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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Quackery

Checking in with The DCA Site

It’s been a week since I last wrote about dichloroacetate (DCA), the chemotherapeutic agent that targets tumor cells by an interesting new mechanism based on the Warburg effect, as I’ve described in the past. After a very interesting article in Cancer Cell in January by investigators at the University of Alberta, the blogosphere erupted with […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for “success”

It’s been a couple of weeks since we last checked in with The DCA Site, that dubious advertising site for BuyDCA.com, where a chemist named Jim Tassano sells to desperate cancer patients non-pharmaceutical grade and non-FDA-approved dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent with an interesting and unusual mechanism of action that has shown promise in […]

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Bioethics Cancer Medicine Quackery Science

Dichloroacetate (DCA): A scientist’s worst nightmare?

Given all the verbiage (see the link list below) about dichloroacetate (DCA) that I’ve spewed into the blogosphere decrying the hijacking of a promising cancer therapy by conspiracy-mongers (it’s the cancer cure “big pharma” is keeping from you because they can’t make money on it) and opportunistic entrepreneurs like Jim Tassanno preying on the desperation […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Science

Things like this make medical science worthwhile: A drug to treat genetic diseases due to nonsense mutations

There are times when, as a scientist, I look at an idea and its execution and simply stand in awe. It’s particularly satisfying when it’s a relatively simple idea that could conceivably do a lot of good for a lot of patients. Oddly enough, whether it’s because I’ve been out of the loop or because […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for “success” (part 2)

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it. I say this in light of a commenter, who decided to show up in one of my old posts to claim “positive results” from dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule experimental cancer drug that has shown promising activity in rat models of cancer but has […]