An update on my life

Well, LAP, he isn't "some guy", he is a co-founder. So let's start there.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medarex

Of course "cancer" isn't one disease. In speaking to him at length for the last 10 years, he's made me rather informed on the mechanisms behind cancers and how these new drugs treat them.

In any event, I'll be first in line to watch you eat your hat, considering that 20 years ago computers were running Windows 3.11 on 586 processors and pagers were all the rage. Technology is exponential, not linear.

Anyhow, all the best to you, Mumu. I sure do hope that she kicks its ass. I've seen incredible shit - my best friend has MS and was told he could never walk again. He was chair bound for 7 years, and when he had heart trouble, they zapped him and miraculously (doctors have NO IDEA HOW) he is up and around again. Crazy shit happens, and so there's always hope z

Oh stop being so silly Pete. To claim that cancer will be a thing of the past in 20 years is not just wrong tts imbecilic, I was only being polite about that. There will be no hat eating. To make such a claim just shows you have no idea what you're talking about. There is a world of difference between tests on rats and what you are saying. No drug is helping shit if you dont detect the cancer until its at an advanced stage and has spread metastatically throughout the body, so stop right there. Thats for starters. If your buddy who started a company with a wikipedia link has TRULY said or implied to you that cancer will be gone in 20 years then he is also a fucking imbecile. I eagerly await his presentations around the globe working in oncology, cancer research and clinical care.
Did you even read the article from their breakthrough published in 2013? Do you know how long it takes for trials of these kind, do you know how they amass statistics, results based on 5 and 10 year mortality? They wont even be fucking finished testing anything he has in his lab for the best part of that twenty years.

so no, cancer will not be a "thing of the past" in 20 years. Not even close. Thats just a laughably ill informed comment. I will probably be speaking with Sanford Meeks who is one of the top guys down at MD Anderson, he owes me a beer, and I'll prod him on why news of this breakthrough has not filtered down to the world of, well, everyone that works in the field and we can discuss what we will all do when everyone no longer has a job. Perhaps we can eat our hats together.

here is the article, in "Science" so its "light reading" and accessible to non academics
science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6165/1432.full

littered throughout the article is more than enough information for any professional working in oncology to know why the 20 year claim is nonsense, They even close with a last line that requires no scientific training or understanding of the process and timeline of what might be involved in making "cancer" (by your implication, ALL cancers) a thing of "the past" in 20 years, so totally eradicated
"It's likely that some cancers will not yield to immunotherapy for many years, if ever."

hey, I'm not knocking these new techniques, trust me, we are all excited about lots of new treatments and techniques, probably the biggest improvement will come from earlier diagnosis but lets calm down with the hyperbole - my informed prediction. In 200 years there will still exist forms of cancer killing people earlier than it should. Neither of us will be there for any hat eating on that one


www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science...ancer-professor.html
hope you are all taking your aspirin


I am still crossing my fingers for your results Mumu

Lovely that you decided to change your avatar and handle just for me. It takes a real commitment to "being right at all costs" to take a thread where a guy is pouring his heart out and make it about how smart you are.

*slow clap*

I think I've just decided to give up the Fort for Lent. This place can be so fucking negative and utterly caustic too often.

Cancer is a gazillion dollar a year industry that makes a lot of rich, powerful people in big pharma and the health insurance protection rackets even richer and more powerful. There's too much profit in it, it's not going anywhere in 20 years. Hell, look at all of the chemical shit they sling that CAUSES cancer. It's just like alternative fuel- real progress and the betterment of civilization is not a priority of the biggest and most influential corporations and businesses that lean on things like cancer as a kind of welfare that ensures continuance of profitability- at the expense of human lives measured in dehumanizing terms such as "outcomes".

So what is left for us is to treat things like cancer with a combination of medical technology, nature, compassionate caregivers and the human will to survive. Faith, hope and love help kick cancer's ass every day, and every day someone goes home cancer-free and every time it is as much a miracle as it is the result of research.

TL;DR, Mumu and his wife need our love and support, not the negativity.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Lovely that you decided to change your avatar and handle just for me. It takes a real commitment to "being right at all costs" to take a thread where a guy is pouring his heart out and make it about how smart you are.

*slow clap*

I think I've just decided to give up the Fort for Lent. This place can be so fucking negative and utterly caustic too often.

So just because Lee fucking disagrees with you, someone who actually works in the actual business, now its all caustic and toxic. That's bullshit right there.

It is not caustic and toxic to fucking disagree with you. It's simple you are not an expert and maybe Lee isn't either but he's certainly closer to the heart of it than you are. Changing his fucking avatar has nothing to do with it.

Yeah theres no negatitivity or causticity here, and I'm sure we all hope the news is good for MuMu.

