Immunotherapy cancer drug hailed as 'game changer'

Do you know what a game changer is? Hint: It means the game changes. In this case it would mean that cancer is at least 50% obviated.

Also of note: just like good ol' mAbs, you need a target for CAR-T cells. And BiTEs, and BiKEs, and what have you.

Also also of note: the approaches that took pediatric ALL and adult APL (among others) from 5-10% survival to 90-95% survival weren't single pronged. (Good thing, too; I've seen patients who seemed ideal for CAR-T die when their malignancy outran the engineered cells) The majority of progress in real-world outcomes has arisen from combination or sequential therapies, incrementally improved to decrease toxicity and maximize efficacy.

Which is to say, incrementally advanced.

Last: per the above, you can use the two together. If a tumor is actively suppressing T cells, it isn't going to dissolve from CAR-T cells without a fight. There are additional tactics useful for "priming" the immune system, but in the end I don't see a lot of solid tumors melting away in trials of CAR-T cells (feel free to correct me).

Do take a look at the Kite trials and how they're structured. When you have to condition a patient with fludarabine to hit outcomes (at all) that's not a wonder drug. It's another tool in the toolbox. A necessary and useful tool, but a tool, not a magic wand.

That is like saying "this is just another GPS guided smart weapon". Just because mAbs aren't new, doesn't mean they don't have enormous therapeutic potential.

The standards are set by reality, not wishes.

Thats because there is almost no low hanging fruit for cancer treatment and therefore you only get incremental progress most of the time.

As far as spacing doses, just like anything else it's subject to revision.

Nonavalent HPV vaccines produce antibodies against nearly every HPV variant known, reduce the likelihood of HPV integration, and for someone who has verified that at least a quarter of head & neck squamous, almost half of anal, and far better than half of cervical carcinomas show HPV integrations, typically right into the middle of tumor suppressors or onto oncogene promoters, this is a big deal. These cases are preventable. Not preventing them, when it's relatively cheap and available, is (to me) APPALLING.

The antivaxxer pricks are cynical for relying on the rest of us, who are responsible enough to assume a TINY risk to our kids in order to protect them and others, to take the risks so they can enjoy the benefits of herd immunity.

If that isn't the definition of cynical, I don't know what is. It's on a level with the Soviets celebrating the "eradication" of smallpox while internally working to weaponize it.

Provided a child develops appropriate immunity by the time they're regularly interacting with others, I could care less about the spacing. But that's not really what this is about, is it?

If you have kids and you don't get them vaccinated on an appropriate schedule, you are being a cynical prick. If you fight HPV vaccination because it might "make girls promiscuous", you are a cynical prick. You are presuming to judge risks for others, risks which we as a society have determined are unacceptable. And that makes you a cynical prick, if indeed you do it. (Maybe you're playing devils advocate, I don't know. But I really hate this line of reasoning, and on balance, it doesn't hold water.)

I expect he knows less about it than you do. To you, he says this is a smart choice. To the people who just get them all at once, he says that's the smart choice. As a general rule of thumb, doctors don't actually know the current status of vaccination knowledge; especially "family doctors". So long as you're just taking them, he'll tell you whatever you need to hear.

Anyway, lets look at this: "so, an intelligent person would try to space out, don't you agree?"

Let's imagine a situation where there is, in any given week, a 90% chance of catching each of five lethal diseases. There is a vaccine available for each; taking them all at once presents a 1% chance of death. So in this case, spacing out the vaccines is a stupid thing to do. Where this is going is that without more context and information and actually looking at the numbers, the statement "so, an intelligent person would try to space out" is at best meaningless feelgood nonsense and at worst dangerous.

If we gather the actual numbers, we find that the risk from these toxins of which you speak is vanishingly small (considerably less than, for example, driving somewhere) and thus spacing out the vaccines is not something an intelligent person would do. You probably put the child at higher risk of death from the extra trips to the doctor; do you drive there, or cross roads to get there?

Additionally, unspecified "toxins" are not necessarily cumulative. It's quite possible that they have no effect on each other, and no effect on the ability of the host to deal with them. Is that the case here? Do you know? Are you practising evidence-based decision making? This is your child's life, so you owe it to them to do it properly.

No, we don't do it to "lower insurance costs". We do it because the things covered by the vaccines are things we want people to be protected against, and if we delay some of them to spread them out (which has no demonstrated benefit, of any kind, to justify it), then necessarily that means delaying some of the vaccines, and delaying the protection that they provide.

> There are toxins in vaccines

Specifics, please. IME, any time someone mentions generic "toxins" without specifics in discussion of supposed health practices, they are shoveling woo.