Notice the Marxist comment and the conspiracy theorist comment at the bottom...just wow. "OMG teh big pharma did not already discover this 100 years ago!!!"
Posted on 02/02/2007 7:33:20 PM PST by alnick
New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens.
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 also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.
DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Side effects?
Side effects? Not being dead?
Actually -
Dichloroacetate safety (see http://www.stanford.edu/group/hopes/treatmts/ebuffer/j4.html)
There is some concern about the toxicity of dichloroacetate. Accumulations of dichloroacetate in groundwater have been described by some reports as a potential health hazard. However, concern about dichloroacetate toxicity is mainly based on data obtained in rats who were administered dichloroacetate at doses thousands of times higher than those to which humans are usually exposed. In these animals, chronic administration of dichloroacetate was found to cause liver problems and tumors. (Stacpoole, 1998.) In contrast, the dosage given to most humans is much lower than that administered to the rats. In clinical trials where dichloroacetate is used as a medical drug, no major side effects have been reported. Dichloroacetate is currently the most effective treatment for a disease known as congenital lactic acidosis (CLA). People with CLA have defective PDC enzymes and are thus unable to efficiently produce energy. In one study, patients with CLA were treated with 25-50 mg of dichloroacetate per 1 kg of body weight. No major complications were observed in the participants. (Stacpoole, 1997.) However, more research is currently being done to study the possible toxicity of dichlororacetate.
All I know about it is what's in the article, but it does say this: "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 a carcinogen, lol.
bump for later read.
From Wikipedia:
Although dichloroacetate "has actually been used safely in humans for decades" its therapeutic use can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichloroacetic_acid
"....pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines"
Sad, but true.
Notice the Marxist comment and the conspiracy theorist comment at the bottom...just wow. "OMG teh big pharma did not already discover this 100 years ago!!!"
I thought not being dead was the objective, not a side effect.
Interesting that it says TINY doses work. Perhaps that would reduce the side effects. However, the side effects, if self-limiting in duration, are a small price to pay to kill the cancer cells.
I had a couple of doctors read another article about this a couple of weeks ago.
It is not in the human stage yet from what they read, would take lots of time.
They hope it works, and looks interesting to them.
They think it is a time off for public use though.
"Side effects?"
Sleepiness (somnolence)
Dizziness
Dry mouth
Weakness or loss of strength (asthenia)
Raised levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood
Seizures
Persistent painful erection of the penis (priapism)
Raised blood sugar levels (hyperglycaemia)
Explosive diarrhea (caca-poopoo-mia)
Dyslexia
Inflammation of the head (hugeheadism)
Sudden desire to run for political office
Spontaneous Combustion
Death (dropdeadism)
The priapism part doesn't sound too bad...
Especially if that is combined with the "explosive diarrhea".
I got to sit in on a cancer talk last year.... It seems that promising drugs tested recently (ones that shrink tumors) were not shown to benefit patients. People just died with smaller tumors.
Interesting ... one of the tests was to "cure" mice by giving them DCA via their drinking water. Potentially, areas with contaminated groundwater might actually be the anthesis of cancer clusters like the one in Woburn, Mass. featured in that John Travolta movie or, of course, Erin Brockovitch. I wonder if anyone is doing the research to find the cancer voids as well as the clusters.
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