mmmmm shower scene

Absolutely. I love the way she nibbles at his neck.

Still beautiful now 🙂

It throws our previous “mutation” theory of carcinogenesis on it’s head, as an undergrad I designed my own little project to investigate this (much to the amusement of my old school cancer biology professor) before it was cool

cancers are not just caused by mutated genes, but also caused epigenetic changes though the change in methylation state of promoters plus histone & chromatin changes.

cancers are not just caused by mutated genes, but also caused epigenetic changes though the change in methylation state of promoters plus histone & chromatin changes.

I’m sorry, but what has this got to do with Jenny in the shower?

cancers are not just caused by mutated genes, but also caused epigenetic changes though the change in methylation state of promoters plus histone & chromatin changes.

That’s maybe a little to much random detail for this thread.

Tom_W1987 – Member

That’s maybe a little to much random detail for this thread.

its not random detail

its not random detail

For laymen, it is. The standard Knudson hypothesis is nice and easy for non-biologists to get their heads around.

For me and you, epigentics is much more relevant and even then it still makes a lot of Biologists heads implode in on themselves. I guess trying to explain chromosomal instability and it’s role in cancer is a bit beyond a lot of laymen as well though.

and the paper you linked to was lol

and the paper you linked to was lol

😛

That’s the thing with cancer though, people expect definite answers to causes and definitive cures. People quite often ask why we haven’t found a cure yet, I was simply trying to point out there may never be a cure. It’s hard explaining the latest breakthroughs to the public as there are no easy answers and I also can’t be bothered to try . If people are interested they can read that paper and have a rummage around wiki.

I’m glad it’s not my job to interact with the public in regards to scientific matters.

I’ve had it twice in my 20’s, don’t see what all the fuss is about (joke).

Statistically it means a few of you should be safer thanks to me

Please go an buy a copy of Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science to see how the media and vested interest groups manipulate statistics and science. Alternatively go to to wikipedia and look up epidemiological transition to better understand this effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiological_transition

Please go an buy a copy of Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science to see how the media and vested interest groups manipulate statistics and science. Alternatively go to to wikipedia and look up epidemiological transition to better understand this effect

What does Ben Goldacres “Bad Science” have to do with this discussion?

Please, please don’t tell me you think that cancer could be cured but that there’s some global conspiracy meaning that vested interests stop that from happening.

Oh god no! Just meant that we shouldn’t take media headlines at face value, we should actually look at what is being reported and try to understand the data. Headlines such as this will worry many people and allow vested interest groups (usually a financial interest) to exploit this worry, whereas an appreciation of the data (in this case the effect of an ageing population on geriatric disease incidence) can allow people to make informed decisions based upon more than a soundbite

Nearly everyone i know who has died in the last 10 years, its either been cancer or a heart attack, some where patients recieving treatment and some just died after being diagnosed but to far gone for any meaningful intervention, if in doubt get checked out.

As lots of people have said here 50% of us will get cancer is mainly due to the longer lifespans we now have. Plus it depends on your definition of cancer and finally we are getting better at detecting cancer via molecular diagnostics. Not really “news” but it will fill CRUKs coffers a bit more.

I am struggling a bit with the statistics. If the main cause of the increased incidence of cancer is higher life expectancy, then surely the 50% figure is constantly changing and therefore not relevant to anybody.

Typically, the life expectancy of someone who is 60 now, is different to someone who is 30 now, and is different again to a newborn now.

Its not all down to increased risk, much of it is increased detection and early detection, before other illnesses take hold. These factors play a big part in the 50% number.

Prostate cancer is misleading 70-80% of men have it at autopsy but most are asymptomatic

The most routine test is for prostate specific antigen, and its a very poor test for malignant cancer

Its routinely used in american health insurance required check-ups, and throws up loads of false positives, which are immediately jumped on by the healthcare providers and insurance companies then put up premiums making people uninsurable , problem is that the prostate cancer would’ve never become malignant in most cases so people go thru completely unecssary and very unpleasant cancer therapy

Cue rent a hack Daniel Hannan and prize muppet Glen Beck, using prostate cancer in the Obamacare debate as an example of terrible survival rates comparing US to the UK completely ignoring the huge difference in the numbers diagnosed

Anyway cancer is really over 200 diseases with different prognoses and treatments its a freaking nightmare!

Do you lot reckon the pharmaceutical companies really want to find a cure or find a remedy that keeps cancer symptoms at bay so they can keep selling the remedy. loads of money in that. actually for all illnesses

What Fallsoffalot? As said above cancer is a group of diseases that are not all the same. I’d say if they found something that cured one and kept the symptoms at bay then they would release both. As much as it’s popular to brand big pharma as bastards of the highest order they are also human beings and a lot of good scientists in there.

hmmm Yes your probably right its just a thought i had years ago.
but cant help thinking how much money is involved

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/gag-money-rejected/200366.article

I work in publicly funded cancer research and am certain big pharma is not sitting on a cure for ‘cancer’, if only because they are greedy gits and if they could announce a cure they would, if only to watch their share price go thru the roof !

