The key word here, though, is “probably.”
Two
years ago,
I blogged
about a
promising
new drug
that held
out hope for
a major
breakthrough
in the
treatment of
many forms
of cancer.
It’s called
dichloroacetate,
or DCA for
short.
Two trials
have been
completed
at the
University
of Alberta.
Also,
clinical
trials in
patients
with solid
tumors that
have
failed
standard
therapies,
as well as
in patients
with
malignant
brain tumors
have begun.
Desperate people, however, can not and will not wait for the formal clinical trials to be completed, published, reviewed, and submitted to governmental authorities for approval. They don’t have the luxury of time. And, thanks to the miracle of the internet, people are finding out about DCA, and are self-administering their own treatment programs.
Forums, blogs, and journals have sprung up across the web to bring the needed information to families who are willing to grasp at any available hope. Normally, I would suspect these people would be ripe prey for a con artist, and a healthy skepticism of generally anecdotal evidence would be called for. But, what impresses me the most is that these folks who are blogging their experience are not doing so to make money. They are offering no advertising, nor selling a product. They seem to be motivated only by their desire to share their experience, and to pass along any helpful information that they discover.
I don’t know how long it will take before the FDA will approve DCA for use in cancer treatment. At this point, however, it really doesn’t seem to matter. People are taking the matter into their own hands, and their reported results are truly remarkable.
In this blogger’s humble opinion, this is what the internet is all about.
People-powered news indeed.
Related Links:
This is the original news story from two years ago: “New Scientist”
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
