Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Republicans in disarray!

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This really is a full service blog.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

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Reader Interactions

53Comments

  1. 1.

    MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson

    Newt Gingrich will be the first to note that vaccination was the cause of his man-whore slutdomification.

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    This is amazing shit.

    Everyone knows that vaccines cause psoriasis, phlegmatic imbalance and wanton thoughts.

    You forgot autism. Also. Too.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    @gwangung:

    Seriously, cool if true

    The big danger with enhancing the immune system is making sure it doesn’t go into overdrive. Great, we cured your cancer, but now you have MS! Here’s your wheelchair miss!

  9. 9.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    My next door neighbor had a b-day party on Friday night. 90 minutes after I got there everyone was asked to go sit in the family room. What followed was a 45 minute pitch about an anti-aging pill. If only it was anti-cancer, my wife and I would have been SO IN.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @gaz:

    Nagannahappen, the 27% will be with us forever, unless the Vulcans invade us, go absolutely apeshit from the torrent of illogic, and revert to Romulan disposition and get all Genghis Kahn on their asses.

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Shari:

    That’s what we’re told by the religious group with the highest divorce rate in the nation.

    Also, I dare to hazard, probably have the most pr0n stored on their hard drives of any group out there.

  18. 18.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Nagannahappen, the 27% will be with us forever, unless the Vulcans invade us, go absolutely apeshit from the torrent of illogic, and revert to Romulan disposition and get all Genghis Kahn on their asses.

    Some people think the whole country is on a slippery slope straight to hell but I’m not one of them. I don’t think the country is headed for lunacy and fascism. But that is an option and a decision will have to be made.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @Wag:

    anything that sounds too good to be true is.

    I think vaccines are a rare exception. Think about what people in 1700 would have thought if you had told them you could completely protect them from smallpox for the rest of their lives with a single treatment. They never would have believed you, but vaccination worked so well we were able to eradicate smallpox completely. You ignore the power of vaccines at your own peril.

  21. 21.

    The Other Chuck

    Apparently this vaccine is so earth-shaking that they won’t let you read the article, because when you click on it, you get a “Forbidden” message.

    There’s a few really smart people on DKos, but unless I recognize something written by one of them, I try to not get my science from the GOS.

  23. 23.

    moe99

    Yeah, I got the same error message. If you want good, solid information about cancer, the best place on the web is http://www.cancergrace.org. It’s run by MDs who really care about cancer patients, mainly lung and breast cancer right now, but with hope to expand into other realms.

  25. 25.

    losgatosca

    I won’t believe it until it gets the Jenny McCarthy PsuedoScience stamp of approval and Suzanne Somers publicly attributes her latest successful recovery to using it. And if the Christian Science Monitor runs an editorial endorsing it, I’m all in.

  27. 27.

    YellowJournalism

    “Everyone knows that vaccines cause psoriasis, phlegmatic imbalance and wanton thoughts.”

    So if my parents had refused the vaccine and let me get red, itchy bumps all over my body, I wouldn’t have the red, itchy bumps all over my body? But I’d have to give up my wanton thoughts, so it wouldn’t have been worth it.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @moe99:
    If you really want good cancer information, I’d recommend The National Cancer Institute, who are more or less the go to people. If you’re a Galtian genius who doesn’t want to associate with moochers from the government, feel free to try treating your cancer with free market alternatives like laetrile.

  32. 32.

    magurakurin

    @MikeJ: So, if the GOS is going to require that you be a member to read diaries, well, then their readership is going to get even less. I am a member, but I’ll be damned if I bother with signing in. I’m so well and truly over that place.

  35. 35.

    Schlemizel

    @Linda Featheringill:
    I agree about not heading for lunacy and fascism. We have F’ed up our natural resources, poisoning air, earth and water, and unbalanced the environment. Most of us will probably die in the coming catastrophe and any survivors will be reduced to hunter gatherers. But hey! They’ll eat an all natural diet while getting plenty of exercise before they die young.

  36. 36.

    Schlemizel

    @Roger Moore:
    Not sure how many people remember the laetrile scam any more. But did you know that the guys who made huge bucks from the scam sunk a lot of it to get some shitty B movie actor the job of Governor of California? They also formed a committee to help him in his run for the Presidency and provided him with a bunch of advisers. Those guys are the Randian base of the modern wingnut.

  37. 37.

    Cermet

    First – many cancers are not tumor related (far too many) so I would not think that these non-tumor ones would be much affected by any vaccine; also, some cancers are virus caused so a tumor vaccine would do zero for them; second, for many cancers, it is a stem cell based ‘cancer’ that causes the disease and these cells are not going to be much affected by vaccines – the vaccine could target the daughter cells of these stem cells but the root cause of the disease is then unaffected. Next, any vaccine must target and be designed for a very specific chemical site for a very specific cancer and in some cases, must be tailored for the person – these would make any treatment very expensive. Finally, a universal vaccine for cancer (non-tumor based – simply a powerful drug that kicks the immune system into warp drive) might sound good but as someone already pointed out – driving the immune system into a general attack mode can be worse than any cure (and for many people would mean death.) Sounds very suspect.

  39. 39.

    The Dude Abides

    Dendreon has had the Provenge prostate cancer vaccine approved and on the market since Summer 2010, so how is this Israeli company’s vaccine news? Granted, they are both immunotherapies. Provenge is autologous, but I’m not sure if the Israeli vaccine is autologous or allogeneic.

  40. 40.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Schlemizel:

    You mean this guy?

