THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIFE-SAVING VACCINES IS COMING

Two days after the Russian rebellion, the surprise is that the news media was actually on top of all the action. You would have thought that the absence of any kind of reliable information from that country would suppress "the truth."

First, earlier today, released was an 11-minute audio by the leader of revolt as defiant as ever. Then, later at night, a 5-minute address to his nation by Vladimir Putin, where he essentially reinforced what I thought was the reality.

Essentially, there was this revolt led by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group (about 40,000 mercenaries), which ended in a compromise arranged by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Certainly, this exposed Putin as vulnerable, and no matter what was decided, places Prigozhin as enemy #1 to Putin. What is the future? Stay tuned.

It is not popularly known, but there are already decades-old hepatitis B vaccines to prevent liver cancer, and HPV vaccines, introduced in 2006, to prevent cervical cancer. A typical case is Jamie Crase who was 34 when she thought she would die young with ovarian cancer. However, she is now 50 and has no sign of cancer.

Scientists today reported on an expanded list of vaccines for cancer to be available in five years.

Unfortunately, this initial injection will only shrink tumors and prevent cancer from returning, not prevent it.
Experimental treatments will come for lung and breast cancer, with melanoma and pancreatic cancer to follow.
Early efforts will be for something relatively specific, like a noninvasive breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ.
The medication will boost our immune system to kill cancer cells using that same platform for COVID-19 vaccines, mRNA.
Like in teaching T cells to combat covid, the cancer vaccine will do the same to fight tumors.

Moderna and Merck are jointly developing a personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma. From early notices, these vaccines will be expensive because each one will need to be made from scratch, unlike for covid, which ended up costing pennies/shot.

There is a failed history.

First, Provenge was approved in the U.S. in 2010 to treat prostate, bladder and skin cancer.
Cancer overcame this treatment.
But medical researchers learned a lot from this failure.

A few months ago Moderna reported it hopes to offer new vaccines also for heart disease and other conditions by 2030, which is only 7 years away. All are also based on messenger RNA technology. And the irony of all ironies is that COVID remarkably will show researchers the way to a whole host of other more significant cures!

Comments

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

Search This Blog