Cancer

Kitsu’s Afternoon “News”: Politics and Vaccination

Original story from Discovery News posted in their Blog on 21 September 2011.

Politics has a number of victims, particularly right now when things are so savage between parties and the party lines aren’t just drawn in the sand. There are fences up and woe betide he who is on the “wrong” side of it, no matter how good their idea is or isn’t.

Republican Michele Bachmann, for example, attacked her same party competitor Rick Perry of accepting campaign funding from the pharmaceutical company that makes the HPV vaccine when he was working to make it mandatory for 6th grade schoolchildren. Bachmann raised the stakes, however, and made false accusations that the vaccine causes mental retardation. So far, no person has been able to back up the accusations against this vaccine or even get the people who supposedly make these anecdotal connections to step forward and let their situation to studied. Even with money as bait.

HPV is a political victim because we have an STD that can be vaccinated against. and heaven forbid we be able to prevent a cancer from taking root in people. Is this what’s going to happen is an HIV vaccine is developed?

Kitsu’s Afternoon “News”: HIV sides with people against Cancer (+ Bonus Stories)

Originally reported by Discovery News in their blog on 14 September 2011.

The normally life threatening Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been genetically engineered by scientists to reprogram cancer patients own immune systems to attack cancer cells. This process involves removing t-cells and infecting them intuitionally with modified HIV. The T-cells then attack the cancer. Finally, chemotherapy is used to kill off the infected t-cells and prevent the modified ones from interfering with the production of normal ones. The patient then suffers what appears to be the flu as the cancer dies.

The University of Pennsylvania group who created this process plan to continue testing it, and have already had excellent results in the 3 human tests preformed (2 cases in full remission and another in partial, all lymphocytic leukemia sufferers). Future tests are planned to include research with other forms of cancer.

 

BONUS STORIES

  • SPIKY NEWBORN DINOSAUR FOUND IN D.C. BELTWAY 19 September 2011: The first dinosaur hatchling ever discovered in the Eastern USA is not only the youngest dinosaur ever found, but represents a new species of armored dinosaur!
  • ASTEROID FAMILY NOT GUILTY OF DINOSAUR KILLING 19 September 2011: The Daptistina asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that has long been considered the source of the dinosaur slaying asteroid has been cleared for xenocide against dinosaur kind after providing an alibi: the asteroid belt didn’t exist at the time for dinosaur extinction!