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.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

So when do the human tests begin?

--timball

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers - health - 17 January 2007 - New Scientist

] March in National Colorectal Cancer Month
]
]
] Colorectal cancer, which refers to cancers of the colon
] or rectum, is the second-leading cause of cancer death in
] the United States, but it is highly preventable,
] treatable and often curable. When detected and treated
] early, it has a five-year survival rate of 91%- hence the
] importance of screening.
]
]
] The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recommends screening
] for anyone age 50 or older. Those with a family history
] of colon cancer are encouraged to ask their physicians if
] they should begin screening earlier and to discuss which
] procedures would be most appropriate.

Office of the Attending Physician | February is Heart Month

I post this because it's so frighteningly gross. Please don't look here if you don't like the nasty.

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