Claude Clay said:
i had always hoped that in the search for a cure for 'x' ( HIV) that along the way a path would have been found that included a cure/prevention for cancer.
Cancer is not as easy because each cancer is different, and it is the cells of the body getting out of hand, not a foreign body.
In fact that is a major concern I have with this new technique of using the immune system to target cancer by creating antibodies.
There is a very real risk these cancer cells, which are in fact just mutated human body cells, are close enough to some other normal cells (maybe even in a different part of the body) that it could trigger various autoimmune conditions.
An autoimmune disease being the immune system attacking and killing certain healthy cells in the body, like say a specific type of organ tissue.
It is still a good tool to have available and would certainly beat dying of cancers hard to treat, but vaccinating the body against cells of the human body is quite risky, and I don't think most of the public realizes it.
It would be interesting to see how many people treated develop an auto immune disease within some years of the vaccination. Where the immune system turns against the body and starts killing some organ of the body that it thinks is close enough to the cell it was trained to attack.
As for lung cancer, while there is many causes, tobacco use is often a cause. I believe half of the deadliness comes from the additives. Tar, or smoke in general is bad for the lungs from any plant, especially if it accumulates. But if you look at the approved (and that is not all of them) additives some of them are downright scary, more likely to cause cancer than the plant material is. They add chemicals so they burn evenly, chemicals to make them taste better, burn cooler, etc
They even add things little different from asbestos to tobacco!
Since tobacco is considered to be deadly by the public anyways, they get away with adding deadlier things to tobacco products than they ever would be able to add to foods, and when people get cancer or die the tobacco use, a chosen risk, is blamed. Not any of the far deadlier additives.
People inhale these deadly additives into a critical and sensitive part of the body.
The tobacco substitutes are no better.
For example here is a 1978 patent describing some of filler of cigarettes:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4119104/description.html
Highlights include:
Numerous tobacco substitutes are known; typical tobacco substitutes are described in, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,809,904; 3,410,276; 3,461,879; 3,477,865; and 3,732,392. Generally, such tobacco substitutes comprise a binder, a fibrous filler, such as asbestos or kraft pulp, to impart strength to the tobacco substitute sheet and a combustion control or burning rate modifying agent.
Boric Oxide, Boric Oxyacids, and Ammonium, Alkali Metal, or Alkaline Earth Metal Salts of Boron Oxyacids
They are describing industry practices for tobacco substitutes, before even going into their own worse patent invention.
You can find many notes from the tobacco companies of various additives. A popular one by weight has been alumina trihydrate.
When alumina trihydrate is heated it releases 3 water molecules, which absorbs heat, cooling the smoke. This makes for a cooler more pleasant smoke.
It also creates aluminum oxide.
Aluminum oxide (aka corundum) is very hard and widely used as an abrasive (such as the 'sand' on sand paper.) Probably not something you want to be smoking, considering a lot of such cancers are caused after continuous irritation and scaring. Sand paper in the lungs is not much better than asbestos.
I could go on all day with examples of deadly things they add to tobacco that make it far deadlier than the plant itself.
But when someone dies, oh it was from tobacco use, a risk they knowingly chose.
