A Cure For Cancer?

A reader writes:

Is this for real?

I know it is from a student newspaper, but if this is for real… yikes!

HERE’S THE LINK THE READER IS TALKING ABOUT.

And despite the fact that it’s from a student newspaper, it is indeed for real. I did some checking and found other references to the same possible cancer cure, and it’s been picked up by other news outlets.

HERE’S THE ARTICLE ON IT IN NEW SCIENTIST.

And, of course, it’s found its way onto Wikipedia.

HERE’S THEIR ENTRY ON THE REPORTED CURE.

For those who haven’t immediately zoomed off to read the above links, here’s a synopsis of the story: Researchers in Alberta have found a chemical–dichloroacetate or DCA–that appears to kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells unaffected. The links above contain details on precisely how it does this, but there are two striking things about this chemical: (1) It appears to work on a wide variety of different types of cancer cells and (2) it’s cheap–really cheap–because it can’t be patented.

The latter point is a significant part of the story because, since it can’t be patented, it can’t make a boatload of money for some drug company. Consequently, drug companies aren’t interested in doing the research needed to find out if it actually works in humans, what the therapeutic dosages are, what the side-effects are, etc.

This is not a new story in medicine, though it may be the first time some readers have run across this phenomenon. In fact, drug companies spend millions and millions of dollars so that they can produce near-knockoffs of natural or already-known substances so that they can patent the near-knockoff and use it to make money, when the already-existing substance that they’re imitating would treat the same condition just as well or better.

THAT’S ONE OF THE REASONS THAT I OFTEN RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not down on drugs or conventional medicine. I simply recognize the distorting effects that economic interests can have in this area, as in every other. Sometimes a drug is the best way to treat something. Sometimes a nutritional approach is better. It just depends.

Having said that, I am very intrigued by the reports concerning DCA and will be trying to find out more.

The odds are always against something like this panning out, but I would love it if this one did! A cheap and effective cancer cure would be the answer to countless prayers throughout the world.

One note: For people who are suffering from cancer or who know someone who is, there is going to be a huge desire to try personal therapies with DCA even before human clinical trials are done. It’s understandable that people would want to do this. I do not yet know if DCA is commercially and legally available in the US, but even if it is available and legal, caution is warranted here. There are side-effects if DCA is taken in the wrong dosages.

Remember the first law of toxicology: "The poison is in the dose."

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

30 thoughts on “A Cure For Cancer?”

  2. “Consequently, drug companies aren’t interested in doing the research needed to find out if it actually works in humans, what the therapeutic dosages are, what the side-effects are, etc.”
    This has always made me crazy. The same thing happened with Downs syndrome – some of the major effects of Downs can be avoided with supplements, but there’s no $ in it for the pharmaceuticals, and therefore the doctors don’t know about it, and if it really worked the doctor would tell me about it, right? so therefore it isn’t true…

  3. +J.M.J+
    I read an article in the local newspaper a few months ago about a new treatment for cancer in animals. A veternarian injected something extracted from the Bloodroot plant into a dog’s tumor and the tumor died and came off. Some alternative medicine-types promote the use of Bloodroot to treat human cancers, but it’s very controversial.
    I believe the cures for cancer, AIDS, diabetes, autism, etc. are out there. The question is whether they will ever become available to us, the pharmaceutical industry being what it is.
    In Jesu et Maria,

  4. I think there should be a few cigars being smoked at the RJ Reynolds Inc. headquarters over this good news!
    Just think of the advertizing potential!
    For a limited time only! Buy 1 pack of Marboro XTRA-NIC(R) Cigarettes… and recieve 2 FREE!! Marlboro brand, double strength DCA capsules! Hurry while supplies last!

  5. Please check the budget and cancer research projects of the US National Institute of Health, the American Cancer Society, major US universities, and the other over 100 other non-pharmaceutical groups doing cancer research before deciding that potential cancer cures are being overlooked.

  6. A couple of observations:
    Mice and men are not the same thng.
    How is it that cancer remains in the world? The secular press, especially the supermarket tabloids, announce another cure almost weekly ;O) .

