7 More Cancer Scientists Quit Texas Institute Over Privatization

[tay]

Cancer will never be cured. There's too much money in the medicine.............


AUSTIN, Tex. (AP) — At least seven more scientists have resigned in protest from Texas’ embattled $3 billion cancer-fighting program, claiming that the agency in charge of it is charting a “politically driven” path that puts commercial interests before science.


Commercialization projects focus on turning research into drugs or other products that can be sold rather than financing research itself.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/u...t-texas-cancer-research-institute.html?ref=us

 

[L Gilbert]

Correction......... some cancers have been cured. But I agree. Politics should stay the frack out of science and go play with itself in a corner, preferably out of everyone else's way.

 

[tay]

Correction......... some cancers have been cured. But I agree. Politics should stay the frack out of science and go play with itself in a corner, preferably out of everyone else's way.

Oh? Do tell which ones.

And it's not just 'politics' per se that the scientists are upset with but the tying of the private business community to the tax payers research money with the provisio that they look for drugs to control cancers but not a system that will eliminate cancer(s).

Some call that fascsim........

 

[taxslave]

Big Pharma has only one interest. That is maximum return to shareholders. Producing medicines that maintain patients is much more financially rewarding than curing diseases. A cured patient is a lost customer.

 

[The Old Medic]

Oh yes, GOVERNMENT must finance 100% of everything, and make all medications and treatments discovered available free of charge!

That is the silliest position I can possibly imagine. Governments are not made of money, and they need to bring in revenue in order to FINANCE RESEARCH.

 

[L Gilbert]

Oh? Do tell which ones.

First off, read this; http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/04/24/science-is-sexy-the-cure-for-cancer/
There are hundreds of kinds of cancer. Some are cured by the body itself before the cancer becomes malignant, some are cured after malignancy by a variety of methods including physically removing it through surgery, some by chemo, etc.
You are speaking of a single preventative cure for cancer and that's virtually impossible simply because of the number of cancers and each act on different parts of the body.
A few that can be cured are breast cancer, skin cancer, and bowel cancer. If no-one that got a cancer could be cured, they'd be dead or dying from it. I have friends that are alive and relatively healthy because theirs have been cured. That does not mean that they can't get it again, though. And that's because of the nature of the cancer.

And it's not just 'politics' per se that the scientists are upset with but the tying of the private business community to the tax payers research money with the provisio that they look for drugs to control cancers but not a system that will eliminate cancer(s).

Yeah, there's profiteering taking place. It happens any time that someone can figure out how to make a proit from something. That does not mean that progress cannot be made with or without the profiteering.

Some call that fascsim........

So? I just call it business as usual. It's standard operating procedure for bluddy near anything in life. You want to change it? Then change the entire structure of money and economics.

 

[PoliticalNick]

Oh yes, GOVERNMENT must finance 100% of everything

No, just everything we the citizens determine to be essential services and are willing to pay taxes for.

and make all medications and treatments discovered available free of charge!

The best idea you have ever put forward on CanCon. A civilized society puts the health and education of its citizens in the paramount position.

That is the silliest position I can possibly imagine. Governments are not made of money, and they need to bring in revenue in order to FINANCE RESEARCH.

Governments are supposed to be made of the will of the citizens (stop laughing it's true) we finance the govt to do our biding. Do WE need to force the govt to get its finances in order...hell yeah! Should we force the govt to finance more health research, sure. Should we allow the govt to help big pharma block research and possible cures so they can provide maximum return to the shareholder, NO!

 

[Tonington]

Oh? Do tell which ones.

And it's not just 'politics' per se that the scientists are upset with but the tying of the private business community to the tax payers research money with the provisio that they look for drugs to control cancers but not a system that will eliminate cancer(s).

Some call that fascsim........

You read that article incorrectly if the above is what you think that article says. The scientists are upset with a lack of systematic reviews for large projects, and favoritism, not with commercialized products. You seem to have swallowed that poison pill like so many others that a cancer treatment won't be commercialized because it wouldn't be profitable, and so we only develop products that maintain a patient. That is plain bunk. Cancer treatments are hugely profitable. Cancer is an environmental disease with genetic predisposition factors, in other words there will always be customers. I work in an animal health division of one of the big pharmaceuticals, and we currently have a novel candidate in our development portfolio for dogs that is hoped will lead to a cancer treatment in humans.

As for the center in Texas, commercialization is the goal after all. Research on treatments that yields products that patients can actually use. You can quibble about the profit motive if you like, and actually I think there is a place for government in this role. Dichloroacetate is a fine example. In in-vitro lab experiments have shown this relatively cheap and old compound is effective at treating cancer. But it will never see clinical trials in the current pharmaceutical business models because the drug is old and cannot be patented. So why would a company pay hundreds of millions of dollars on clinical trials if they won't be able to get that investment back? What about other risks, like efficacy that doesn't turn out to be much better than placebo? The number of drug candidates that work in petri dishes dwarf those that actually work in biological systems like patients...

 

[Bar Sinister]

Not all cancer research occurs in the USA or in privately funded facilities. In fact there have been a number of breakthroughs in Canada's publically funded cancer research centres. As for an ultimate cure for cancer I suspect there will be one especially given the many cnacers that were once considered incurable but are now commonly cured.

 

[karrie]

How can you have one cure for that many illnesses?

Cancer is not one disease. My friend suffered cervical cancer. It has a completely different pathology from the melanoma I suffered, which has a completely different pathology from the liver cancer that took my aunty. They are caused by differing environmental factors and viruses...some known, such as cervical cancer and my melanoma, some unclear, like my aunty's liver cancer. They can't all be cured the same way (and by cured, I'm not referring to cutting them out or poisoning the patient).

 

[Tonington]

Yes Karrie, you're correct. In fact there are over a thousand different commercial cell lines out there that represent the majority of the sub-types of cancer. And they have different targets, with different up-regulated and down-regulated genes.

The future of cancer therapies is moving away from those broad approaches like radiation and chemotherapy, which can be very spotty with the hits amongst misses. With the emerging technologies in gene therapies and molecular tools it is likely that more efficacious treatments will be those that are fine tuned to the patient, that is to say based on their own body biochemistry as well as that of the type of cancer they have. The benefit of this is that clinicians will be able to select from therapy regimes that are best suited to the individual- the treatment courses that are optimized for outcome.