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posted by Woods on Saturday May 17 2014, @02:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the cough-coryza-conjunctivitis-creating-contagion-cancels-cancer dept.

Stacy Erholtz didn't have many options to treat her blood cancer left when she agreed to being injected with the equivalent of 10 million doses of measles vaccine. Hours later, she was vomiting and feverish. Months later, her cancer was gone. This landmark result-if replicated in larger clinical trials-could open the door to new therapy that uses viruses to target cancer cells. Viral therapy is an old idea with some success in mice, but this is the first clearly documented result of it working in humans. "It's a game changer," one of the researchers told the Washington Post.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by ElderGeek on Saturday May 17 2014, @03:16AM

    by ElderGeek (1387) on Saturday May 17 2014, @03:16AM (#44561)

    I would not call this the "first clearly documented case of this working in humans"

    I heard about this style of treatment in a podcast that I can't find now. But a little bit of googling has turned this up:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coley's_toxins [wikipedia.org]
    http://www.damninteresting.com/coley%E2%80%99s-can cer-killing-concoction/ [damninteresting.com]

    lt;dr From 1900-1936 it was standard for Dr. Coley to give a patient a "cocktail" that would basically cause a staph infection and a high fever. If they survived the fever they would often be cancer free. With the advent of radiation therapy in the 1920's this treatment fell out of vogue.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilJim on Saturday May 17 2014, @07:46AM

    by EvilJim (2501) on Saturday May 17 2014, @07:46AM (#44602) Journal

    well fuck me with a cancer and measles infected fence post. if something works occasionally it's sad that it just drops off the radar when something only so-so effective comes along.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:16PM (#44654)

    I think Coley switched to injecting destroyed staph bacteria that would cause severe fever but no infection. It also was effective, apparently.

    But I guess there wasn't enough money to be made curing cancer that way.

  • (Score: 1) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday May 17 2014, @05:58PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Saturday May 17 2014, @05:58PM (#44669)

    It might be interesting to search the data and see if the frequency of cancer is lower in those who have survived measles or any other serious disease.

  • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Saturday May 17 2014, @09:09PM

    by etherscythe (937) on Saturday May 17 2014, @09:09PM (#44703) Journal

    obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/938/ [xkcd.com]

    --
    "Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"