Edit: It seems potentially promising but also potentially toxic. Needs more study.
Yes, but it wasn't really the drug I was drawing attention to but instead that if a cure can't be profitable, it will not be developed. It wasn't always this way. The polio vaccine was developed and never patented. Edward Murrow asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent. Salk’s famous reply was “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
> It cures cancer, but it is never prescribed because it is unpatentable.
The article I found says:
> The occurrence of side effects such as neurotoxicity as well as the suspicion of DCA carcinogenicity still restricts the clinical use of DCA.
I am thoroughly anti-establishment and particularly anti patent as well. I am a libertarian communist aka an anarchist. But you're not going to win any arguments misrepresenting things like that, saying "the cure for cancer exists but they won't use it because they can't profit".
It sounds like what they are trying to do is figure out what mechanism DCA uses to work, so they can find away to do the same thing without the toxicity issues.
Of course everything in our world is touched and marred by the profit motive. So perhaps they have not studied DCA enough because of this profit issue in general. But perhaps it does a good profit opportunity since DCA is toxic - they have to invent something new that does the same thing as DCA without the toxicity.
Anyway I sympathize with your feelings about the world, but your obvious black and white views and grand claims aren't going to make you very popular in online discussions. The profit motive does suck, but the world is still a very complex place.
Biology was never my thing, but it stands to reason, even if it is cynical, that if a cancer cure could be developed, except that there was no possible way to profit from the cure, then a cure would not be developed. Studies and research and development of treatments is very expensive, so the results need to be profitable or they will not be pursued.
But something that causes significant nerve damage in 15 out 15 test patients during a study is not a top candidate for chemotherapy.
If that's your claim then fine, that's pretty true.
But what you originally said was that a cure would not be developed. Which means by anyone, not just big pharma (why are you making it one word with intercaps?).
And while studies tend to be expensive, the better something works the smaller of a study you can use.
Not an oncologist, but that sounds and awful lot like how cancer is currently treated with chemotherapy and radiation, kill everything and hopefully get all the cancer before the patient dies.
I think I heard about it on 60 Minutes, so... grain of salt there. Information here [1] details the news thread that must have led to the 60 Minutes piece. Interesting how the FDA jumps in to do rare enforcements, cautioning against its use for the risks, when the risks don't sound worse than conventional cancer treatment, and the ACA is also piling on. I think it is suspicious that not only would no one be interested in more research because the drug is unpatentable, but that also FDA and ACA are saying there's nothing to see here, when there is obviously something to be seen. Cancer is big business. I always figured it would never be cured because it is too many things, but maybe it will never be cured because it is too profitable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichloroacetic_acid#Cancer
Sure? That makes it a tool, and far from something you could simply call a "cure" for cancer. If it works as a cheaper chemo drug, great, but even if you make chemo drugs free that doesn't make cancer cured or cheap.