The Joyce sisters: Heron Island, 2008
Boy, is this a good one!
Sometimes I almost believe that the NYTimes deserves its reputation
as the best new source in America; even better than the Breitbart News, the Bellingham
Herald, and my personal favorite, The
Onion. The scouting team of Joanne
& Dick Ingwall has just sent me a link to this very useful and informative
article, which I hereby pass on to you:
The gist of this little gem is
this: immunotherapy is close to being a real
breakthrough in cancer treatment, but has some very serious – in fact, potentially fatal
– side issues that require urgent address.
This is illustrated by two cringe-generating case studies, accompanied
by some simple science that we all can assimilate. And as an added treat, there is a diagram
illustrating how immunotherapy works. I must have read about immunotherapy six dozen times, but now I think I understand it, thanks to this illustration.
(Confession:
As a geologist, I thrived on diagrams – maps, etc. I might have trouble with the printed word,
but I got off on pictures. Toward the
end of my career I began to simply scan new publications for useful
pictures. Then I would check to see if I
was cited, and – if so – I would read the thing. That worked because I had graduate students to explain new scientific wrinkles to me.)
So, why should we be surprised that immunotherapy comes with the potential for collateral damage? The body has ways of protecting itself from its own immune system. Immunotherapy subverts that protection, with
any luck only with regard to the targeted cancer cells. However, do it imperfectly and your
implacable T-cells will also devour your liver, your pancreas, your kidneys,
and a whole lot more besides – not that more would be needed. A significant number of people have died as a
result of the side effects of immunotherapy. Much effort is being expended to find ways to deal with this problem, but the end is not yet in sight.
Some of you know that I am an Egyptophile – I am fascinated by
everything about ancient Egypt. This
blog brings into focus the myth of Sekhmet the lion-headed goddess of
destruction (and other stuff). Once Re,
her father, told her to kill off a bunch of humans he didn’t like. As her work progressed she found it so
entertaining that she set out to kill all of mankind – and Re couldn’t turn her
off! In desperation he mixed human blood
with beer, causing Sekhmet to get drunk and pass out. Presumably her subsequent hangover was so bad
that she gave up on her cat-and-man game, and we all were spared.
We need Re to show us how to shut off our T-cells.
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