[HN Gopher] Immune discovery 'may treat all cancer'
___________________________________________________________________
Immune discovery 'may treat all cancer'
Author : sjcsjc
Score : 331 points
Date : 2020-01-20 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Original article -
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-019-0578-8
|
| Very interesting finding indeed, these T cells seem to (not fully
| confirmed) target cells with abnormal mrtabolism, which is one of
| the hallmarks of cancer in general (most cancers at least).
|
| This solves one of the biggest problems with immunotherapy, which
| is that if a cancer is not different from regular tissue in any
| fundamental way that the immune system cannot recognize, then it
| can't fight it. This is why melanoma is the poster child of
| immunotherapies (skin cells get mutated a ton due to UV so skin
| cancer has a lot of mutations to differentiate it by). If this
| cell stands further scrutiny, it could potentially be a very
| general therapy option indeed.
|
| Potential caveat is that cancers typically find a way to generate
| resistance, and markers of abnormal metabolism (at least as
| detected by this MR1 receptor) night be easy to suppress, in
| which case this might just become one in a line of multiple
| treatments. That might still be good enough though.
| mabbo wrote:
| > cancers typically find a way to generate resistance
|
| Resistance is a neat thing.
|
| I remember (and I'm sure someone will reply with a link to it,
| since I can't find it) reading a story about a fellow with a
| very seriously antibiotic resistant bacteria infecting his
| chest. It resisted everything they had. Researchers found a
| phage that would attack that specific bacteria- but alas, the
| bacteria became resistant to the phage as well!
|
| Fortunately, the bacteria had limited dimensions in which to
| change. The changes needed to become resistant to the phage
| made it no longer resistant to at least one of the antibiotics.
| It could not have its cake and eat it to. With both attacks
| against the bacteria ongoing, it was defeated.
|
| What I'm implying with all this is that yes, the cancer may
| become resistant to this therapy in question but in doing so it
| may be forced to become less dangerous, or less resistant to
| other forms of attack. It does not change merely from "not
| resistant" to "resistant" but from "form A, which is not
| resistant" to "form B, which is resistant", and "form B" may
| have a lot of other consequences.
| yread wrote:
| Stuff like this gets used in cancer treatments, too, with
| combination therapies [1].
|
| Even more interesting are drug holidays: cancer becomes
| resistant to drug A by evolving a new clone that uses some
| other metabolic pathway unaffected by the drug but is less
| efficient. Stop drug A, the first more efficient clone takes
| over again. Give drug A again and there is no resistance for
| a while.
|
| [1] https://www.oncode.nl/news/one-two-punchmethod-published-
| in-...
| himinlomax wrote:
| > which is one of the hallmarks of cancer in general (most
| cancers at least)
|
| It may well be the definition factor, at least some people
| think so: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3941741/
|
| If I remember their argument correctly, cells that "only"
| reproduce anarchically present little danger (benign tumor) if
| they don't also do so at an abnormally fast rate / metabolism.
| rsync wrote:
| "If I remember their argument correctly, cells that "only"
| reproduce anarchically present little danger (benign tumor)
| if they don't also do so at an abnormally fast rate /
| metabolism."
|
| Forgive this (very tortured) analogy, but I think there is a
| lesson here for would-be extropians who think society will
| simply tolerate a few vampires here and there.
|
| Specifically: they'd better be living lives of quiet,
| impoverished contemplation ...
| tialaramex wrote:
| Most cells stay in the same place, die when told to and don't
| make more copies. Necessarily some of your cells don't obey
| one or more of these rules (you wouldn't last long if your
| blood cells weren't endlessly copied for example or if they
| stayed in one place). But if all three rules get broken
| you've got cancer.
|
| The cancer I had when I was young, Hodgkin Lymphoma, is one
| extra rule broken because the lymphatic cells already don't
| stay in one place and makes extra copies of themselves -
| which is why it relatively often occurs in young people. One
| copying error and the "Die when told to" feature breaks in
| the new copies and now you've got cancer.
