TOO MUCH ON TALC, ALREADY!

At Crater Lake

This back-and-forth squabble over talc and ovarian cancer is becoming tedious.  I have reported on developments for years, often as “Comments” to other talc-related postings.  I have decided not to do it anymore.  My “sources” spew up talc/cancer stories almost weekly, but from now on I’m going to write about them if they are game-changing.  Here is one last link:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-27/johnson-johnson-jnj-talcum-powder-suits-not-backed-by-science.

My bottom line remains the same:  Don’t use the stuff.

AN IMMUNOTHERAPY PRIMER

Linda on the Thames

Have I blogged about this already?  Geeze, my brain is getting so dilapidated that I can’t remember what I did yesterday, let alone last month.  Anyway, this is a painless review of two kinds of immunotherapy: checkpoint inhibitors, and CAR T therapy.  Also a bit about another wrinkle, involving lymphocytes.  Worth reading, and it won’t take you five minutes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/cancer-immunotherapy-drugs.html

SO YOU'VE GOT OVCA. WHAT THEN?

Even bald, she was beautiful

Here is a short essay on ovarian cancer treatment that most of you women should read – but, I hope, will never need.  Men could benefit from it as well.  I wish to hell I had known this stuff when Linda got her OVCA diagnosis.

https://www.self.com/story/ovarian-cancer-treatment-options

THE NEVER-ENDING TALC STORY

Linda and niece Ella

maybe ten years ago

Johnson and Johnson is one of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world.  It is a component of the Dow Industrial index.  It has been here, grinding out useful commodities since your mother was a little girl.  It makes lots of good stuff, but I’ll bet it fervently wishes that it had never made talcum powder!

Talcum powder basically is a powdered form of the mineral talc, the softest natural substance in the inorganic world.  Talc is a hydrothermal metamorphic rock that forms, often in great abundance, at many places in the world.  Talc is used in a huge number of industrial processes.  One form of talc, known as soapstone, is dear to the hearts of stone carvers.  Talc clearly is useful; the burning question obviously is: should it be used as a form of baby powder?

One suspicious problem with talc as a baby powder is that it forms under very similar conditions as does asbestos, and frequently in the same region.  Asbestos and talc have very similar structures.  Asbestos, as you know, is a nasty carcinogen.  J&J insists that its baby powder is, and has been, asbestos free.

Even occasional readers of this blog will be aware that J&J has been sued repeatedly over recent years on the charge that their baby powder causes ovarian cancer.  The charge is that it is the talc itself that is to blame, and not any accidental admixture of asbestos.  The science on this claim is indeterminate at present, but enough suspicion remains to underpin my advice:  leave the stuff on the shelf, and use corn starch instead.

J&J has stated repeatedly that there is no asbestos in their product.  Now, however, nosy newsmen have turned up evidence that this may be untrue.  J&J is calling “foul”.  My take is that if J&J officials really knew that there was even trace amounts of asbestos they all should be marched outside and shot.  The case is far from closed, however, but in the meantime: DON’T USE TALCUM POWDER!

And sell your JNJ stock.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/johnson--johnson-asbestos-scandal-13735166

A STEM CELL PRIMER

A very long time ago, in Mexico

Confused by all the chatter about stem cells?  This will help:

https://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics.htm

DENDRITIC CELLS

On Santorini

Do you know what dendritic cells are?  Well, don’t fret; neither did I until a few weeks ago, and I read lots more of this stuff than a normal person would.  Anyway, dendritic cells are part of the mammalian immune system; the outer defenses, so to speak.  They are stationed at places where bad guys are most likely to try to get in; nose, throat, etc.  When they encounter such a bad guy they devour it, break it into pieces, and display these pieces on their surface.  These pieces, known as antigens, alert the T cells as to what to search out and destroy.

Well, people at Lund University, in Sweden, have figured out how to reprogram ordinary skin cells into functional dendritic cells.  They also have learned how to alert these new dendritic cells to specific “enemies” – possibly cancer cells.  Cancer cells are wily devils; they tend to mutate so rapidly that they can “hide” from some therapies, even immunotherapy.  Somehow this new technique can circumvent this trick.  To find out how you’ll just have to read the news release.

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/watch-a-code-for-reprogramming-immune-sentinels

and then explain it to me.

MOONSHOT, REVISITED

Linda and her (much) younger sister Carolyn

On the occasion of the latter's birthday

When I decided to accept the offer of a faculty position at Western Washington University I had two other alternatives.  I had an offer from San Diego State University, as well as the option of returning to the U. S. Geological Survey, where I had worked for over five years.  Pay, of course, was a factor, but not in this case an important one; the Survey paid by far the most, and Western the least, by a substantial margin.  I rejected SD State on the grounds that it had a punishing teaching load, precluding the opportunity to do much research - which I particularly wanted to do.  The Survey did nothing BUT research, but required one to live in places I disliked – big cities, especially Washington, D.C.  And also, in my time with the Survey I had discovered it to be painfully and frustratingly bureaucratic.  The most important person in my Survey branch was the director of personnel – who knew how to get around the bullshit and let things get done.  Unfortunately, he retired.

But enough baloney about me.  Let’s get to the point.  However…..

Last chunk of baloney.  All that I wrote above is true – but the real reason I picked WWU was to be near the North Cascades.

So here is a progress report on the Moonshot; the Federal program to kick-start cancer research – or, rather, turbocharge it.  The initial appropriation was $1.8 billion.  So far (two years) $600 million has been spent.  The principal result, according to this progress report, seems to be to have been to establish committees to oversee the work!  That is 1/3 of the pot.  Moonshot is supposed to last seven years, so now we have five left to get results.  Shades of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Read the link given below; you will get a good summary of what Moonshot is all about.    And while you’re at it, see if you detect a note of” bureaucratise”.  After all, is there anywhere else that you might encounter a word like “operationalize”?

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2018/cancer-moonshot-planning-to-research?cid=eb_govdel 

EPITHELIAL OVARIAN CANCER

This is precisely the disease that took Linda away.  A novel way to attack it is described.  May it bear bountiful and beautiful fruit.

https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/29/new-techniques-study-deadly-ovarian-cancer/