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/gag-money-rejected/200366.article

That kind of stuff doesn’t happen often, as invariably word gets out and universities suffer damage to their reputations. Also, academic scientists have their own reputations on the line so are unlikely to want to get involved with academic fraud. It can and does ruin careers.

hmmm Yes your probably right its just a thought i had years ago.
but cant help thinking how much money is involved

Okay, for the laymen here, there will never be a magic bullet cure for cancer no matter how much or how little money is involved. Cancer is to complicated and is effectively always evolving. Maybe in 50 years, nano-engineering or surgical advances will take off in such a way that we could eradicate 100 percent of cancer cells from the body…. until that time, there’s never going to be a pharmacological treatment that cures cancer.

kimbers – my cynical nature tells me that why push one drug as a cure when you can push 10 cos, you know, you need this one to mask the side effects of that one and repeat.

/cynicism off.

my cynical nature tells me that why push one drug as a cure when you can push 10 cos, you know, you need this one to mask the side effects of that one and repeat.

Do you know how long it takes and how much it costs to get a drug to market? Working ones won’t get put back in the box.

kimbers – my cynical nature tells me that why push one drug as a cure when you can push 10 cos, you know, you need this one to mask the side effects of that one and repeat

I’m a bit tipsy but…

Because every cancer is markedly different and constantly evolves, rendering one drug that was once exceptionally effective totally ineffective 6 months later. Not to mention that any treatment given quite often just ends up selecting the few drug resistant cancer cells found in the tumor for further expansion, whilst killing off the rest, even before the cancer cells genome rearranges itself.

As I’ve said, academics who aren’t involved with big money could tell you that there is currently no hope for a magic bullet. You could throw the entire budget of the US military at cancer research and you wouldn’t walk away with a cure.

Any company that produces some amazeballs treatment for most types of cancer, would find themselves with a monopoly overnight and would be able to eclipse just about every other company on the planet in terms of revenue.

CG your cynical nature is in overdrive there !

Drug companies certainly have been guilty of putting profit before ethics, sadly governments aren’t willing to invest the kind of money it takes to develop drugs themselves

Fortunately there are 1000s of dedicated researchers and medics and even pharma employees ! who spend their careers studying cancer and improving treatments
As evidenced by the huge leaps in survival rates for some cancers in the last few decades
Often the pay is crap, the hours are long and the work is stressful, if you aren’t engaged and passionate about research you don’t do the job

Often the pay is crap

+1

Ok lets pretend pharma’s have a magic bullit and the 50% of us who gets cancer gets one dose of the magic bullit. cured.
And lets pretend pharma’s have a remedy that keeps symtoms at bay and the 50% need to take the remedy for the rest of their life.
the extra money would be mind boggling.
Not saying this happens just what could happen when the suits get involved 😈

shall we pretend there are fairies and dragons too?

The “Lets Pretend” scenario is so far from reality that it’s not relevant.

I thought the story was something like the drugs are there and waiting to be produced, they talk of the costs and the big players end up saying ‘thanks, but no thanks’..leaving all the research and development a big waste of time and money, so they’ve given up as they spend so much money only for this to happen over and over? Then there’s the other stories of drugs (cures?) needed ready and waiting but there’s far too much money to lose in all the current drugs that are being used for treatment, so it’s not likely to go ahead. Or have I been reading too much crap from mirror.co.uk? :O)

Possibly any reading of the mirror is a mistake but I’m not quite sure what you mean.
Is it that you think there are working drugs ready to be made but not being made? Or stuff that has got to a point and development has stopped for a number of reasons, cost may only be a very small part of it.

The big issue is all of this costs money, things hit the market and the drug company has a limited time when they have the exclusive license to that drug. After that anyone can make it by following a recipe. The cost of the drug development needs to be recouped from the period that it is commercially viable plus the costs of all the ones that didn’t work. Problem then comes that health providers won’t pay the higher prices for the drugs, due to benefit and budget reasons. They also know that the drug will be available in a generic form down the line.

So it comes down to who should fund it all after that, the risk taker gets the reward, if there is no reward then the risk is too great.

Martinxyz, if you can provide a single reliable source for any of that guff, I’ll eat a whole bottle of Viagra 😉

odd how there are 3 pages of posts on here yet only a couple of cancer ‘victims and survivors’ have posted up. You would think they would have the better insight into the reality of all of this, having first hand experience…

Maybe because this is really a discussion about statistics, rather than an “how I live with cancer thread” . That would need it’s own thread, then I could add something useful 🙂

Do you lot reckon the pharmaceutical companies really want to find a cure

No. Because the individuals themselves, the big bosses, and their family and loved ones may also get cancer. So they would also want to be cured.

crewlie – Member
Maybe because this is really a discussion about statistics, rather than an “how I live with cancer thread” . That would need it’s own thread, then I could add something useful 😀

😛