Thanks Meirluc,
I was thinking of the last 31 to enter the trial after the halt, but what you're suggesting makes even greater sense. The question may be, was anything at all done to make the vaccine better, or is this a matter of surgery being improved by the product that better discriminates between cancerous and normal tissue during surgery. Perhaps it's a product of both.
Frankly I believe the treatment of all sorts of cancers is improving, so people are living longer with all sorts of cancers, but few are totally being cured. I for one can probably live a normal lifespan, but barring some new development, if I want to eliminate the likelihood of coming out of remission, I'll stay on chemo the rest of my life. The leukemia is certainly under control, but I can't say it's a cure as long as I'm on chemo. I suspect that many different cancers may be handled in this way in the future, and DCVax's may prove to be a part of this treatment. The question may be, can DCVax-Direct have a role if no tumor is seen to inject it into, but rather to deal with cancers which may be occurring but are undetectable because of their size.
Personalized medicine I believe will play a big role in our future, and that's certainly what we have here. I don't know that it will ever reach the point where diseases like colds and the flu are treated with something personalized, but I do believe that many terminal or very serious crippling diseases will be addressed with personalized therapies.
Surgery is an area where things are changing dramatically, but not in every case. I had a kidney tumor removed robotic-ally, but much simpler disk and hernia surgery was done with a much bigger incision. I suspect that a few years from now the robots will be used for nearly everything because they involve much less disturbance of organs, especially our skin. Humans will still control the robots, with computer assistance, but my point is that recovery will be much quicker as everything will be done through tiny openings rather than large slices that your hand can reach into. Of course all this will probably be replaced with nano-bots that can actually travel to where the surgical works needs to be done and do it on a microscopic level, but I suspect that's more than a decade away.
I suspect that anti-aging technology will make it so people can live productively for centuries, but we as a society need to deal with how to deal with that. I doubt that retirement at age 65 will still be the case if people are routinely living to 150 or more. I won't be around to see it, but perhaps my kids will.
Gary
