buy DCA dot com under FDA investigation
After so much shouting and discussing and deploring going on in the skeptic blogosphere (especially at Respectful Insolence, c/o ScienceBlogs), it looks like the mainstream media have caught up with the Vet (Pet, or whatever they decide to call it) DCA and its linked forum at the DCA site.
After the story appeared on the Edmonton News, it made it to the Canadian national news (National Post, CBC) and finally, even to the BBC and Nature. The FDA, contrary to what some ID/quack supporters have been saying, has taken an interest in the case, especially after the main author of the DCA study manifested his worry at the sheer number of people trying to contact him to get dosage information, first for humans, then for 150-pound pets, and after the Canadian Cancer Society warned cancer patients, and encouraged them to refrain from undertaking unproven treatments.
Thanks to all the bloggers that have been talking about this, reporting, writing and taking action, the days are coming down for Jim Tassano and the DCA circus.
8 of you rambled:
So why can't people with cancer use DCA if they want? I have seen too many doctors that don't know squat yet they act as gods. So much for freedom in this god forsaken country.
I obtained and tested the material that they were selling at BuyDCA.com. It was extremely pure sodium dichloroacetate with the exception of a bit of additional water. My wife is dying of stage IV melanoma. The only time the cancer stopped advancing was for around a month when she was taking DCA. Every clinical trial and chemo they put her on only resulted in advancing disease. She is miserable now. There were no side effects when she took the DCA, but she has had awful side effects from the other chemo drugs she has taken. DCA resulted in a higher quality of life for her for a short period of time. I suppose I shall have to synthesize it myself (it really isn't that hard) then give it to her. I wonder is it better to have a PHd Chemist do this or some hack in his garage? People who say that cancer victims will shorten their life and reduce their quality of life by using this are only correct if those people take a huge amount of the material. The toxicology for this material is well known, and the amount that needs to be taken for therapeutic effect is quite a bit lower than any serious side effects. Before anyone spouts off about "the dangers of DCA" they should visit a cancer ward with people dying in agony with less than a month to live. Thanks to the busy bodies out there, a perfectly good remedy that was apparently working is out of bounds now. Big Pharma couldn't be more pleased.
You know I can't help but think of this. One of the justifications for having abortion clinics is that even if there aren't any abortion clinics women will get abortions from back alley abortionists. The thought being that if women are going to do this anyway we should make it as safe as possible for them to do so.
Doesn't this line of reasoning apply even more to something like DCA? This stuff can be made easily by people with practically no formal education. But is it safer to have someone with no chemistry background making it or a practiced PHd chemist that they had manufacturing this before the FDA raid? Since people are going to seek this stuff out, it makes sense to simply slap some mandatory quality control on this product for BUYDCA so that they can make it safely. Also the site should be required to tell people not to take more than 13 mg/kg (the point where some people start showing some side effects).
When looking at the known side effects of this chemical it is clear that its side effects pale in comparison to alcohol and cigarettes. Why are alcohol and cigarettes legal, which can only destroy, while this medicine which has the very real potential to save lives is forbidden?
It looks to me like there are a lot of unthinking, knee jerk reactionaries who have decided out of hand that only a profit driven super corporation has the "wisdom" to try this out on volunteers. Corporations have proven themselves capable of great greed. If this is a "cure" then corporations would have a huge incentive to shut down its use. Not just because the compound in question is simple to manufacture but because it is unpatentable but because its very presence threatens the Pharma Gravy Train with a complete dessication!
Good Reading for all....
Might make a few people go quiet :)
http://www.medicorcancer.com/DCAtherapy.html
enjoy
Wow, I think I missed a lot of the discussion going on here! Let me reply to your comments.
Anonymous July 18, 07
It is dangerous to take a drug that has not been tested for use in patients that are undergoing/have underwent chemotherapy. Especially if it is not done properly. It is not that people do not want to allow patients to use drugs that can cure cancer. The issues are:
- DCA does NOT cure cancer. It causes a size reduction in certain MOUSE tumors. That is NOT equivalent to curing cancer in humans. Plenty of drugs never make it out of the pipeline for this very simple reason - which is also why it is so hard to make new anticancer drugs.
- Proper testing needs to be done before the drug is administered. The drug needs to be tested for safety in cancer patients (not just humans in general) and, of course, for effectiveness in humans
To Anonymous July 24, 07
I am sorry for your wife. I understand what you mean. People who are very close to me are suffering of cancer as well, so I can sympathize with you. I am going to address your main points.
