Dear Gregg,
I admit I have not focused much on benign tumors, but a guess would be that the body does catch most of them before they become a problem, and that only occasionally does something, benign or malignant, develop beyond a certain point.
www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclie...11&q=tumor+rejection
What is perhaps more interesing here is that so-called spontaneous remission/regression also happens in advanced cases. I simply googled "cancer spontaneous remission", and picked this one from the first page.
<i>Spontaneous remission of cancer (SR) is defined as a complete or partial, temporary or permanent disappearance of all or at least some relevant parameters of a soundly diagnosed malignant disease without any medical treatment or with treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting regression. We report the case of a 61-year-old man who presented with extensive metatastic disease five months after pneumonectomy for poorly differentiated large cell and polymorphic lung cancer. A vast metastatic tumour mass of the abdominal wall was confirmed histolologically and there was clinical and radiographic evidence of liver and lung metastases. Eight months later, the patient was operated on for a hernia, which had developed in the inguinal biopsy scar and the surgeon confirmed complete clinical SR of the abdominal wall metastases. Again five months later there was no longer any radiologic evidence of liver and lung metastases. Complete remission has persisted more than five years. Histology of the primary and of the abdominal metastases were reviewed by several independent pathologists. SR is an extremly rare event in lung cancer. This is the first documented case of clinically evident visceral metastases of a bronchiogenic adenocarcinoma developing after complete resection of the primary and then showing complete SR. The epidemiology of SR is reviewed and possible mechanisms involved in SR are discussed</i>
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/anno/...08/00000010/00148262
This article, which I found referenced on Keith Laney's forum, explains nicely why there is little knowledge of the extent and circumstances of SR
<i>A significant portion of invasive breast cancers may regress on their own without treatment, a new study that is bound to provoke controversy suggests.
The study, published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests breast cancer screening may be leading to over diagnosis of cancer, with upwards of 22 per cent of cases likely to resolve themselves without treatment.
Once a breast cancer is found, it wouldn't currently be considered ethical not to treat. So if the theory is correct large numbers of women may be having surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and other treatments that would never have been needed if their cancers hadn't been detected.</i>
www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/11/24/breas...ocialcomments-submit
I said "NO NEED FOR CONSPIRACY (THEORY)", so I believe we agree on
your "dogmatic stubborn stupidity" point. This, however, is Libertarianism of the naive sort:
<i>The government constitutes a monopoly. An open market is competitive. Pharmaceutical companies compete against one another. When one of them makes a major mistake, it costs them</i>.
Try a real world analysis instead. Companies compete within certain parameters, those that tend to perpetuate the raison d'etre of the industry they represent. That is but one convergence of interest between competitors. They will all attempt to create practical monopoly in their area. In the medical industry's case, they will attempt to influence funding and validation procedures, promote laws and regulations that protect their industry against competition from alternative approaches; they will make research prohibitively expensive, shape public perception through their marketing efforts - which might give you the illusion of competing choices between two different chemotherapies - involve themselves with "charitable" efforts carried out by the likes of WHO etc. etc.
Thus, as with the two competing political parties, determining the parameters of political discourse, Merck may take a hit on Vioxx, and GSK or Roche might show bigger returns that year, but the thinking, the development, the philosophy, the business interests the products offered, the overall agenda are basically the same regardless. If you represent an approach with far less capital, political influence and profit potential, good luck to you in trying to get through with it.
I have recently been offered a promising investment opportunity in a new biotech company. Unique selling point: Drug Rescue, specifically cancer drug rescue.
When a cancer drug has failed because of too high toxicity profile, this company can go in and determine the genetic profile of the guinea pigs, so the company can reintroduce the failed drug, now targeted to those who seem genetically best equipped to tolerate it. The various companies can thus look forward to mutually lucrative competition for "rescue" of their expensive poisons. No need to go in new directions the next decade. This perverse form of inertia constitutes innovative thinking in the brave new biotech world.
