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Science: Health: Cancer
Cure for Cancer   (+2, -9)  [vote for, against]
Bit of a long shot.

With the technoolgy of today, scientists have successfully frozen lab dogs, and brought them back to live hours later.

Situation: Cindy has lung cancer. She is going into this cure for cancer sugery. The doctor explains how it works.

Doctor: "first, we make an incision here, then we remove the cancerous area" Cindy: "doesn't look to bad..." Doctor: "then, we use a medical IV pump and suck out all your blood, fill your veins with saline and wait 10 minutes." Cindy: "pump out all my blood?! Are you crazy?!" Doctor: "calm down, we are going to give you new blood" Cindy: "new blood? As in a blood transfusion?" Doctor: "yes, we remove the saline, and pump in an entire bodies full of <insert your blood type here> blood. This removes all the cancer that was in your blood" Cindy: "sounds like a swell trip!"

So, yeah, I'm back, with possibly an even worse idea than ever before, but you know what? I don't care, I'm past caring, maybe I don't understand how Cancer works, but I will post this anyways.

Will work well with other diseases, gang green for instance.

*sigh* thoughts?
-- EvilPickels, Oct 20 2005

Artificial Blood http://news.bbc.co..../health/3207291.stm
So you don't have to actually kill them. [zen_tom, Oct 20 2005]

Pet Cemetery III http://www.news.com...39502-13762,00.html
[Shz, Oct 20 2005]

Cryogenic dogs http://www.news.com...39502-13762,00.html
For AWOL [wagster, Oct 20 2005]

Circulating cancer cells http://clincancerre...eytype2=tf_ipsecsha
That is one big URL. [bungston, Oct 21 2005]

Dr Kyzas blames publication bias... http://www.fantasyc...fmatt03.xml&site=17
[po, Oct 25 2005]

Presumably the freezing is meant to cryogenically keep the patient alive? Won't the blood be quite difficult to pump out when it is frozen solid?
-- Jinbish, Oct 20 2005


The process removes any potential bad bacteria or viruses, and then the blood removed, removes the remaining viruses and or basteria in the blood stream. The bloood removed becomes waste.

BTW my brother has Pandis, it's this basterial disease he got from his gerbil. things aren't going very well.
-- EvilPickels, Oct 20 2005


Instead of saline, you could use that fake blood that's going through the FDA process...linky coming when I find one. Cindy may not need to die (even temporarily) at all!
-- zen_tom, Oct 20 2005


Er.. what? You pump the blood out, then pump the saline in, then pump the saline out, then the new blood in. The saline is just there to kill of any lingering basteria and seperate the two blood things from infecting each other.
-- EvilPickels, Oct 20 2005


//scientists have successfully frozen lab dogs, and brought them back to live hours later// Evidence?
-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Oct 20 2005


Yeah, what you're describing is a 'flush' of the entire blood system. You could put the same antibacterial chemicals into the artificial blood (it's completely sterile, having been made in a factory somewhere) empty a person of their own diseased blood, flush them out with this stuff (maybe pushing 20-30 peoplesworths of artificial blood through the system for a really thorough clean-out), before finally filling them up with some of the 'good stuff' again. Like an oil change.
-- zen_tom, Oct 20 2005


Even though there's not much idea here, I can't bring myself to vote against a cure for cancer.
-- Worldgineer, Oct 20 2005


Cancer tends to spread via the lymph, not the blood, or directly from the tumour itself to adjacent organs. It can spread via the blood, but this is not the commonest route. Therefore it would be necessary to drain the lymph, which is all the interstitial body fluid outside the circulatory system. Lymphatics are also a passive system, unlike the arterial side of the circulatory system, so it would be difficult to pump the lymph out. If the spread is direct, it wouldn't help. It would also be useless for leukaemia. Any kind of sarcoma wouldn't work terribly well, as these regenerate themselves after being removed unless even microscopic traces in the area of the tumour are also removed, but ironically, these spread most agressively via the blood, so there might be some benefits.
However, it might work for solid carcinomas that mainly spread via the blood. It would mainly be useful for preventing spread to the lungs or liver, if it could be done.
-- nineteenthly, Oct 20 2005


I admire the sentiment but wish that there was a little more to get my teeth into here.
-- st3f, Oct 20 2005


I don't think this will do any good on most cancers but could have health benefits in other areas. Long shot, but it may purge HIV from a person's system.
-- Madai, Oct 20 2005


[Evil] - How you doin? Did you know that Keith Richards had a total blood transfusion just to clear the heroin out so that he could pass a US immigration drugs test and play his US tour?

