Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 11:04:28 +0100 From: "Fabio d'Alessi" <cars@civ.bio.unipd.it> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg510$foo@default> Subject: Re: Medical uses of CP
>Oh geez, comeon. You're taking things farrr too seriously. If people
>choose to try it and get sick thats their problem. Each person takes
>responsibility for his/her actions. Don't censor or withhold information
>that may potentially if unlikely have some validity. No offense, but I
>believe i speak for many many people on the net when i say I dont want
>you or anyone else making up my mind for me. I dont need to be protected
>from myself. I agree it looks pretty quack to me as well but this whole
>thing reminds me of the time back in highschool where my science teacher
>told me not to tell people in class how they could look at the partial
>eclipse that was occurring because they might do it wrong and blind
>themselves. This may sound harsh but theres this thing called evolution
>which has been going on for millions of years and I'm a big believer in
>it.
Sorry, Chris, but I have to *strongly* disagree. You clearly are not
in the typical state of mind for a patient affected by AIDS of tumor.
I work at the laboratory of Human Genetics at the University of Padua,
and, as the name implies, we're doing a lot of research on terrible
and extremely painful human rare diseases. Syndromes which no one here
have ever heard, but that still make a lot of people suffer _a lot_.
Well, when you *SEE* this people, when you hear what they say... what they
HOPE.
You cannot even imagine what kind of state of mind enter these people,
once they have rare diseases, or grave diseases such as cancer and
or AIDS.
Barry has been very polite to simply "disagree" with people trying to
make money with homemade recipes. After all, a posting related to some
interesting medical use of CP has been intriguing and interesting to
read. But as far as tumors, AIDS and miracles, I have to strongly disagree,
and we must be extremely careful.
Want an example? In italy, many months ago, an old medical doctor claimed
to have discovered the cure for cancer. Now, who works on oncology knows
that it is quite impossible to find the universal cure for cancer, but
still this man claimed to have found it. And he was not a sneaky guy
trying to sell homemade mixtures. He brought scientifical data, surveys
on patients, cases of tens and tens of terminal-stage cancers resolved
like miracles. What happened after this recalls, distant medieval phobias.
People breaking the doors of the pharmacies to get the "magical" medicine
(which was a mixture of human hormones) and so on. The worst is that many
decided to stop with radio-therapies and chemical-therapies in favor of
this miracle therapy.
Just think that this phenomenon had proportions that pushed the italian
government to take extremely serious measures, in grave emergency. The
phenomenon implied hundreds of thousands of cancer-affected patients.
What happened last month, after months of delirium, is that several italian
and non-italian scientific teams, testing the miracle mixture, found
simply *NO* relevance, *NO* validity, absolutely *NO* effects of this
mixture against *ANY* cancer. In just something like 3-4% of the cases
the tumor was slighly slowed.
In the meanwhile, hundreds of patients died or worsened because of their
choice to stop with traditional cures in favor of this.
I think someone out there will think "it's their fault, they should blame
themselves".
I think it different. People out here are not oncologists, and they simply
cannot JUDGE if this or that could be useful or not. They HAVE to rely on
someone who is an oncologist. This is why oncologists need to be EXTREMELY
careful about such declarations. And the same applies to who makes medicines,
treatments, and the like. Companies that make, for example, aspirin, know
that in particular experimental conditions high doses of aspirin can have some
retarding or blocking effects on some tumors (far more than any drosera).
But have you ever heard Bayer claiming "aspirin is a serious anti-tumoral
medicine"?
Now, let's stop this and back to CPs.
f
-- Fabio d'Alessi - Laboratory of Genetics, Department of Biology, University of Padua, Italy.
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