Comment by kerkeslager

Comment by kerkeslager 6 days ago

"Things that haven't been approved for general use yet" is not meaningfully different from alternative medicine. You've adopted the aesthetic of cyberpunk instead of crystals or tarot or whatever, but let's be clear: you're not approaching this any more scientifically.

Do you know how many kinds of brain cancer there are? Are you aware that different kinds of brain cancers work differently and require different treatments? The fact that you're asking for "bio hacks" for brain cancer without even mentioning what kind of brain cancer it is, shows you don't know enough of the background information to even ask the right question, let alone assess the answers. This is like, asking "How do I fix a car problem?" without specifying what the problem is.

Specialization exists in our society for a reason. Let the oncologists do their job.

I get it, you're smart and you want to help. I'm smart too, and as smart people we can muddle our way through a lot of lower-complexity specializations without actually being a specialist. But I'm telling you medicine, especially oncology, is not one of those things. People a lot smarter and a lot more knowledgeable than us have been trying to cure brain cancer for a very long time and the fact that it isn't cured shows it's not something you and I can muddle our way through with a conversation on Hacker News. It's far more likely that whatever harebrained idea you come up with will hasten your friend's death or increase their suffering before they die, than that it will improve anything.

I mean, among the things you're considering is infecting your friend with Zika virus. For fucks sake.

d--b 5 days ago

The text below the title says stage 4 GBM, that is the specific form of brain cancer. So that’s that…

I don’t deny that smart people are trying to cure cancer. And I don’t pretend to be above them.

My point mostly is that I am reading about promising technology in the medical literature that is not through the clinical trials yet. So it is not available to the general public.

What I know is that the current available treatments are generally not working well. I don’t think my friend will last more than 6 months.

So what I am asking the community is: has anyone DIYed any of the promising technology and obtained any results. Seems fairly reasonable in a life and death situation.

As a matter of fact, someone who has GBM has indeed done just that (see in the thread). Unfortunately his experiment just started, so I can’t know if it worked for him or not yet.

Regarding Zika, yes it looks like it could work. You may not be able to do this at scale. I don’t have a clue. But if it was me, I’d book my flight to Brazil on the day of the diagnosis. A lot of people got Zika, the world didn’t end.

I don’t understand why people can’t stomach the Zika idea. A ton of medical research involves infecting people with live viruses.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240823-why-some-people-...

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kerkeslager 4 days ago

> The text below the title says stage 4 GBM, that is the specific form of brain cancer. So that’s that…
Which kind of GBM? You're aware there are different kinds, right?
> So what I am asking the community is: has anyone DIYed any of the promising technology and obtained any results. Seems fairly reasonable in a life and death situation.
> As a matter of fact, someone who has GBM has indeed done just that (see in the thread). Unfortunately his experiment just started, so I can’t know if it worked for him or not yet.
And if his GBM does go into remission, you still won't know if it worked for him.
In fact, no one has "indeed done just that". No one has obtained any results.
> I don’t understand why people can’t stomach the Zika idea. A ton of medical research involves infecting people with live viruses.
I can stomach infecting people with live viruses just fine.
What I can't stomach, is someone saying shit like: "Meanwhile, it is proven that the Zika virus does kill GBM cells in humans. This is what causes microcephaly in newborns. Inoculating the Zika virus in a controlled environment yields zero risk, and has no side effects."
Uh, that's not proven, and "zero risk" and "no side effects" is not a thing in medicine. I'm not aware of any treatment for anything that has "zero risk" and "no side effects", let alone some bleeding edge treatment with a virus that has barely been studied as an infection let alone as a treatment cancers. Even the studies you linked did not say what you claim here: that's you literally making shit up. You said that, it's a quote of you, and it was dangerously incorrect.
I think it's a pretty reasonable rule of thumb that if someone says someothing has "zero risks" and "no side effects", they should be ostracized from medical conversations. You simply do not know what you are talking about and should stop talking about it, because what you are saying endangers anyone who believes you.
And as I've reiterated a few times now: you do not have cancer, so whatever harebrained grasping at straws you would do if you had cancer is irrelevant. Your friend is the one with cancer, so maybe ask them what they want before inundating them with your irresponsible, unqualified medical advice.
I am sorry about your friend, I really am. But that's not an excuse for you to spread medical misinformation.

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- d--b 4 days ago
  
  You're quite upset. It doesn't help.
  Ok, yes you're right : medical stuff never yields zero risk nor side effects, I should have been more nuanced. And yes, Zika infection probably doesn't cure GBM either. There. Happy?
  Yet, there have been clinical trials where people have voluntarily been inoculated by a live zika virus shot to test if a Zika vaccine was working. So real doctors have done it before, and on people who were not going to die 6 months later.
  See here:
  https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/how-human-challen...
  So you can blame me all you want for suggesting this CrAzY IdEa, but you should also be pissed at those doctors who actually did it in clinical trials.
  From my point of view the situation is:
  1. There is a non-zero probability that the Zika virus aggressively attacks GBM cells, as suggested by a whole bunch of medical literature.
  2. Current treatments are not working well and do induce extremely debilitating side effects.
  3. There have been clinical trials where people have been voluntarily infected with Zika.
  It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that we could try and cure GBM patient by infecting them with a live Zika virus, exactly the same way as we did to test the Zika vaccine.
  But instead doctors say we should follow a protocol that we know doesn't work and is very heavy in terms of side effects. And people just keep dying really fast, without trying anything new.
  It just pisses me off.
  --
  Re: my friend has cancer and not me. Is there anything I wrote that suggests I am forcing anything upon him? I haven't told him anything about the research I am looking into. You're just too angry for some reason...
  
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