  7. Be skeptical of what you read in New Scientist, too. It has its moments, but it is in some ways the tabloid of science magazines. Things like this are easy to blow out of proportion.

  8. I don’t buy the argument that cheap cures are kept from the public because of supposed economic reasons. If there is a demand for a specific product, there will be a supplier even if the margin is slim. Don’t underestimate the economic force coming from the incentive of cost savings.
    I remember when researchers found out that vitamin E could treat severe menstrual pain in certain dosages when taken at certain times. It was all over the news and has benefitted millions of women. Vitamin E is cheap, but that didn’t keep the info from getting out and being implemented.

  9. I would hesitate to put all of the blame on pharm companies.(disclaimer: I work for a large biotech company) Instead I would point out the extreme costs that are imposed on the industry by the FDA. A conservative estimate is that it takes 800 million dollars and 10 years for a promising drug to reach the market due to the complex regulation of the industry. It is hard to think of any type of company that would spend ten years and 800 million dollars for something that they will not recoup no matter how benevolent the cause is.

  10. Can you say, “Quack”, as in Dr. James Q. Akin, master of science fiction and the square dance?

  11. Gee, Jimmy, I bet the infantile remarks of a twit leave you shaken!
    bill912, Second Part-Time Third Sub-Assistant to the Deputy Vice-Master of the Jimmy Akin Personality Cult.

  12. Is there some sort of John Personality Cult that I’m not aware of???
    Most persons on the blog with the handle “John” all end up sounding like infantile twits.

  14. (2) it’s cheap–really cheap–because it can’t be patented.
    There are a number of patents that feature things that are cheap and, furthermore, silly for the most part:
    Retractable Table Top for a Toilet
    Patent#: US 6983493
    Some of the best ideas come when you’re sitting on the john. It’s as if opening one end to eliminate the physical, we make more room on the other side for the metaphysical. One might conclude then that the more time you sit on the toilet, the more inspiration you will receive.
    Rafik Shaumyan has at last conquered the “shortcomings” of standard facilities with his table top: “A device for providing a working surface while a user is seated on a toilet.”
    Shaumyan has thoroughly analyzed society’s plebian use of the crapper and restored its royal dignity. As he puts it:
    “The toilet seat can more rightly be called “the throne” if certain conditions are met above and beyond the simple support and flush provisions. A supply of toilet paper needs to be furnished and at a convenient location or locations, not a marginally accessible location. A supply of reading material from which a selection can be made is usually welcome, and for some an ashtray, cigarettes and matches are needed. Some may prefer to prepare notes such as shopping lists, and these will need pencil and notepaper and backing for the note paper. ”
    All the convenience fit for a king.

  15. Anyday, I’ll take Realist over (most of) the Johns.
    P.S. This statement is not meant to compliment Realist when the times when he speaks against reason.

  18. Hey, John(idm),
    Did Jimmy steal your girlfriend back in high school, or something? Or were you turned down for a job sweeping up at Catholic Answers?
    Your posts are unwaveringly;
    A)Without substance
    B)mean-spirited
    C)personal
    I know of tons of websites that I would dislike visiting. Guess what? I don’t visit them! I don’t get a thrill out of visiting wesites I loathe in order to leave snarky comments so I can feel superior to someone for a few minutes.

  21. In fact, drug companies spend millions and millions of dollars so that they can produce near-knockoffs of natural or already-known substances so that they can patent the near-knockoff and use it to make money, when the already-existing substance that they’re imitating would treat the same condition just as well or better.
    Can anybody say hoodia???

