My Malignant Melanoma

New Sites

A new poster on the melanoma board brought a couple of useful sites to our attention:

Of general interest:Melanoma International Foundation

And for those who are pregnant and have MM:Pregnant With Cancer


DCA, Green Tea, Alternative Medicine

I note also a couple of interesting items in today's British Journal of Cancer:

A study of the effect of green tea drinking concluded that it has no effect on lung cancer.

A review of the evidence suggest that DCA may well be a promising broad spectrum anti-cancer agent.

These interest me because they strike at one of the arguments of the "alternative medicine" touts and apologists. Science is studying the seemingly more promising "alternative" agents.

Mostly, as with green tea, the initial promise evaporates. Detailed investigation shows that the apparent correlation between taking a substance and cancer protection or reversal is not true.

Sometimes however, despite there being no possibility of windfall profits (DCA is an old, cheap drug- I could make it in my kitchen), investigations are carried out and prove encouraging. The review itself notes that drug companies are not going to fund trials, and encourages charities to fund them. It will be interesting to see what happens. I am hopeful, as I do not beleive in the paranoid nonsense about the suppression of cancer cures by big business. A trial has in fact already started in Canada.

What also interests me about DCA is that it started being sold on the internet in an unregulated fashion when word first got out. Like everything else, DCA is a poison at too high a dose. The right dose may however kill cancer and leave people alive. Proper trials will tell us.

Labels: Alternative, Canada, Clinical, DCA, Dichloroacetate, Green Tea, Malignant, Medicine, Melanoma, Nature, Trial