"New" Cancer breakthrough

[Jammrock]

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/02/24/cancer.virus.ap/index.html

Uh ... Royal Rife figured this out in the 1930's. It's about time someone in the scietific community followed up on his research

Anyway, very exciting news regarding cancer. "New research" (meaning they don't consider Royal Rife's research valid) has found links between a virus and at least prostate, liver, and cervical cancer, meaning an infectious desaese. The theory is, kill the virus, kill the cancer. Hopefully this means kemo goes away for the virus related cancers.

For those not familiar with the saga of Royal Rife: http://www.rife.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rife. Essentially Rife claimed to have discovered tha cancer, as well as many other inflictions, were viral related. His "fix" for curing cancer was to use resonant harmonics that would cause the viral cells to explode or die. Despite some "reported success" in the 1930's with the "Rife Beam Ray Machine" (his frequency generator that allegedly cured many forms of cancer), the AMA declared him a loony and raided his labs, taking and/or destroying most of his research and equipment.

Jammrock

[Byock]

I hope this leads to something major.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Finding viruses in a cancerous prostate has nothing to do with the crap that loon spewed.

As for the viruses in the cancerous prostate... cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Prove the virus actually caused the cancer first before jumping to conclusions.

[Jammrock]

Finding viruses in a cancerous prostate has nothing to do with the crap that loon spewed.

As for the viruses in the cancerous prostate... cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Prove the virus actually caused the cancer first before jumping to conclusions.

Uh, the whole point of the article was that they think there could be a link between viruses and cancer. Something that was though up of a long time ago. It's interesting whether you think Rife was a loon or not.

[Wombat]

As for the viruses in the cancerous prostate... cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Prove the virus actually caused the cancer first before jumping to conclusions.

Well, they already did that with HPV and cervical cancer.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Sorry, it was just the Royal Rife thing that annoyed me.

[Brian Ellis]

Having been DXed with prostate cancer 10 years ago, I take it with a certain degree of scepticism, without ruling it out, either. I am more of the opinion that PC is mainly of genetic predisposition. Of course, this predisposition may mean it is more prone to attack by a virus.

It would seem strange to me that glandular cancers are among the most widely studied with literally hundreds of thousands of biopsies done annually and that a common viral cause has not been found many years ago.

Anyway, Jammrock, the adenoma of the prostate, representing >99% of cases, is never treated by chemotherapy, not even in conjunction with other methods. The recognised treatments are:
- radical ablation with surrounding lymph nodes
- "saving" surgery (more dangerous than radical, but preserves the ability of erection in some cases)
- radiotherapy (which I had done)
- brachytherapy
- cryotherapy
The choice of therapy depends on the degree of advancement of the disease. The "saving" surgery and the last two are of use only if it is virtually guaranteed that no metastasis has occurred, i.e., the tumour is 100% contained within the gland (low Gleason number). I have a friend in Switzerland who had a PSA test done on my instigation. As this indicated positive, a biopsy confirmed it. The oncologist recommended radical surgery, in his case, but he opted for the "saving" ablation. Three years later, his routine PSA tests started to rise again and he had radiotherapy which seems to have controlled his dragon.

When PC metastasises, it ends up inevitably in a long and painful outcome (in the bones) and death is a relief. If, for this reason alone, every man >40 had annual PSA checks (blood sample) and tracked the values with time, over 98% of this painful prognosis could be avoided. PSA is not 100% infallible: there are very few false negatives (<0.5%) but quite a number of false positives, possibly 20%, due mainly to sexual activity in the 48 h before the test, benign bladder infections, mechanical pressure (long distance driving, bicycling, work-outs, anal sex etc.) and other causes. For this reason, if the test proves positive, many other tests are done before resorting to a biopsy. This could save tens-of-thousands of lives and much misery per year.

[Jammrock]

Sorry, it was just the Royal Rife thing that annoyed me.

hahaha ... I have no opinion on Rife. I found the link interesting is all. So many peopole found him a loon, yet here we are 70-years later and he may have been right on the virus-cancer link. How much so I can't say, as I am neither a doctor nor a geneticist. The only reason I know about Rife is because my Dad researches alternative cancer treatments in his spare time for people who have "been sent home to die."

Anyway, if you read the article they say that the people affected by the virus-cancer link are people that are genetically predispositioned to the cancer in the first place. So something along the line of genetic weakness to the virus where cancerous cells are the byproduct.

Jammrock