cancer cure?

original post march 2007:

New Scientist reports hopeful news on the health front:

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers... dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

update & bump April 22 2007:

Though there is still potential for DCA to become a cure, the hype may be premature. Other articles pro and con here, here, here, here, here, and... lots more.

sifting

The previous post drew many comments from one atheist, with several overlapping issues being mentioned. Though I tried to respond to each, I did so in a hasty and disorganized manner. The next few posts will separate and try to clarify some of those issues. Topics may include:

Separation of church and state.
Morality vs Relativism.
Old Testament laws.
Faith requirements for all belief systems.
Reliability of ancient texts.
and others.

Return of the King-Bashing

Molten Thought points to an American Spectator article about a dangerous trend:

While (blasphemous modern "art") and Church-bashing documentaries are frustrating, there is something that is more offensive still. That much of the media in the U.S. and Europe are politically liberal is a given. What is becoming increasingly alarming is the anti-Christian slant with which they present the news and its growing influence on some Americans...

This manipulation of public opinion is at work as we speak. Is the practice of infanticide called abortion a political hot potato? If so, it's (reported as) the fault of the followers of Jesus, and not those who actually take innocent life. Are diseases like AIDS killing thousands? Don't look to those who encourage sexual licentiousness; (they) blame the Catholic Church for not handing out condoms in Africa. Terrorism? (It's reported as) merely payback for Christian-American repression and/or the Crusades.

But could this disinformation policy practically affect the thinking of the huge majority of Americans who claim to worship Jesus Christ? Too much of the public seems to be acting out these nefarious ideas, the worst of which is the doctrine that people must keep their faith -- the Christian one only, thank you -- out of public life lest they be considered religious fanatics. After all, everyone knows that "more people have been killed as a result of religious wars" than any other, right?

The 20th century was the bloodiest, most savage epoch in recorded human history, yet little of the carnage was a direct result of religious pursuits; quite the opposite. Most of the regimes responsible for the deaths of untold millions were those that discarded Christianity in favor of the State. The extent of suffering in the service of Communism, Socialism and Nazism was unprecedented; as was that of those who opposed them.

Our constitutional republic, with its safeguarding of religious liberty and God-given rights, is one of the only forms of government that can stand in the doorway of such ferocity. As we presently see, there are certain religions whose tenets are totally incompatible with protecting those rights for all. Our Christian heritage -- tempered by the experiences of our European forefathers -- paradoxically guarantees the rights of others to disparage its Founder with impunity.

But this does not mean we must accede to their irrational fears and hatred for those whose charity toward them springs from the heart of Jesus Christ. As history has painfully demonstrated, less Christianity leads to more violence and hate, while true adherence to the Gospel can only bring the peace and love of which liberals so fondly speak.

missing

Sad report: the Mish-Mash blog seems to have gone away, hopefully only temporarily. The last entry was sometime around Thanksgiving 06, and hosting was suspended about a week ago. His... unique... brand of humor will be missed.

p.s. some of the graphics for this site were hosted on his site, and so are now missing, most noticeably the title bar. this will be fixed in the near future.