Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers ...

[muckshifter]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/cancer/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html

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.

It's an older drug used for other maladies, it's already off patent and sold as a generic. It can never be patented again. And there lays the rub, no profit in it for drug companies.

 

[floppybootstomp]

I think that story is irresponsible, it gives out false hope to cancer sufferers.

I don't know about other countries but here in the UK I get the impression that our Health Service only want to cure you, they're not worried about profit or sucking up to drug companies.

And I speak, of course, from first hand experience.

There are a lot of good medical folk out there, people who are good hearted, the only thing holding them back is possibly the Goverment imposing budgets on the NHS.

That Canadian University will carry on their research, despite that story which smacks of The Sun/National Enquirer tabloid nastiness.

 

[cirianz]

Dunno though... Although aimed more at the general market, New scientist is usually a pretty reliable magazine, unless they've changed alot from when I used to read them (been a few years I'm afraid). Might be worth some backup searching to check it out.

 

[Adywebb]

I've read about this somewhere else a short while ago - and there was a lot of critism of the research and the projected benefit.


Although it may not necessarily be profitable for the big drug companies to market it if it really is a cancer cure all, I think the political/medical pressure to make it available to sufferers would be too overwhelming to ignore.

And if its that cheap to make and it works, I'm sure a non-profit organisation/smaller company/charity or even a countries national health service would have researched/marketed it by now....