    Ernst T. Krebs, Jr.—Laetrile’s “father”—has often been referred to as “Dr. Krebs” although he has no accredited doctoral degree. He attended Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia from 1938 to 1941, but was expelled after repeating his freshman year and failing his sophomore year [3]. After taking courses in five different colleges and achieving low or failing grades in his science courses, he finally received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Illinois in 1942 [3]. In 1973, after giving a 1-hour lecture on Laetrile, he obtained a “Doctor of Science” degree from American Christian College, a small, now-defunct Bible college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The school, founded by evangelist Billy James Hargis, had no science department and lacked authority from Oklahoma to grant any doctoral degrees.

  42. 42.

    Lojasmo

    @Tim:

    Or eat things like wild caught salmon, and grass-fed beef. There are whole food diets that TASTE good too.

  44. 44.

    WyldPirate

    I didn’t read any of the primary literature on this vaccine, but it appears from the title of one of the links I read that they are using the Muc1 protein and glycosylating it improperly. My molbio and immunology skills are real rusty, but it would seem that they could make the vaçcine in cell cultures w/o having to worry about it being autologous or allogeneic, The Dude Abides.

    Perhaps I should have some coffee and go read a bit, though. :-)

  45. 45.

    AlladinsLamp

    Neither allogenic nor autogenic. There is no personalization in this vaccine.

    The vaccine stimulates cytotoxic T-cell activity towards a glycosylated epitope of the MUC1 protein, a protein found on the surface of some 70% of cancer cells.

    An adjuvant, not a preventitive.

  46. 46.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Schlemizel:
    The coming catastrophe? Soviet Eastern Europe, Maoist China, and the yellow fog of 19th century London would like to talk to you. The Earth has shrugged off far worse than the US can imagine inflicting on it. I’m all in favor of protecting the environment, but don’t go all doomsday.

  48. 48.

    prn

    FWIW, I used to do research related to cancer vaccines years ago, and have training in cancer research in general. I’ve been out of the lab for nearly a decade, so take everything I say with a grain of salt

    AFAIK, Most vaccines so far have been directed against solid tumors, mostly because those are easier to study in animal models. But vaccines could be used against non-solid cancers. The cells you most want to target are metastatic cells, and those start out as free-floating cells that have left the primary tumor; the immune system is perfectly capable of attacking cells within circulating blood.

    It does appear that many cancers arise from stem cells, but as long as there is an antigen on cancer cells that can be targeted, vaccines against stem-derived cancers could be effective. Every cancer is different, that’s why so many different treatments are necessary.

    Individual, or autologous vaccines made against a patient’s actual tumor are not all that impractical. Cancer treatment is expensive and complicated anyway, and if a tumor has been surgically removed, its not unusual for the tissue to be cultured, analysed, genotyped, etc. Individual vaccines tailored to each patient are not in the realm of science fiction by any means.

    Boosting the immune system in general is not a bad approach at all. Sure, maybe years later you MIGHT develop an autoimmune disease, but at least you’re not dead of cancer. Every year our understanding of the immune system grows exponentially, and treatments for autoimmune diseases improve as well, so cancer versus controllable autoimmune disease might be a pretty good trade-off. And the more we learn about using our own immune systems to fight cancer, the more we’ll learn about avoiding side effects. Even though we haven’t cured cancer yet, and we might never cure every cancer, treatment and survival overall is much better than it was 50 years ago.

    In many ways, cancer is like chronic diseases like HIV or diabetes – the goal is to keep the patient alive and healthy enough as long as possible. You may not “cure” the disease, but you can live a good life in the meantime. Vaccines are just another tool to accomplish that, not a magic pill, but nothing to shrug off either.

  49. 49.

    prn

    Also, cancers caused by viruses, are not essentially all that different than cancers caused by other means. There’s no reason vaccines couldn’t be effective against virus-induced cancer. The presence of virus doesn’t induce every cell to become cancerous. In cervical cancer caused by HPV, the virus is often essentially cleared by the time the cancer has reached clinical significance

  50. 50.

    PIGL

    @AlladinsLamp: as a clinical researcher friend of mine, who was involved in human papilloma virus research, once told me “it’s easy to cure cancer in mice”.

    Don’t be holding your breath, or god forbid giving any sufferer false hope. The odds of this ever working, based on the stage they are at, are about a gazillion to one.

  53. 53.

    Arclite

    @WereBear:

    I know that’s the Common Wisdom, but nutritional science took a wrong turn with Ancel Keys’ research because he cherry picked the data for the famous 7 Countries Study. So now, Paleo is looking far more promising for health, according to the latest studies out of Germany.

    Hmm, I thought that there were some studies that promoted the idea that vegetarians had lower cancer rates.

    First, initial studies have shown that high fat diets promote breast cancer. Vegetarian/vegan diets tend to be lower fat than meat eaters.

    Also, this study from the British Journal of Cancer shows lower rates of a broad spectrum of cancers for vegetarians (about 12% lower) and even lower rates for those that ate fish but no red meat (18%).

    And this 20 year longitudinal study shows that high intake of fruits and vegetables over time results in a reduction in many different kinds of cancer. Vegetarians on average consume more fruits and vegetables than non vegetarians.

    And it’s been well documented that meat consumption increases cancer rates for certain kinds of cancer.

    So, yeah, cancer thrives on sugar: if you have cancer (or even if you don’t) you shouldn’t drink Coke and eat cotton candy daily, but it seems like the vegetarian diet offers benefits over a non veg one.

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