo pripravljeno umreti.

-Via Ofenziva

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Jingle_Bombs

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Soviet cogitations: 5437
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 28 Sep 2009, 00:56
Ideology: Democratic Socialism
Unperson

13 Sep 2011, 15:52

I'm going to wait until either FC or Richto tell us this is legit before I really comment on it I think.

Sounds fishy to me. A cure for cancer? Seriously?

Mabool

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Soviet cogitations: 10005
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 14 Jul 2008, 20:01
Ideology: Trotskyism
Philosophized

13 Sep 2011, 19:22

Uh, no, it's not a cure for cancer, it's a treatment that stops cancer... which is nothing new or extraordinary, I was quite disappointed by the article actually.

"Don't know why i'm still surprised with this shit anyway." - Loz

Fellow Comrade

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Soviet cogitations: 4953
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 13 Feb 2008, 15:25
Ideology: Other Leftist
Politburo

14 Sep 2011, 00:43

Quote:
Uh, no, it's not a cure for cancer, it's a treatment that stops cancer... which is nothing new or extraordinary

Yes, but this is still a good thing. There is never going to be a single magic bullet which cures cancer. This kind of thinking is a pipe dream. As of now, there are treatments or preventions for several types of cancer. This is sounding to me like one more to add to the list.

The awesome thing about Cuba is that the health industry there is likely to seek cures or preventions even if the type of cancer involved is a comparatively rare one. In the US, drug companies will only manufacture treatments if they can make a good enough financial return. So thousands of people can die when a treatment for their condition exists! Just because a bunch of Capitalist pricks don't think they can make enough money out of them!

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Krasniy_Volk

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Soviet cogitations: 1011
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 24 Feb 2004, 06:15
Party Member

28 Nov 2011, 00:35

I find immunotherapy to be a very interesting field
I hadn't heard about attempts to apply it in lung cancer until now, though. We'll see how it fares in trials. Vaccine-based immunotherapy has produced improved outcomes in other cancers in the past, albeit it tends to be insufficient in itself. Still, every bit helps

Fellow Comrade wrote:

Yes, but this is still a good thing. There is never going to be a single magic bullet which cures cancer. This kind of thinking is a pipe dream. As of now, there are treatments or preventions for several types of cancer. This is sounding to me like one more to add to the list.

The awesome thing about Cuba is that the health industry there is likely to seek cures or preventions even if the type of cancer involved is a comparatively rare one. In the US, drug companies will only manufacture treatments if they can make a good enough financial return. So thousands of people can die when a treatment for their condition exists! Just because a bunch of Capitalist pricks don't think they can make enough money out of them!

Some points

- there is such a thing as orphan drug designation, to encourage development of drugs for rare diseases.

- even in a socialist economy, you have a limited budget, and must make choices on what to fund more and what to fund less. Cold Equations gambit, unfortunatedly, but there's no helping this :-(

- to be fair, as far as corporations are concerned, the pharmaceutical complex works better than your average capitalist industry, meaning that they have a strong incentive to invest in R&D, and are actually the sector which invests the highest % of it's revenue in it. This is not to say that they're not a bunch of corporate sobs, but rather, that before making drastic changes to the model, we should have a throughly planned alternative in detail.

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Marshal Konev

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Soviet cogitations: 2880
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 16 Nov 2005, 17:55
Party Bureaucrat

29 Nov 2011, 02:32

Well, actually, I would not give too much credit to the pharmaceutical complex. In the US at least, under the provision of the Bayh-Dole Act, most of the serious investment in R&D is spearheaded by the government, and the pharmaceutical companies only enter the equation at the late stage of development, in areas like drug delivery design and marketing.

"History is a set of lies agreed upon."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

Krasniy_Volk

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Soviet cogitations: 1011
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 24 Feb 2004, 06:15
Party Member

29 Nov 2011, 03:25

*shrug* The way I studied it, it was as I said. I'm not saying that goverment investment in R&D isn't very important as well. I'm not saying that the current model is ideal, or that there are no better alternatives. What I'm saying is that we (rethorically speaking) should be careful with it, and changes should be mulled carefully before being implemented.

I'm reading this at the moment, looking for further insights on the matter. Maybe a new thread would be better, though, as this is fairly off-topic.

Edit: bits:

Quote:
Health-related research receives the second largest
amount of federal support for R&D (behind only
defense-related research). That support has been steadily
growing for several decades. Research spending by
NIH—by far the primary recipient of government fund-
ing for health-related basic research—totaled $5.8 billion
(in 2005 dollars) in 1970, more than doubled to $12.3
billion by 1990, and reached $28.5 billion by 2004 (see
Figure 4-1). In comparison, R&D spending reported by
the members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manu-
facturers of America was just two-thirds the size of NIH’s
spending in 1980. PhRMA’s R&D spending surpassed
NIH’s in 1987 and has remained higher since then,
although both grew at similar rates in the late 1990s and
early 2000s.3

Quote:
That comparison excludes R&D spending abroad by foreign
PhRMA members. Domestic R&D by domestic PhRMA mem-
bers has exceeded NIH outlays since 1991 (by $3 billion to $5 bil-
lion in most years).

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