| ▲ | estearum 4 days ago |
| Yes there are few that claim 100% efficacy and no side effect at this stage, but there are far, far, far fewer who make it to human availability. I wouldn't describe it working in humans as "a stretch" per se. I'm not identifying a specific reason it shouldn't work in humans. I'm just saying that's true of thousands and thousands of really great looking treatments (per year!) that, nonetheless, end up not working in humans, or not being convincing enough to even warrant putting them in humans once. |
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| ▲ | d--b 4 days ago | parent [-] |
| If it is the case that there are such treatments (easy to produce, 100% efficacy, no side effect) that cure fairly common deadly disease such as colorectal cancer in mice, and that never make it to human trial, there is something seriously broken about medical research... |
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| ▲ | estearum 4 days ago | parent [-] | | No, the issue is that mice are very different from humans. The only thing such a state of affairs clearly indicates is broken is using mice as proto-human test subjects. Which of course, when you state it like that, is obviously suboptimal. But no one knows what to do about it. | | |
| ▲ | gus_massa 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Mice are good because they are super cheap. It's useful as a very early test. They used a shotgun approach, they tested 9 bacterias and 1 of them was suspenseful. At least it was suspenseful for 2 weeks, until the study ended. It's very difficult to extrapolate that to the 5 year survival rate in humans. | | | |
| ▲ | d--b 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, yes, at least that study proved that some bacteria eat cancerous cells in at least one mammal. If that particular bacteria doesn't work in humans it may still trigger a search for a bacteria that does. Still being optimistic about this :) | | |
| ▲ | estearum 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Yep, it's not wasted effort. This is how science works! Lots of dead ends and then suddenly a breakthrough. |
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