    Struggle over Hoodia patent continues
    Business Day, Johannesburg: Jul 12, 2006, pg. 6
    War rages on for rights to hoodia An indigenous cactus has raised some of the thorniest problems in patent law and rights to traditional knowledge. Reports on wrangles over hoodia gordonii LITTLE did the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) suspect when it patented the appetite suppressant substance, P57, in the 1990s, that it was seizing hold of a prickly problem that would not go away anytime soon.
    The miracle plant that tells your brain you are full was used by San hunters in the deserts of southern Africa. They chewed the pulp of the hoodia gordonii cactus to suppress thirst and hunger.
    (The San have sucked on hoodia for generations, principally to raise their energy and fight hunger during long hunting trips.)
    When the CSIR took possession of this age-old herbal knowledge by gaining a patent on the molecule, P57 the active agent in the plant there was an international outcry. Research of indigenous plants had been going on at the CSIR since the 1960s and its scientists isolated the molecule in 1996. Patent hell broke loose.
    Representatives of San clans demanded restitution of their right to communal intellectual property, supported by a global chorus of well wishers and patent-law critics. It happened while the new democratic SA was on honeymoon. Nothing could have been more embarrassing to the venerable CSIR than the claim that it had ripped off defenceless rural people in an act of biopiracy.

  22. The way we get people to do work is to give them money for it. That is how the economic system works.
    The problem here is that we have a large body of work that would be good for someone to do, but no way to pay them for it.
    What we need is some way to reward the behavior that we want and need.

  24. small correction if no one made it in the combox above. It is not only the dose that makes the poison. It is also the sensitivity of the person.
    For example, there are evidently some Japanese people who can be on the ground drunk from less than a shot of hard alcohol, who can get drunk just from the vapors of alcohol. Similarly there are large Russian men who can consume copious amounts of Vodka without a problem.
    There are similar differences in sensitivity to many chemicals. Even if a drug is safe for 90% of people, what if you happen to be a part of the 10% that its really harmful to. What if it is 99% and 1%, does the risk then become acceptible? At some point it must, if anything is going to be made available. Still, it shows the importance of testing such things first.
    It is (or should be) criminal though to refuse to follow up on such a possiblity because you can’t make money off it.

  25. JR,
    That’s why in the ancient herbalist systems there are certain types of persons and constitutional differences to take into account when giving a dose of medicine.
    Case in point; the much maligned ephedra is an herb in Traditional Chinese Medicine that is considered “hot,” it is usually for the common cold which manifests itself as having chills, runny nose, a slower heart rate, and a white tongue coating.
    Now some supplement company comes along and markets this herb as a weight loss supplement; then some guy takes it before going out in 100+ degree heat in full football gear and everyone wonders why he drops dead.
    The reasoning by the press and the lawmakers is that the herb is bad; no… it’s that the guy had no business taking that herb for what he took it for.
    Drugs, herbs, vitamins, etc… have certain purposes that they need to be taken for and if one breaks the natural rules with them, he/she shouldn’t be suprised when there are disasterous consequences.

  26. the devil knows the cure for cancer because he is an angel. He probably told his followers.
    Some masonic temple probably holds it.
    Who told Spock about cellphones?
    Or Davinci about planes?
    Edison about electricity.
    The infernet?

  27. I like the more economic approach. It would seem that, if DCA really was effective at destroying cancer cells, there would be a dignifigant demand for somebody to begin supplying it. Since it can’t be patented, there would be very little possibility of any sort of market domination by one company, but profits could be made regardless.
    Outside the realm of pharm. companies, it would seem the American Cancer Association and others like it might be interested enought to fund some research.
    P.S. Phillip Morris makes Marlboro cigarettes, not R.J. Reynolds. (Good thing too or PM might not be able to fund my grandpa’s pension plan…)

  28. In fact, drug companies spend millions and millions of dollars so that they can produce near-knockoffs of natural or already-known substances so that they can patent the near-knockoff and use it to make money, when the already-existing substance that they’re imitating would treat the same condition just as well or better.
    CSIR isolated the hunger-suppressing chemical component in Hoodia Gordonii, now known as P57; patented it in 1997.
    CSIR licensed the UK-based firm Phytopharm to further develop and commercialize P57.
    It has been established that P57 works fooling the brain into thinking it is full, even when it is not, therefore curbing the appetite.
    The following year, Phytopharm licensed drug giant Pfizer to develop and market P57.
    Note: Hoodia is a wild plant used by generations of native Bushmen in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert to help them avoid starvation in the dry, hot sands.

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