| marta_morena wrote:
| Sorry but this is just false. Everyone has "cancer" all the
| time because these "mistakes" happen all the time. The
| reason why someone gets the medical condition, "cancer", is
| because for some reason, the immune system stops cleaning
| up these rouge cells. That could be a huge infection or
| injury, general decay of your body, etc, causing a cancer
| clump to form. Once cancer reaches a certain size, it will
| develop mechanism, like acidity, that will inhibit immune
| response regardless of whether the immune system would now
| classify the cancer as a threat. In any event, cancer is a
| very complicated condition, with many different causes.
| It's unlikely there will be a one-size-fits-all solution.
| aazaa wrote:
| > The findings, published in Nature Immunology, have not been
| tested in patients, but the researchers say they have "enormous
| potential".
|
| then later:
|
| > However, the research has been tested only in animals and on
| cells in the laboratory, and more safety checks would be needed
| before human trials could start.
|
| The abstract for the original article notes:
|
| > ... An MR1-restricted T cell clone mediated in vivo regression
| of leukemia and conferred enhanced survival of NSG mice. TCR
| transfer to T cells of patients enabled killing of autologous and
| nonautologous melanoma. ...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-019-0578-8
|
| What does that second sentence mean?
| acqq wrote:
| " Melanoma, also known as malignant melanoma, is a type of
| cancer that develops from the pigment-containing cells known as
| melanocytes.[1]" (from Wikipedia)
|
| "autologous - adjective - (of cells or tissues) obtained from
| the same individual."
| aaavl2821 wrote:
| this describes a t cell receptor that recognized and killed cells
| from several cancers while sparing healthy cells
|
| theoretically this could may made into a therapy by taking t
| cells from patients, modifying their DNA to express this
| receptor, and then readministering the modified t cells to
| patients
|
| there are two FDA approved drugs that use this basic approach.
| however, this only works currently in "liquid tumors", not "solid
| tumors" like breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate, etc
|
| This article gives a nice, simple explanation as to why solid
| tumors are more difficult (scroll down to the chart):
| https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-next-frontier-of-...
|
| if this works, then the first challenge listed in the chart would
| be mitigated. however the challenges of a suppressive tumor
| environment and sufficient delivery to tumor cells is still a
| major unsolved challenge
| aduitsis wrote:
| One more good article:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/22/the-promise-an...
|
| and:
|
| https://www.novartis.com/news/media-library/car-t-cell-thera...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _The upgraded cells would be grown in vast quantities in the
| laboratory and then put back into the patient._
|
| What I would like to see is a world in which doctors and
| researchers ask "Why isn't your body already making enough of
| these and what can we do to help it crank them out in sufficient
| quantities?"
| Nitramp wrote:
| My understanding is that cancer kills you late enough in your
| life to has little impact on your ability to reproduce, and
| thus fitness in the evolutionary sense.
|
| https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
|
| These are deaths / 100'000 people. It's a bit difficult to
| judge precisely in that resolution, but death by cancer is
| <1%/year before the age of 40. That was roughly the life
| expectancy (assuming you made it past childhood, big if), for
| humans during most of their evolution.
|
| So the likely answer is that it never mattered to our body (or
| survival) to combat cancer effectively.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Or, alternately, we produce plenty of them normally in our
| youth so as to keep cancer from getting a good hold and we
| develop deficiencies that reduce their production as we age
| and this allows cancer to go from whatever stuff causes it
| floating around the body randomly to full-blown tumors and
| the like.
|
| Either way, your framing has zero bearing on my point. If
| they can produce them in quantity in vats for purposes of
| combatting cancer, why not produce them in quantity in the
| body? That's my point.
| firethief wrote:
| Human evolutionary fitness goes beyond individual
| reproductive fitness, for kin-selection sort of reasons.
| That's why e.g. women are generally capable of living well
| beyond menopause
| rosybox wrote:
| I'm happy for all the progress being made with cancer. I wish we
| would also make progress on diseases that attack the nervous
| system for which we seemed to have made next to none.
| Alzheimer's, ALS, MS, Parkinson's, Hunnington's Disease, Kennedy
| Disease, Muscular Dystrophy, small fiber neuropathy, even benign
| issues such as essential tremors have no cure, and some of these
| are painful death sentences.
|
| We seem to know so little about how our bodies work. There are no
| bio markers for some of these or early detection and little idea
| what are the causes or the important details of what's happening
| as the disease progresses.
