Today’s post is unfortunately a sad one. We lost a very close family member this weekend to a long battle with a number of ailments including Cancer. It was one of those situations where our loved one was taken decades before her time, but at least it was not something that just occurred suddenly.

It’s been a very sad weekend, but at the same time one that reminds me how precious life is. I also came to the personal realization that grief is for the living, not the dead. We have to continue on through this world forever missing a part of ourselves that can never be refilled.

This weekend also reminded me of a commitment I made some time ago to help Stanford University’s Folding@Home project which researches fundamental causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. Cancer and Parkinson’s have both impacted my family and I believe that with enough emphasis we can cure these crippling diseases.

And you can help Stanford’s research by simply running a tiny piece of software on your computer that only uses the spare cycles when you don’t need them.
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I sure hope either my current, or soon to be, sister-in-law (both doctors) responds to this article with some commentary (hint, hint)…

This article courtesy of New Scientist, and brought to my attention by Cash Struck.

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
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If you live in the US, you can print and fax in this form for a free subscription to Cure magazine.

Cure has excellent overview articles both for laypeople and physicians.
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A recent report from Reuter’s brings hope to the nearly 40 million people currently infected with the AIDS virus worldwide.

An AIDS virus genetically engineered to fight other AIDS viruses worked better than expected, suppressing the virus and renewing the immune systems of a few patients…

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