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216 sats \ 1 reply \ @zuspotirko OP 10 Nov \ on: This scientist treated her own cancer - The science community is not happy science
Here the Tldr:
what happened: Virologist Beata Halassy injected a virus into her cancer. It worked. She's cancer free for 3 years now.
the wrong story: There is an incorrect version of why the scientific community is unhappy with this. The claim is that she didn't follow ethics review boards and therefore the truth must be suppressed
the actual problem: Before a treatment makes it into real medicine we want to know if results are repeatable. Halassys results are very interesting but it helps us very little if we don't know if it'll work a second time on a second person. And after that a statistic of many patients. It's hard to find a virus that is sure to kill big clumps of cells but still leave a very sick cancer patient alive - therefore it will be very hard to construct a second experiment with an ethics review board
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @02a9a61fdc 10 Nov
There are several clinical trials underway to test this therapy (e.g. NCT03866525, NCT01503177, NCT04695327 ). The term is oncolytic virotherapy. Its not the virus that kills the cancer cells, it is the immune system that kills the virus infected cells. There are plenty of viruses that are more or less harmless for humans. Dr. Halassy for example used a measles virus that is also being used in vaccines.
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