| randcraw wrote:
| There's huge interest in fighting Alzheimers and other
| neurodegeratives among the pharmas. Alas, there's been nearly
| zero success on that front after more than 20 years of effort.
| Until more cutting edge research can suggest more promising
| approaches, it's unlikely that Big Co R&D spending will climb.
| For now, it's going to be up up to governments to fund the big
| risk takers -- academic labs and their offspring startups.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| As far as I know there's no letup in searching for treatments
| for neurodegenerative diseases. Spending remains high because
| the payoff will be huge.
| btilly wrote:
| _Until more cutting edge research can suggest more promising
| approaches, it 's unlikely that Big Co R&D spending will
| climb._
|
| Alzheimer's is a bad example.
|
| There is in fact evidence of success with treatments that
| treat underlying brain infection rather than preventing
| amyloid beta plaques from forming. 20 years of barking up the
| wrong tree may be at an end soon.
| hobofan wrote:
| At least for Alzheimer's there has been some hopeful advances
| recently[0]. Given the state of the low research funding
| allocated for it (especially compared to the disease's
| prevalence), that's pretty good progress I would say (and
| hopefully enough to spur more investment into solving it).
|
| [0]: https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/2019-year-
| hope-a...
| johncearls wrote:
| You'll be happy to hear that, in recent years, the funding
| for Alzheimer's disease has boomed. My lab does a lot of
| research in AD and it is probably the fastest growing area of
| funding by NIH, from 600 million in 2015 to 2 billion this
| year[0]. Also, note Aging is another real growth area and a
| lot of Aging programs have AD/Dementia as a sub-focus. [0]:
| https://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx.
|
| [Edit] from 1B to 4B if you count subcategories. Expect good
| things in the future.
| aaomidi wrote:
| The progress of these are independent from each other.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Not totally. Those conditions have money and people working
| on them that could be put to work on cancer and heart
| disease.
| slimed wrote:
| Unless society is willing to allocate a larger percentage of
| GDP towards medical research it really is zero-sum which
| diseases get funding and which do not.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| As a matter of public health, we should really be focusing the
| vast majority of our efforts on cancer and cardiovascular
| disease. Odds are that most people will end up dying of one or
| the other.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Mental health [1] should be on that list. The amount of
| suffering as well as economic losses from mental health
| issues are overwhelming.
|
| [1] Ideally we should work towards broader / more fundamental
| goals such as "well-being" and "meaning", but that is even
| more difficult.
| gfodor wrote:
| I hold out a lot of hope that the resurgence in psychedelic
| research may lead us out of a large part of our mental
| health crisis.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Psychology research is certainly important, but not in the
| same way as cancer research.
|
| For mental health, what's primarily needed is more access
| to therapy.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| I disagree that simply access to therapy solves the
| problem. I don't think we have a good understanding of
| the many causes and factors that affect the wide variety
| of mental health issues people face.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| First, mental health issues account for a huge amount of
| suffering and societal expense.
|
| Also, this is a commonly misunderstood issue. We are
| increasingly finding that "psychological" issues have
| strong links to physiological issues. Here is one example
| (of many):
|
| https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas/index
| .sh...
|
| Autoimmune disorders can lead to a huge variety of
| neurological/psychological issues. All work on better
| understanding of the immune system is going to help many
| overlapping disorders.
|
| What have previously been seen as "psychological" issues
| are, for these disorders, only marginally improved by
| therapy. Therapy can help someone cope, but root causes
| might be based on immune system issues.
|
| I could of course be wrong, but my own unfounded
| suspicion is that in a few years we will find that a lot
| of current mental health therapy was rather stone age.
| Much may be replaced by more fundamental treatments to
| eliminate the source of basal ganglia (or other
| structures) inflammation that led to the psychological
| disorder.
| DanBC wrote:
| We need better, safer, anti-psychotic medication.
|
| We need better, more effective, treatment for entrenched
| eating disorder.
|
| We need better treatments for treatment-resistant
| depression or anxiety disorders.
| penagwin wrote:
| This.
|
| Currently most mental health medicine is like throwing
| darts in the dark. We clearly don't actually understand
| why some medications work for some people but not others.
| If you go through the medicine path then I can only wish
| you the best of luck - finding the right medicine is life
| changing but it's a long arduous struggle to find it
| currently.
|
| Not to mention the side effects...
