We Fought Cancer…And Cancer Won. | Print Article | Newsweek.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 11 Sep 08
  

  this is really excellent - (1) limitation of animal studies (2) structure of funding discourages great leaps (3) for-profit structure undermines research into prevention. Note opportunity for collaborative research, use of complexity paradigm

  health healthcare laboratory cancer immuno genetics brain_tumor disease politics

  • the huge majority of funding for cancer has gone into the search for ways to eradicate malignant cells rather than to keep normal cells from becoming malignant in the first place. "The funding people are interested in the magic-bullet research because that's what brings the dollars in,"
  • Another missed opportunity involves the environment around a tumor cell. "We used to focus on cancer cells with the idea that they were master of their own destiny," says MIT's Weinberg. "By studying genes inside the cell we thought we could understand what was going on. But now [we know] that many tumors are governed by the signals they receive from outside"—from inflammatory cells, cells of the immune system and others. "It's the interaction of signals inside and outside the tumor that creates aggressiveness and metastasis."
  • third big missed opportunity, the use of natural compounds and nondrug interventions such as stress reduction to keep the microenvironment inhospitable to cancer.

  1 more annotation...

• 10 Sep 08
  

  Kytelae

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