| ▲ | ALittleLight 13 hours ago |
| That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/news-eve... From what I can tell there are several things like this - that have promising anti cancer effects, that just don't really get that much attention because there's not a patent possible. Really makes me think much less of medical science. Even if you couldn't patent any thing you'd think you could get fame and fortune by devising a useful therapy. |
|
| ▲ | adamredwoods 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| When my wife was alive, some people in her group tried it. There's not much evidence. >> that have promising anti cancer effects I don't know why people gravitate towards the "simple" remedies for cancer, or pose that money making is a barrier for these remedies. Remember, research costs money! DO the funding yourself if you think there's a miracle cure here. (hint: there's not.) |
| |
| ▲ | jdhendrickson 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I am sorry for your loss, you lived through my biggest fear. It must be so frustrating to read this kind of thing over and over. |
|
|
| ▲ | shepherdjerred 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s pretty unlikely that this is true for a few reasons: - Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective - Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish - Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor it’s unlikely for an effective treatment to exist and be ignored by the medical community for decades just because something can’t be patented |
| |
| ▲ | dennis_jeeves2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Very wrong on all 3. It's an extremely naive world view. | | |
| ▲ | shepherdjerred 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | What do you think is correct instead? | | |
| ▲ | dennis_jeeves2 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > - Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective. They will often do what make them the most money. Also remember that is doctor is subject to rules and regulations. He risks loosing his license if he does not toe the line. Your average medical student is about half a million dollars in debt when he/she graduates. > - Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish. Doctors do want the best outcomes for themselves, but if you manged to become a doctor, it means that you have never learned to question authority. Many doctors believe that what they are taught is Gospel. A doctor or a medical student who questions authority, will either not make it through medical college, or will have a license revoked. >- Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor. A patient is generally ridiculed, or ignored by the doctor if he suggests something that he thinks is better. It goes without saying that there are exceptions both among doctors and patients. |
| |
| ▲ | triceratops an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Please explain to us all why glory and survival aren't more effective motivators than the money to be made from patenting something. | | |
| |
| ▲ | DrScientist 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish However often the work required to prove something is effective is beyond a capacity of a single Doctor. Also in terms of wanting the best outcome for themselves - sometimes that involves not putting their career at risk by trying unproven treatments on patients ( you are focussing on the outcome when it works, not the more likely outcome and consequence of it not working ). So sure 'miracle' cures are unlikely to lay undiscovered - but most improvements in medicine are incremental, rather than miraculous. | | |
| ▲ | shepherdjerred 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. But it sounds like the parent said there’s a miracle treatment that the medical community is ignoring for lack of a financial incentive (and they then go on to mention a financial incentive?) |
| |
| ▲ | NotGMan 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >> If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor Hah sure. Try this and tell me how the egomanical "gods in white" react. Go through some stuff the RFK says about vaccines etc... and you'll see that in real life it's the opposite. | | |
| ▲ | shepherdjerred 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m not saying all doctors are perfect or even good, but surely there would be at least some occasions where a patient tries this supposedly very effective treatment, gets better, and the doctor is left curious. | |
| ▲ | wat10000 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The only thing you should take away from the stuff RFK says about vaccines is that RFK is a complete kook. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | Panzer04 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| One must wonder if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say. Rarely are these things straightforward and clear cut. That being said, I recently broke my ankle, and found that the protocols still often include 6 weeks off it, despite modern evidence largely showing zero downsides (and some benefits, especially in terms of early recovery) to weight bearing immediately - Probably costing possibly billions of dollars in lost productivity and unnecessary PT every year. I probably shouldn't get too high on my horse about random unexplored therapies - plenty of things in medicine that are just done some way because that's how it's always been done. |
|
| ▲ | cyberax 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it. Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again. Vitamin C at high doses is cytotoxic, so it works against rapidly dividing cells. Cancer cells also preferentially concentrate vitamin C because they are under oxidative stress. However, just like with most of other generally cytotoxic treatments, cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. And the overall toxicity of vitamin C makes it uninteresting as a treatment. |
| |
|
| ▲ | insane_dreamer 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out. |
|
| ▲ | pjc50 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This dates back to Linus Pauling: https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-r... It seems that once you exceed a certain level the body just dumps it, making megadoses unviable. |
| |
|
| ▲ | ben_w 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| IIRC medical research is really expensive, hence money-seeking is to fund it within capitalism. Also IIRC the rewards are oversized compared to the costs, but that doesn't change that the costs are also huge. Does mean I'm generally in favour of getting every government to quadruple public spending on this though. Whatever the current spend is, we can do more. |
| |
| ▲ | adamredwoods 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Rare diseases fund research through philanthropy. And let's not forget Biden's Cancer Moonshot program! https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/ | |
| ▲ | ALittleLight 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't see how something like high dose vitamin C IV is very expensive. I would assume a handful of oncologists could do the whole thing themselves. We get X patients a year, we randomly suggest the vitamin C IV to half, the half with vitamin C did better or worse by these metrics. Vitamin C is not expensive and they have to collect the outcome data for everyone involved anyway - so where is the expense coming from? If it has benefits then more doctors will start to do it and more data will become available. If not, onto the next thing. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not a physician and not in the medical field, but I would hazard a guess that a lot of the expense comes from just doing the work. What specific doctor will administer the vitamin C and monitor the patients? How do you isolate that the vitamin C dosage increase is effective? Who is going to create the vitamin C in the proper dosages? Who is going to write about it to make sure that it's legally approved? The human body is very sophisticated. The trials have to be done in a scientific way, following the established procedures of ethical medical treatment, peer reviewed, etc. And let's say you start giving vitamin C to some of these patients and they start having bad reactions and it makes their disease worse? Who covers the hospital stay? Who pays for their care? Just looking at a few things there I'm guessing that's a few million dollars at the very least.. and even so you have to look at opportunity cost. Is this the best and most promising path of research for the physicians and researchers? Are there more promising compounds? Etc. | |
| ▲ | cen4 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It happens already. You just have to find the docs who do it. Which usually means attending conferences which focus on specific diseases. | | |
| ▲ | andy_ppp 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | You mean the sort of conferences that attract charlatans and conspiracy theorists? |
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | alphan0n 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well. https://xkcd.com/1217/ |
|
| ▲ | dennis_jeeves2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| >That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it, and I think had published a book on it. You should be able to check the Linus Pauling Institute and find literature on it. I probably did it over a decade back. Predictably he was ridiculed (IMO wrongfully) for it by people who did a very shoddy job of looking into the nuances. The last I checked in the US the Riordan clinic offers Vit C for Cancer. There are probably several other practitioners who will not publicize that they treat patients for cancer (and several other chronic conditions) for obvious reasons. |