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| > We clearly don't actually understand why some
| medications work for some people but not others.
|
| There are plenty of psychoactive drugs where we have no
| understanding of why they work _at all_. Lithium is one
| of the oldest, most successful, and best known
| medications for bipolar disorder, major depression, and
| schizophrenia, and we have _no idea_ which of the many
| effects it has on the body actually contribute to
| stabilizing mood.
| brokensegue wrote:
| citation on that? my understanding is that therapy is our
| best option but that's it's unreliable and about as good
| as our drugs.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I think the rates of depression and anxiety are
| indicative of a problem, and the answer isn't just to
| throw resources at it.
| DanBC wrote:
| Yes. Mental disorders account for many years lost to
| disability.
| https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/disability/us-
| lea...
| [deleted]
| dehrmann wrote:
| Sort of, but not smoking, diet, and exercise get you pretty
| far on cardiovascular disease.
| Silhouette wrote:
| And cancer for that matter.
|
| But from a brutally pragmatic point of view, the point
| holds.
| arcticfox wrote:
| Does diet and exercise really get you that far against
| cancer though? My sense is that it helps but only a
| fraction of the amount that it does against
| cardiovascular disease, is that right?
| quindecagon wrote:
| > Overweight and obesity are associated with at least 13
| different types of cancer.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/obesity-cancer/index.html
| troughway wrote:
| I asked this as well, literally Googling up "Does
| exercise prevent cancer", and what I found isn't all that
| great:
|
| https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
| prevention/risk/o...
|
| >Nearly all of the evidence linking physical activity to
| cancer risk comes from observational studies, in which
| individuals report on their physical activity and are
| followed for years for diagnoses of cancer. Data from
| observational studies can give researchers clues about
| the relationship between physical activity and cancer
| risk, but such studies cannot definitively establish that
| being physically inactive causes cancer (or that being
| physically active protects against cancer). That is
| because people who are not physically active may differ
| from active people in ways other than their level of
| physical activity. These other differences, rather than
| the differences in physical activity, could explain their
| different cancer risk. For example, if someone does not
| feel well, they may not exercise much, and sometimes
| people do not feel well because they have undiagnosed
| cancer.
|
| I would really like to see some proper studies done.
| Unfortunately, seeing friends and otherwise healthy,
| physically active people passing away from cancer at a
| relatively young age does not inspire hope at the moment.
| Silhouette wrote:
| The short answer is yes, they can make a meaningful
| difference to risk, but as ever with cancer, the long
| answer is that there are a lot of risk factors and they
| aren't the same from one type of cancer to another. I'm
| not a medical expert, just someone who's supported cancer
| research for a long time and has a lay person's
| understanding of the issues, so I'll leave it to more
| knowledgeable people to comment any further.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I can imagine that if some highly efficient cancer technique
| pops up, a vast amount of money would be freed to fund other
| fields.
| AWildC182 wrote:
| IIRC we've at least made some progress towards slowing the
| progression of symptoms for some of them. Would be awesome to
| see some huge breakthroughs though.
| alan-crowe wrote:
| Perhaps this discovery could end up going the other way, with
| those newly discovered T-cells being the culprit in auto-immune
| diseases. Boosting their action would be too dangerous to use as
| treatment for cancer, but knowing that they are there may lead to
| new treatments for auto-immune diseases.
|
| And where does this fit into transplant rejection? Perhaps MR-1
| differs enough between people to cause problems. This reads like
| the early days of a discovery that could lead anywhere.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| As someone with Crohn's and who knows people with all sorts of
| similar (maybe?) autoimmune diseases, any nugget of hope for
| something besides immunosuppressant treatment (meaning our
| bodies are always welcoming of other infections/sickness) is
| welcome.
| jonlucc wrote:
| Fortunately, the paper shows that this particular treatment
| doesn't attack normal cells, but it may cause trouble longer
| term (which is one reason additional safety studies are
| required before human trials).
