Monday, June 04, 2007

The battle over a cancer pill

From the Globe and Mail:
British businessman Peter Sartorius has devised his own treatment regime for prostate cancer. Every day, he drinks a salty cocktail, a mixture of water and an experimental drug called DCA he orders over the Internet.

Jim, a retired handyman in Louisiana, has lung cancer, and has been told that he has only a few months left to live. He swallows homemade capsules filled with DCA that his son, Jason, puts together.

Both men started self-medicating this spring after University of Alberta researchers announced that DCA (dichloroacetate) dramatically shrank tumours in rats without damaging healthy cells. But the Edmonton team was having trouble finding money to see if DCA works in humans. ...more

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