Scientists have discovered a sugar compound from deep-sea bacteria that can destroy cancer cells in a dramatic way. This natural substance, produced by microbes living in the ocean, causes cancer cells to undergo a fiery form of cell death, essentially making them self-destruct. In lab tests and in mice with liver cancer, the compound not only stopped tumors from growing, but also activated the immune system to fight back. This finding could pave the way for entirely new cancer treatments based on sugars from marine organisms.
We discover hundreds of new compounds that kill cancer cells every year. Perhaps we should only be posting in uplifting news when new drugs are found effective.
This one seems a bit better than most—in that they’ve tested it on mice and it seems to work—but there’s still a big gap between mice and humans. Plus we don’t entirely understand the mechanism behind it yet.
A mouse model still is really not a stage to post news articles. Only 1 in ~100+ drugs that make it past mouse models eventually get approved. And those are replicated findings. As far as I can tell this headline is an un replicated study.
Journalists need clickbait “cancer cure” hopium. But I don’t think it’s very useful. As a chronically ill person myself I’m sick of people sending me those articles about my illness because they think a cure’s on the horizon when well, it’s really unlikely. Which means every time they see me and I’m not magically cured I have to sit through another “what about that miracle drug” convo. I still hope, but I don’t like the misleading hopium journalism seems to love.
I was wading in here to post exactly that XKCD.
We discover hundreds of new compounds that kill cancer cells every year. Perhaps we should only be posting in uplifting news when new drugs are found effective.
This one seems a bit better than most—in that they’ve tested it on mice and it seems to work—but there’s still a big gap between mice and humans. Plus we don’t entirely understand the mechanism behind it yet.
A mouse model still is really not a stage to post news articles. Only 1 in ~100+ drugs that make it past mouse models eventually get approved. And those are replicated findings. As far as I can tell this headline is an un replicated study.
Journalists need clickbait “cancer cure” hopium. But I don’t think it’s very useful. As a chronically ill person myself I’m sick of people sending me those articles about my illness because they think a cure’s on the horizon when well, it’s really unlikely. Which means every time they see me and I’m not magically cured I have to sit through another “what about that miracle drug” convo. I still hope, but I don’t like the misleading hopium journalism seems to love.