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure there is already an increase in
| autoimmune disorders after current immuno-oncology (IO)
| treatment. Patients should certainly have that information
| before treatment.
| pg_is_a_butt wrote:
| Humanity itself is cancer.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I wonder if this could have anti-aging uses to identify and
| remove cells dealing with metabolic dysregulation.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| One anti-aging speedup would be that long term safety of HGH
| therapy would be much less important if cancer would be easy to
| cure.
|
| Peter Thiel started HGH therapy in 2014 because ,,cancer would
| be cured in 10 years anyways''.
|
| It seems to me like his prediction is coming true (maybe we'll
| need 5 extra years though).
| Vysero wrote:
| Why does more testing need to take place? I would be willing to
| bet the majority of people currently dying of cancer within the
| next month or so would have zero problems testing it for them. So
| much bureaucracy. People need help now.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Vast majority of new cancer treatments do not end up improving
| survival times and generally come with significant, unpleasant
| side effects. Of the small minority that are found to be a net
| benefit, most are just barely worth it: very modest extension
| of life expectancy with sufficient toxicity that many well-
| informed patients will nevertheless decline them.
|
| This is not just chemo either; immunotherapies can be brutal.
| randcraw wrote:
| Like most new cancer therapies, this will surely get
| "expedited" status from the US FDA, which will enable as fast a
| development as imaginable, like FIM (first in man) within the
| year. If it delivers on its promise, it will receive initial
| approval for those with advanced metastases of the initially
| targeted forms of cancer within a year after that.
|
| A major question is the cost of the therapy. If it equals
| CAR-T, which it closely resembles, it will NOT see rapid
| adoption until the price per treatment falls below CAR-T's
| current bill of $500,000 US.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Beating 500k/patient seems like an approachable target. When
| my mom had lung cancer, when it recurred it came so fast
| there was never any time to think about speculative
| treatments. Of course you'd pay anything to save your loved
| one.
| davidchua wrote:
| This sounds very promising and also sounds like this case just a
| couple of days ago where a young boy was removed of cancer cells.
| I'm not sure if it's the same kind of treatment.
|
| https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/oscar-saxelby...
| jjgreen wrote:
| Er, wasn't that the plot of I Am Legend, "... three years later
| ..."
| chefkoch wrote:
| Couldn't one develop BiTEs (Bi-specific T-cell engagers) for this
| receptor? That would be cheaper and off the shelf for every
| patient.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The title says _may_ , but it's a very optimistic title anyway.
| From the article:
|
| > _However, the research has been tested only in animals and on
| cells in the laboratory, and more safety checks would be needed
| before human trials could start._
|
| > _Lucia Mori and Gennaro De Libero, from University of Basel in
| Switzerland, said the research had "great potential" but was at
| too early a stage to say it would work in all cancers._
| OJFord wrote:
| The abstract closes:
|
| > These findings offer opportunities for HLA-independent, pan-
| cancer, pan-population immunotherapies.
|
| So it hasn't come (to the journalists) from nowhere.
| pilif wrote:
| Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/
| ajarmst wrote:
| I thought we learned our lesson about "paradigm-changing"
| scientific results released to the media simultaneous with
| initial publication a while back. The paper was published today,
| and only available behind a pay wall. Yes, this is exciting, but
| what they appear to have is a better way of tagging cancer cells
| so the immune system will attack them. This is one round of
| rodent studies in immunosuppressed mice, for which the abstract
| only claims "enhanced survival". There is no reflection or
| information from anyone who isn't actively on the team. This is a
| press release before a funding cycle, not science. "May treat all
| cancers?" Please.
| headmelted wrote:
| This.
|
| How many times in the last 10 years have we gone bananas on HN
| for an immunotherapy wonder drug just to find it's another
| casualty of the current unable-to-reproduce crisis in current
| science?
|
| Remember when CD47 monoclonal antibodies from the Stanford
| trials were going to save millions of lives? What a time to be
| not yet dead that was.
|
| The poster above is correct. Wanting this to be something
| wonderful doesn't make it so, and anyone familiar with the
| subject matter knows this deserves skepticism. This is getting
| upvoted because it sounds good, not because there's solid
| evidence it has legs.
|
| I'd love for this to become a high efficacy treatment for
| millions of people, but we've had the same thing play out _so
| many times_ now that it's impossible to be excited.
|
| This is what usually happens:
|
| They'll try it in the lab, and it'll kill cancer.
|
| They'll inject it in mice, and it'll kill cancer.
