Neanderthal medicine

Skiffin16 said:

Speaking of Which....
Like mentioned, I too have said, "If the cancer doesn't kill you, the treatment will come close".

Have you looked at the origins of many of the chemo drugs?

Taxotere

•In the early 1960s scientists at Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina observe anticancer activity in bark samples of the Pacific yew tree

•In 1971 RTI researchers identify paclitaxel as the active ingredient in Pacific yew tree bark and publish structural data

•In 1986 scientists use a semi-synthetic conversion from precursors of paclitaxel to develop docetaxel out of European yew needles

•In 1996 docetaxel, now called Taxotere®, is approved by the FDA

Cisplatin

•Cisplatin is platinum-based and was the first medicine developed in that drug class. Other drugs in this class include carboplatin, a drug with fewer and less severe side effects introduced in the 1980s.

•Cisplatin was actually first created in the mid 19th Century and is also known as Peyrone's chloride. (The disoverer was Michel Peyrone.) It wasn't until the 1960s that scientists started getting interested in its biological effects, and cisplatin went ito clinical trials for cancer therapy in 1971. By the late 1970s it was already widely used and is still used today despite the many newer chemotherapy drugs developed over the past decades.

•Cisplatin is called the “penicillin of cancer” because it is used so widely and it was the first big chemotherapy drug. Cisplatin also plays an interesting role in the history of chemistry. First synthesized in the 1800s, long before anyone thought of using it against cancer, cisplatin is a target compound chemists use to prove their moxie in inorganic synthesis. The shape and symbols of the molecule as represented in that discipline's iconography is aesthetically pleasing which is another reason people like to talk about cisplatin.

Fluorouracil (5-FU or f5U)

•In 1954 Abraham Cantarow and Karl Paschkis found liver tumors absorbed radioactive uracil more readily than normal liver cells. Charles Heidelberger, who had earlier found that fluorine in fluoroacetic acid inhibited a vital enzyme, asked Robert Duschinsky and Robert Schnitzer at Hoffman-La Roche to synthesize fluorouracil.[16] Some credit Heidelberger and Duschinsky with the discovery that 5-fluorouracil markedly inhibited tumors in mice.

JG

CivilMatt said:

no joking here
Hi Jim,

I took a wrong turn and opened the wrong door at the cancer center the other day and low-n-behold I stumbled on a meeting of the cancers. They were all smoking, drinking, laughing and comparing notes on the different forms of treatments being tried on them. Since I didn’t want any part of it I quickly departed, but did come away with the sense that while not “on the ropes” they are taking a beating and their plenty afraid of DNA and nanotechnology coming down the road.

While some of us may not benefit from the future we will have to get by with a toxic mess of chemicals and searing radiation. By-the-way, during the first two weeks of radiation (before losing my taste buds) I would sneak a couple of wieners in under my mask and they turned out perfect.

Best,

Matt

D Lewis said:

marshmallows for me
Nice fluffy padding to start... perfectly browned and melted at the end. Of course, getting them unstuck from my face was a daily issue.

Deb