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

Wonder why this hasn't been big news:

'January 16, 2007 - Edmonton - DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer.

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast and brain tumors.'

http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=8153


Oh, here's why it's not big news:

'However, as DCA is not patented, Michelakis is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test DCA in clinical trials.'


Great. A cheap and effective treatment for cancer that may go unstudied and unused because no big pharmaceutical company can make a mint off it.

Yeah. I wonder that, too. I posted this a while back, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=502685&skip=1167&show=1 --- no one seemed interested

Maybe it'll be easy to make at home (and safer than crystal meth).

There was a movie making the rounds of small art-film establishments (liberal hotbeds) some years ago, about an amazing cure for epilepsy. Works for kids, results seem to be permanent. Been around since at least as far back as the 1800s. The movie was produced by a Hollywood bigshot (I think it was Francis Ford Coppola) who treated his kid with it; it's completely dietary, so no advertising or other convenient way for doctors to hear about it. Involves feeding the kid a very high-fat diet (peanut butter sandwiches with bacon, and the like). Obviously, it doesn't work quite the same way for adults--despite the super-sized Americans that have bravely tried it. (Hmmmmmm...)

Surely someone could persue it? Surely? If not, this world is a sicker place than I thought.

TRiG.

That'd be the Ketogenic diet (don't know what the movie is, but I can't help thinking of Lorenzo's Oil): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

It has very variable success and it is very difficult to implement.

The world _is_ a sicker place than you thought.



And please stop calling me Shirley


Ba-dum