First, researchers are stunned at their own results: Diabetes cleared in mice experiments.
Nerve cells in the pancreas may be a cause of type-1 diabetes in mice — a finding that could provide new ways to treat the disease in humans, Canadian and U.S. scientists said on Friday.
Defective nerve endings may attract immune system proteins that mistakenly attack the pancreas, destroying its ability to make insulin, the researchers said. This destruction is what causes diabetes.
Injecting a piece of protein, or peptide, to repair the defect cured diabetic mice “overnight“, Dr. Hans Michael Dosch of the University of Toronto said in a telephone interview.
Wow. That is truly a medical breakthrough if it holds in human clinical trials. I was really set back on my heels when I heard this news tonight on the radio.
And then there was this from the morning newspaper: Breast Cancer Rates Plunge.
U.S. breast cancer rates plunged an unprecedented 7 percent in 2003, the year after millions of women stopped taking menopause hormones when a study showed the pills raise the risk of tumors.
The startling new analysis, reported Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, does not prove a link between hormone therapy and breast cancer, but strongly suggests it, many experts said.
“When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it,” statistician Donald Berry of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said of the drop.
Cancers take years to form, so going off hormones would not instantly prevent new tumors. But tumors that had been developing might stop growing, shrink or disappear so they were no longer detected by mammograms, doctors theorized.
Cases dropped most among women 50 and older — the age group taking hormones. The decline was biggest for tumors whose growth is fueled by estrogen — the type most affected by hormone use.
This story is particularly fascinating and troubling given that it suggests that hormone therapy may have contributed to the increase in breast cancer we have seen over the past 20 years or so. I guess “better late than never”, but it really begs a debate over how much “tinkering” with the human body is good versus the negative outcomes. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this issue.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
“haven’t heard the last of this issue.”
No kidding. I can hear the “it’s men’s fault” diatribe by the feminists already.
#2
No. Cancer is caused by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc. and was designed by Halliburton.
Haven’t you been paying attention?
I’ve never heard a feminist say “it’s men fault” and I have never heard, nor can I find, anyone who has ever said that “Cancer is caused by Bush” or “Cancer was designed by Halliburton.”
But I see people make claims about what feminists and liberals and Democrats and conservatives-not-enslaved-to-the-GOP say. And they are usually vapid and false.
Also, that first study is from the University of Toronto. We can’t trust anything related to health care from Canada!! It is a very bad, evil system up there!!
#3
I’ve never heard a feminist say “it’s men fault”
Clearly you haven’t heard any before.
and I have never heard, nor can I find, anyone who has ever said that “Cancer is caused by Bush” or “Cancer was designed by Halliburton.”
Give them time. Everything else is Bush’s fault, why not cancer?
#4
We can’t trust anything related to health care from Canada!! It is a very bad, evil system up there!!
Which is why they come here, if they can, for their healthcare. Also, that’s why many provders are dumping the system.
Pay attention.
Well, sean. They don’t actually use those words. It’s more like (ok you have to imagine the shreaking), “See. SEE! Male doctors came up with hormone replacement therapy. Women were FINE before, hundreds of years women when through menopause with some MAN doctor telling them anything. And NOW LOOK what they did, hormone replacement and HOW MANY women have died at the hands of these doctors.” etc etc.
#6. Oh, did it go down some other way? When I DO hear this, how should I respond to the feminazis?
I dunno, I guess I just can’t ignore the fact that women have been taking these medications of their own free will.
How should you respond? Don’t. It’s like trying to reason with a racist, it doesn’t work.
I think you’re right, Bruce, in that we haven’t heard the last. I imagine there will be a lot more to come on the breast cancer information. Perhaps the best we non-docs can do is to keep encouraging the women we love to get their mammograms. I believe there are some other clinical trials going on for detection technology that is both more accurate and less uncomfortable for the patient. (I know of at least one, but not sure what else is out there.)
The diabetes story is really something. That will be very interesting to watch. Thanks for posting both stories.
#8
It’s like trying to reason with hurricane season.
#9
I didn’t read the article, but I know it said something about the fact that mammograms are down. On the surface, that doesn’t sound good. I don’t know why they’re down, but I imagine it has something to do with the discomfort. I don’t know how that would feel, but I could imagine if there were a testicular cancer screen where my “boys” had to be squashed as flat as possible, I don’t think I’d go for it either.
Ouch. Thanks for that mental image on a Sunday morning, TGC. Hurts just thinking about it!