MEASLES, CANCER - and natural gas

Park in Greenwich, England

 

Diane Wiese posted a very important article on Facebook last Thursday.  It relates how Mayo Clinic has succeeded in reversing the imminent death of a woman suffering from the blood cancer myeloma – by giving her measles vaccine!  Enough, in one dose, to inoculate ten million people!  However, this isn’t your family doc’s measles vaccine – it has been genetically modified to kill myeloma cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unaffected.  I guess you would call what the Mayo people did a phase 1 clinical trial: “proof of principle”, which translates into showing that the proposed treatment can work.  Note, can work, not will work.  Another woman with the same disease, but situated elsewhere in the body, did not respond.   Apparently there is some hope of using this “viral kamikaze” method on other tumors, including ovarian. A phase 2 trial is planned; this checks things like maximum tolerated dose, serious side effects, etc.  Then comes the ponderous phase 3 trial,involving hundreds to thousands of patients, followed for years.  Given the track record of the NIH, as portrayed in the important book The Truth in Small Doses, we can hope to see something definitive around the year 2030.

Here are some links.  One is a bit tough going.

http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2814%2900368-1/fulltext

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/15/womans-cancer-killed-by-measles-virus-in-unprecedented-trial/

I looked at the Mayo Clinic web site as part of this research and discovered another important – and not entirely unexpected – fact.  Despite what you were taught as a child, farting is good for you..