GENETIC "OFF-SWITCH" FOR CANCER FOUND BY CANADIANS

This is some serious news, actually, and I'm sure it won't get major play in the mainstream news if it gets play at all. See, cancer is a MUCH bigger threat to American lives (as well as other humans) than terrorism. Terrorism, even in Iraq, only kills tens of thousands of people each year (if that), where as cancer kills hundreds of thousands of Americans each year--that number is even higher when you consider the rest of the world.

Yet what do we spend a trillion dollars on? Fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's really sad is that just a fraction of that trillion dollars would go a long way towards finding a cure for cancer--an even longer way now that the cure may have just gotten a lot closer. TheGlobeAndMail.Com is reporting (http://urltea.com/189n) that Canadian doctors have found a gene that turns off cancer cell production. Seriously.

Here's, well, the whole article (it's very short):

A unique gene that can stop cancerous cells from multiplying into tumours has been discovered by a team of scientists at the B.C. Cancer Agency in Vancouver.

The team, led by Dr. Poul Sorensen, says the gene has the power to suppress the growth of human tumours in multiple cancers, including breast, lung and liver.

The gene, HACE 1, helps cells fight off stress that, left unchecked, opens the door to formation of multiple tumours.

Dr. Sorensen's team found cancerous cells form tumours when HACE 1 is inactive, but when additional stress such as radiation is added, tumour growth is rampant.

Kick-starting HACE 1 prevented those cells from forming tumours.

The study appears in the advance online publication of Nature Medicine.

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