|
| They'll try it on people, and it'll reduce the size of their
| tumors for six-to-eight weeks before they start growing again.
|
| I'll remember to check back in a year to to see if this is even
| still a thing.
|
| * temporarily
| jl2718 wrote:
| What is the theory here with MR1? They say it's a metabolic
| indicator, but it's a MHC. Looks to be involved with B3/NAD. Does
| a cancer cell just run out of NAD so MR1 doesn't get presented?
| jl2718 wrote:
| Side note: I've been self-experimenting with high doses of
| niacinamide, and experiencing some weird side effects, possibly
| immune-related, like angular chelitis. Probably unrelated.
| jfk13 wrote:
| One key quote:
|
| > "At the moment, this is very basic research and not close to
| actual medicines for patients."
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That seems to contradict what the paper's authors have to say
| on the matter:
|
| > Prof Sewell said the 'right people' are now interested in
| developing the potential new therapy and said progress could
| now move 'quite fast'. The team says human trials on terminally
| ill patients could begin as early as November if the new
| treatment passes further laboratory safety testing.
|
| Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2020/01/20/immune-
| cell-k...
|
| Some level of skepticism is certainly warranted, but it's not
| impossible that this is way closer to "actual medicines for
| patients" than you might think.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| At the same time, this could make chemo and radiation therapies
| obsolete long term.
|
| Leaches and amputations without anesthetic were once "state of
| the art", and it feels like that's where we're currently at
| with cancer therapies. CRISPR is knocking on the door of
| amazing potential.
| rzzzt wrote:
| I'm wondering if there's a "Can I use"-kind of summary for
| proposed cancer treatments available somewhere; presenting
| the various methods attempted, which kind they target, do
| they work in vitro, in animal models, are they currently in
| clinical trial, effectiveness results, link to papers, etc.
| crystaldev wrote:
| Can we just get an npm package already?
| ThalesX wrote:
| Ugh... have you stopped following the Javascript
| ecosystem for the last three hours? We use YARN or NPX
| now. /s
| [deleted]
| kasperni wrote:
| Some more details at
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2020/01/20/immune-cell-k...
|
| > The team says human trials on terminally ill patients could
| begin as early as November if the new treatment passes further
| laboratory safety testing.
| cchance wrote:
| This is what I like to hear! People die daily from cancer,
| treatments like this with promise should be an option even if
| it's a long shot, the people are about to die anyway, it can
| only do good, for them or for science.
| [deleted]
| 1shooner wrote:
| I definitely agree making it available is a good thing.
|
| However, I'd take exception to 'it can only do good'. I've
| had a loved one opt for experimental treatment that was
| ineffective, and made the last months of his life more
| painful and separated from his family (treatment was in
| another city). I'm not saying we would choose differently if
| we were faced with it again, but in some respects I wonder if
| it was more a service to our peace of mind at having done all
| we could than it was for his comfort or happiness.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Mind here that it can also be for the _patient 's_ peace of
| mind. My grandfather was faced with a similar dilemna,
| terminally ill from pancreatic cancer, with a long-shot to
| try to cure it. The doctors were wonderfully frank about
| the potential for failure and "time lost"; even still, he
| opted to go down fighting. Alas, his liver wasn't strong
| enough to sustain the treatment, and it just ended up
| killing him faster.
|
| He was a spiritual man and didn't seem regret the decision,
| but his family had a harder time with it. They were arguing
| for something closer to hospice, and wanted to take him
| traveling to enjoy the last months of his life in relative
| peace. In the end, that didn't get to happen.
|
| There will always be a twinge of regret, I think. One can
| always look back and ask, "what if we had done it this
| way?" But it was the way he wanted to go, and I think the
| knowledge that he had tried everything that he could helped
| him to find peace.
| derefr wrote:
| If that treatment didn't exist, your loved one would have
| opted for _some other_ experimental treatment, no? So the
| existence of said treatment didn 't make their life worse
| relative to that particular treatment not existing.
| (Rather, the existence of _a class_ of experimental
| treatments for a particular cancer that maybe don 't work,
| makes life worse for people, but once there's one, there's
| no harm in adding more, only potential benefit in at least
| one of them maybe working.)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| So who has the mutation in their T cells already?
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