h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's a story from today's Washington Post. It's very long, so I'm posting just the top few paragraphs. You can find more at wwww.washingtonpost.com if you're interested.

"A research team at the National Cancer Institute has successfully treated several cases of advanced and usually fatal cancer with immune system cells taken from the patients, grown in large numbers and given back to them.

"The treatment is one of many strategies scientists are using to try to harness the human immune system's capacity to produce rare cells capable of hunting down and attacking tumors.

"The research also marks the first success in a decade for a once-highly touted strategy conceived by Steven A. Rosenberg, a cancer institute surgeon and one of the founders of "immunotherapy." His experiments in the late 1980s, first with mice and then with humans, were viewed by some as the path to the elusive "cure for cancer." Their clinical results, however, were disappointing in almost all cases.

"The new strategy worked only half the time and has been tried only in the skin cancer known as melanoma, but the results suggest it may be applicable to other malignancies."