[AWOL], I've linked a news story describing what [Evil] is referring to.
-- wagster, Oct 20 2005


Good to see you again [EP]. It's always good to have you around and I hope that your brother gets better. [po], I realise that this will never actually work but what grounds are you MFDing on?
-- hidden truths, Oct 20 2005


Excellent link, [wags]! ;-)
-- Shz, Oct 20 2005


Keith Richards' blood would be highly flammable, methinks.
-- Texticle, Oct 20 2005


There has been a recent buzz about the fact that circulating cancer cells are detectable in blood. I was musing about "CancerCleanse", something similar to what [EP] proposes but less drastic.

You could adapt a machine of the type used to harvest platelets. Platelet donors sit around while their blood is pumped out, spun, platelets removed, then pumped back in. You could do the same thing but instead of the smallest cells (platelets), remove only the very largest cells - presumably the cancerous ones. You could then check to see how many you had removed - maybe count them or something. People would return on successive days until their CancerCleanse produced no more cancer cells in the big cell fraction.

Completely replacing blood with saline would make very bad things happen, but the concept is essentially the same. CancerCleanse just removes it little by little, and puts it back right away.
-- bungston, Oct 21 2005


I thouht most people had heard of this procedure involving saline, I saw a news story on it somewhere, if I could find it I would post it.

Gangreen, bad choice, but I meant it could possibly clear out any disease circulating in the blood. You get the point.
-- EvilPickels, Oct 23 2005


"you put your left foot in you put your left foot out and you shake it all about - you do the hokey pokey, and you turn around" - sung to a familiar tune.

ABSLVE - were you not once a successfully frozen lab dog?
-- xenzag, Oct 23 2005


Read the book, "The Cancer Conspiracy" and your eyes will be opened. Cancer has been cured for years and every new breaktrhough is trashed systematically...you always read about "promising breakthroughs" but you hardly ever hear of them bein accepted for widesprad use. Reason: Scientists world wide get money for a SEARCH for a cure...not actually curing the disease. As my proof...I cite the debacle of the Salk polio vaccine....the medical world was very upset that billions of dollars in polio iron lung and braces, therapy and treatment clinics went right down the crapper. The Medicos and pols who were getting rich off of the polio industry vowed to never let that happen again. Also, don't forget that hundreds of millions in polio cure research were trashed overnight in thousands of university labs. This is merely the way the real world works. Thus we are still using "witch doctor" anti cancer techniques...radiation, chemo and surgery....the death rate from cancer has hardly changed a bit since 1940.
-- Blisterbob, Oct 25 2005


[BB] - the problem with conspiracy theories like yours is there is no way to disprove them. If I posted links showing changes in cancer cure rates, you would call them false because the posters were all part of the conspiracy. It is like arguing religion with a zealot. What evidence can I provide that will make you admit that you are wrong, and do the humble humility dance? OK, only a little dancing, I promise. And you dont have to wear the special pants.
-- bungston, Oct 25 2005


This idea is incoherent and idiotic. I’d MFD it, but then I’d become part of the conspiracy.
-- ldischler, Oct 25 2005


Evidence against consipiracy to prevent cancer cure:

National Cancer Institute budget: approx 1.4 billion dollars/year.

Profits on (1 single) chemo drug Taxol: approx 1 billion dollars / year.

There is considerable financial incentive to cure cancer.
-- bungston, Oct 26 2005


Although I chafe at "making an Idea work", I'll go as far as to suggest that one possibility is to put the cure in every blood cell before transfusion.
-- reensure, Oct 26 2005


Rather than trying to cure cancer, it's probably easier for humankind to grow "replacement bodies" in factories, and perfect the art of brain transplants from cancer ridden body into a perfectly new body (your choice of size, shape and colour... last years models at huge savings!).
-- gillgren, Oct 26 2005


Better still would be to prevent it in the first place, and there are many ways available to do this already, but it's difficult to get people to take steps to do them, for psychological and social reasons.
-- nineteenthly, Oct 26 2005



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