But when you say things like "cancer will be a thing of the past in 20 years" I call bullshit on that. I'm not the worlds expert but it is my profession and I work on a daily basis with people who are indeed world authorities on this. No one is going to be pissed off if cancer is totally eradicated in the future. But it aint gonna happen in 20 years, not even close. I wish your mates company all the best, in fact, if I am not mistaken they either bought out or split off into a secondary company which is based in Copenhagen, a hospital which is twinned professionally with ours, which shares staff, and at which the head of their oncology department is married to the consultant oncologist in charge of our place. You've piqued my interest in trying to fix a visit there to see if they have any links with the company, plus laugh at Andy trying to play ASL properly

I called that bullshit claim out because its a pet peeve of mine because these kinds of stories come out all the time, and just lead to confusion and misinformation and false understanding in people who get their information second hand. A fmaily friend (the wife is also a medical physicist working in radiotherapy) is forever harping on about all kinds of shit she reads in books that go along the lines of "you just need to be happy and positive to beat cancer, all these drugs and treatments are just cons". So I have a very low tolerance for stuff like that. And the economics and sheer scale of the "cancer problem", and the timescales involved in research, testing, ethics, and follow up is measured in DECADES, and thats for any particular individual test which is by the nature of it incredibly specific and not some kind of woo hoo we've fixed it finally. Better diagnostic techniques and imaging are only ramping up the amount of cancer we know about, and theres a fuckton more that no one ever knows about until its too late. We are a hell of a lot more than 20 years away from a cancer specific biological silver bullet that can eradicate advanced stage tumours in situ and follow that up with the biotech required to repair organs and tissues that have been ravaged to fuck by cancer you didnt know you had until it was too late. Again, cancer will not be a "thing of the past" in 20 years. I'll pry my entire Heroscape collection out of my grandkids hands to send it to you myself if I am proved wrong.

I thought you'd appreciate your turn as my avatar focus, I know you like to give out the stick so I know you can take it too.

Cancer fucking sucks, thats for damned sure. Go MuMus wife (and boobs)!!

Saying "I disagree" is one thing. Calling people imbeciles and being a twat is another.

Like Mike said: too much negativity. I guess I'm guilty of being an optimist, but I can live with that. I guess some people prefer to be caustic and pessimistic, which is fine, but there's enough bad in the world that adding to it doesn't make sense to me.

again, there is nothing pessimistic. Its called "weight of informed opinion". Arguing back against facts by saying "dont be pessimistic" is exactly the shit in the books saying "dont get chemo and radiotherapy just think positive and drink herbal tea!". Its bullshit.

Every day you will see and read stories about cancer treatment and technology and its full of politics and outright lies to sell news stories Today theres one in the UK about how using old equipment "gosh, a linear accelerator thats more than 10 years old" with utterly garbage comments about what that actually means for a treatment. Last year a family after reading about it on the internet decided they knew better than a trained fucking consultant oncologist and an entire profession and "kidnapped" their ill son to another country hoping to get someone to pay for a protonn treatment for him, totally disregarding the fact that just because one trearment kind is "better" than another for one particular case or number of cases, it may not be for others (a fact I know well since so many proton potential children get sent down to my machine for a better treatment). A patient in another hospital right now has wasted the equivalent of 3 individual treatments (in terms of time spent by doctors, nurses, dosimetrists, physicists) refusing her treatment plan, created by one of the most eminent consultant oncologists in europe becuase she read some shite on the internet and thinks looking down her chest at the light field on her body doesnt look as optimal as it should, like she knows shit. Amazingly this has caused such a political storm backed by morons looking to score cheap points without her interest at heart have allowed this, shes now getting a plan which in the opinion of people who know is less optimal than intended. Fucking crazy.

I will be spending my weekend designing, tweaking, testing and measuring radiotherapy treatment plans for paediatric patients who will be getting their treatments on the machine (Tomotherapy) I am the responsible medical physicist for, when I am satisfied that the machine is working optimally in every way, and the treatment is as optimal as it can be for the poor little bastards who I will be sat helping wheel into the room, hold hands with while they go to sleep and try to reassure hollow eyed parents living their worst fucking nightmares. I won't be telling them to "stay positive, drink herbal tea and hang on, we will probably fix that in a few years". What we'll be doing is every fucking thing we can to give their kids the best chance they have with proven, peer reviewed and researched techniques and technology based on decades of clinical evidence. We will all be fucking overjoyed if it turns out a mate of yours perfects the scientific discovery of all time and gets it out in the shops and freely available within 2 decades, so theres no pessimism there, but I can tell you that the number of promises made in this field in that regard is very large and so far the number that have panned out in the manner you predict, well, you can guess what it is. Unfortunately

Show some dignity both of you and start a separate thread.

Better idea: how about we just pray for Mumu and his family, and go on living life as best we can in these dark days.

Finally we saw an oncologist after multiple scans. They gave us the good news that what she has isn't imminently terminal and as long as she has the standard response to the medication will live for 10+ years. Life won't be easy, she will have pain, early menopause and a degree of limited mobility, but unless it spreads she won't die.

This thread has weirdly provided us some comfort over the last week as whenever my wife was down, thinking she probably didn't have long to live, I told her that she knew what that meant, she had to provide this forum with a boob photo. That always brought a smile to her face and helped cheer her up.

I know it isn't perfect but I am glad you heard some more optimistic news. Hang in there.

I can't imagine what it must be like to have been diagnosed with cancer twice, and then be told you have ten years or so of life left. It's just unimaginable. I pray you have good insurance, and the support of good friends and family.

Thanks for the update MuMu and congrats on the news!

She knows you're serious about the b00b pic, right ?