Cancer cure will be found in the not too distant future.

[PC-Engine]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=571&e=25&u=/nm/20030429/hl_nm/mouse_cancer_dc_1

[nelg]

Sounds like an important discovery. :D But it reminds me of the saying "if you are a mouse and have cancer, we can most likely cure you."

BTW if this a subject that intrest you look up info on Artremisia (wormwood).

[nutball]

How so? :? Breeding in genetic immunity isn't a great deal of use to those of us whose genetic make-up is now read-only.

[RussSchultz]

I don't believe our genes are completely read only.

If what's missing is something in cells that are regularly produced (like white blood cells), gene therapy could help.

[nutball]

Has anybody actually demonstrated that gene therapy works? I know a few people who work in the field of genetics, they're pretty sceptical that it will ever be a practical treatment.

[arjan de lumens]

Gene therapy on white blood cells is something that sounds like it would require extreme care - if you do anything wrong, your patient will now have a load of autoimmune diseases in addition to the cancer.

[RussSchultz]

Google is your friend. More than anybody would ever really want to know about gene therapy.

http://www.ornl.gov/TechResources/Human_Genome/medicine/genetherapy.html

[nutball]

Hmmm. That link isn't exactly full of good news! Strikes me there are some pretty big hurdles to surmount before gene therapy becomes mainstream.

[MrsSkywalker]

Yeah, but on the flip side, having cancer just 25 years ago was considered pretty much a death sentence...

I personally don't like this idea too much. Too much screwing around with the grand design for my tastes. I'm more interested in the other methods that are being tested (not in US yet...we're WAY too strict about medical testing here!), like the amazing success they have had with the direct application of arsenic to the tumor, and the "cancer vaccines". These will be my options in a decade or two when I develop cancer from having breasts, or not being completely nocturnal, or breathing...you know all those bad habits of mine ;)

[K.I.L.E.R]

You guys are talking about GT like it's a CD writer. :lol:

[MrsSkywalker]

You guys are talking about GT like it's a CD writer.

:) Well, the human body is the most advanced computer in the world, you know...I fear it really is only a matter of time before it does become that simple.

[arjan de lumens]

Hmmm ... the whole human genome (http://genome.ucsc.edu/) is only just too big (~900 MB) to be stored on a standard blank CD, whatever that means.

[RussSchultz]

Zipped or unzipped? Certainly the Genome should compress down well. There's only 5 tokens. ;)

[arjan de lumens]

Zipped. Giving a data rate of ~2 bits per base pair, as expected from standard huffman coding.