BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 3: Smallpox?!?!?!?!?!?!?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/article/42235.htm

Use SMALLPOX TO STOP BREAST CANCER????

OMG! OMG! OMG! When will it stop????? Won’t we all get smallpox now????

*sigh*

I can just hear the reactionary right and the ludicrous left going ballistic if this were to ever get beyond the mouse-testing phase.

Of course, it’s perfectly all right to use a deadly neurotoxin producing bacterium, Clostridium botulinum to make sure my face don’t get all wrinkly as I age. (Oops – I can’t have an opinion on this because I’m a big, old, fat, white guy and I don’t know and cannot possibly understand how the culture and society that has been fostered by, used by and perpetuated by ME (personally) – could possibly understand why I would feel compelled to inject my face with a protein so deadly, “…that one-millionth of a gram of them can kill a man and one pint would be enough to kill everyone on earth.”) -- but SMALLPOX?

Smallpox is a disease that was certified in 1980 by the World Health Organization as eradicated from Human populations. A true scourge of Humanity, it has existed in one form or another since 10,000 years before the Common Era and caused the death of an estimated 300,000,000 people, most of them children. Its relatives abound in the world and while not all of them are lethal to Humans, all but the most common still exist.

Smallpox – Variola major and Variola minor are certifiably deadly, far more deadly than Clostridium botulinum – but with a potential to bring far more help and hope than botulism ever did!

One of the relatives of the smallpox viruses has the creative name, GLV-1h164 has been used to attack a particularly nasty form of breast cancer. “Triple-negative” breast cancer “...is an aggressive form of breast cancer that accounts for between 10 percent and 20 percent of all cases. Younger women (under 35) are the most vulnerable, as are black and Hispanic women.”

These kind of breast cancers, while they maintain a relatively low profile because of their relative rarity, have proven a difficult cluster of diseases to conquer. We can’t even control them.

Most breast cancers respond to hormonal therapy by allowing cancer toxins to attach directly to the cells and kill them. Triple-negative breast cancer cells are NOT sensitive to hormonal therapy, nor are they destroyed by immune therapy.

In the initial tests, “...roughly 60 percent of the triple-negative breast cancer tumors shrank...while the other 40 percent showed evidence of tumor cell death...”

The use of cousins of smallpox seems to be effective, at least in current trials. Is it wise to hold such a small hope that good could come from group of terrifying scourges?

Absolutely YES! Let’s hope the continued research leads to a powerful weapon against triple-negative breast cancers!

Image: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/featuremedia/feature103/Smallpox.jpg