Economic freedom leads to trade and specialization. Millions of free people pursuing wealth–among other things–develop products and ideas that benefit all of mankind. The mere possibility of a cure for cancers makes me immeasurably wealthier today than I was yesterday even though I do not currently have cancer. I may get it, or someone dear to me may get it, at some point in my lifetime, so this news has just improved my standard of living (and the standard of living of the other seven-billion people on the planet).
I hope these scientists become fabulously rich, which would mean great things for the other seven billion of us (minus one Michael Moore and his Cuban witchdoctors).
Aug 10, 4:55 PM EDT
‘Amazing’ therapy wipes out leukemia in study
By STEPHANIE NANO
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia – turning the patients’ own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells.
They’ve only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: Two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third patient is improved but still has some cancer.
Scientists are already preparing to try the same gene therapy technique for other kinds of cancer. “It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did,” said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. “We’re just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last.”
He led the study, published Wednesday by two journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.
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