"she has had awful side effects from the other chemo drugs she has taken": granted, chemo can have very bad side effects, but in some cases it is the best we have. Recent research has found that inhibiting p53 actually helps alleviate the side effects, so we can expect p53 inhibitor to start being used during chemo soon.
"Every clinical trial and chemo they put her on only resulted in advancing disease.": that is not because of the chemo - it is because your wife has an aggressive cancer that the chemo does not manage to bring under control.
"The toxicology for this material is well known": not for terminal cancer patients who have underwent chemotherapy. That is the whole point of the trials.
"Big Pharma couldn't be more pleased.": this is not true. Big Pharma has nothing to do with this. People think that DCA cannot be patented. WRONG. DCA can be patented for use in cancer patients - in fact, Dr. Michaelis has already done that! All that remains to be done is running the trials to see 1) if DCA is toxic to cancer patients and 2) if it is effective in humans. This will also happen very soon. For more information, check out this website, and click on the PDF in the top left corner for the good news.
"a perfectly good remedy that was apparently working is out of bounds now": I like the choice of words, "perfectly good" and "apparently". And that is just the problem: the compound has NOT been shown to counteract cancer in HUMANS in proper controlled trials. Nobody is stopping DCA from becoming a cancer drug - if it turns out to be, we will know soon. The problem is with people taking a compound THINKING that it is a cure, when in reality we do not know. Moreover, this compound does have side effects.
To Punk
Well, let's see how that goes, uh?
For more information on why do-it-yourself trials and DCA administrations are not likely to work, please check this out.
Ok, Stephen, first of all: Of course that DCA has to undergo clinical trials before it can be approved as an anti cancer drug, but consider this:
My father, who has metastatic brain tumour and tumour in his lungs is only alive because of me and my family. NOT because of the doctors who gave him a only a week to live three months ago, and who are responsible for him still having cancer, because his doctor diagnosed him with hemorhoids when he in fact had colon cancer, what was a polyp first and what could have been removed if he told my father to take some tests. And the oncologists who told us that his brain tumour is inoperable when in fact it was, what we later found out when it was too late when it got bigger, after talking to a neurosurgeon and other oncologist, who said that the oncology never contacted neurosurgery, probably because of insufficient funds, I don't know why.
Or the doctor who said that there is no point to give my father vitamins or to treat him any further because we are only prolonging his miseries.
First of all: you can not speak of this subject because you DON'T KNOW the situation which cancer patients and their families are in. You are saying that you know people who have cancer, but it is not the same thing.
Now Stephen, what would you do when they told you that you have a week to live and that you should die as soon as possible.
Would you A: stop eating (doctor who said that my father's appetite will only prolong his miseries) and stop taking vitamins or would you B: being the ONLY alternative that you have, take DCA.
The most coward thing you can do is give up and die Stephen.
Now, if you say that you would not take DCA, you are full of it. What you should do instead of criticising cancer patients for taking DCA, Stephen, is use your energy writing blogs on the issue of how not enough funds are available for cancer research.
So what if it is only tested on mice and human cells in a tube. It is the ONLY hope you have. And what is the bull.... doctors are telling patients that the end is coming. That my father has only a week to live?? So that they don't give us fake hope?? He is in his third month now. How is that fake hope?? They doomed him from the beginning.
My opinion is, if there is only a slight chance that you can live more than they estimate, than they should not crush all your hope and sentence you to death, just because that they want to avoid any lawsuits in the future.
My point being: Of course the clinical trials have to bee done before they can say that DCA cures cancer, but people who will die anyway if nothing is done, drug like DCA, is the only answer. I just don't understand how you can say otherwise, that they should wait for the trials to be done when clearly, time is the luxury these people do not have. Don't you see that it is more than worth it?
Man, I can't believe after doing a day's research that I agree at any level with the alarmist wait for the proof crowd in their crusade. Yes, there is a huge potential for people to grasp at straws far too early in the process. The difference must be that I've got more faith in people than the government to make the life and death decisions that affect them.
If you have no alternatives in your treatment, and this chemical is available, then it does seem to be a very simple choice.
I think the confusion here is where Steppen wolf, Orac, Abel Pharmboy etc. draw the line. You all seem to advocate this non-use, non-availability solution such that the FDA is absolutely right to take a Phase III trial candidate out of pre-mature distribution because it may cause what exactly? (http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=DCA)
If in your quest to warn people such as not to do unjustified harm to themselves in desperation, you have taken even a potentially useful tool away from the terminally ill, do you not feel any remorse?
hello guys try checking out http://forums.cancer.vc - you can learn there more about dca, mms and other alternative treatment options
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