byteCoder

Yes, for the two days of high dose IL-2 every 8 hours, it was pretty bad. My experience was limited to nausea, fever, sweating, and bed-shaking rigors. I've heard that some patients experience hallucinations.

Note: IL-2 was administered after I received my lab-grown white blood cells. It acts as signal to one's immune system to activate. It was used to jumpstart my immune system after it had been replaced.

I’m now 5.5 years post-treatment with immunotherapy for Stage IV melanoma and have had no evidence of disease for over four years. When immunotherapy works, it can be impressive.

For me, my treatment (adoptive cell therapy using tumor infiltrating lymphocytes) used my own white blood cells (130 billion in lab-selected and expanded form) to overwhelm the mutated cancer cells.

It was a one-time treatment (over 3-4 weeks in the hospital) with no further meds or other treatments required.

Immunotherapy has become an important tool in the future of fighting cancer, for sure.

This was demonstrated on "Mythbusters" in 2013:

"Hot-air hand dryers are less sanitary than paper towels in public restrooms.

CONFIRMED

In a preliminary test, Adam and Jamie found that washing their hands properly with soap did not leave behind enough bacteria for them to count, so in the remaining tests, participants only used water to wash their hands.

Sixteen volunteers were enlisted to have their hands sprayed with a harmless strain of E. coli bacteria. The volunteers’ hands were then swabbed for a sample, then washed using water but no soap, then swabbed again, then dried using paper towels, then swabbed a third time. Next, the entire process was repeated with the same volunteers, but using hand dryers instead of paper towels. On average, the paper towels removed 71% of the bacteria on the volunteers’ hands, while the hand dryers only removed 23%, confirming that the myth is true for individuals.

Adam and Jamie also wanted to find out how clean the drying area of the restroom stayed with each drying method. Before the previous experiment began, the mock restrooms were thoroughly cleaned. After the experiment, swabs from the paper towel area yielded 3 bacteria colonies while swabs from the hand dryer area yielded 41 colonies, confirming that the myth is also true in regards to the cleanliness of the restroom."

https://mythresults.com/down-dirty-earthquake-survival

For weight loss, diet is more important than exercise, by far.

There are several aphorisms about this:

1. "Abs are made in the kitchen." 2. "You can't outrun a bad diet."

Personally, I've found that carb restriction (e.g., Keto) has worked well for me for keeping my blood sugar (A1c) levels down (with an added bonus of weight loss). YMMV

I suspect that Richard's first computer was an Apple ][+, not an Apple //e (as claimed by the article), as Ultima existed (published 1981) well before the Apple //e was released (1983).

Here's a good, quick review of the case-law precedents regarding free expression in quasi-public places in the United States:

http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/54-quasi-...

Nope. As far as I know, I've retained my immunities.

However, I do know that my seasonal allergies have changed slightly since treatment–they've actually moderated. I don't know if that's due to the treatment or just an age-related occurrence.

My melanoma was initially an ugly black mole that grew on the side of my face, which I had removed by my dermatologist and sent to pathology for analysis, where it was determined to be a melanoma of intermediate depth.

Because of its depth into the skin tissue, I had a wide excision (where more skin tissue is removed) and a sentinel lymph node biopsy which removed four lymph nodes that were most closely connected to the tissue that was removed. Of the four nodes removed, three were negative (clear) and one had a micro metastasis (micromet) sized 0.18mm. This placed me at Stage IIIa.

The melanoma developed as tumors in my lung just over a year later, putting me at Stage IV.

The primary symptom I had was the mole. I felt completely normal.

As far as the treatment, read my answer about the "hellish" nature of it in another reply.

The research doctors at NIH have been refining treatments with IL-2 for almost two decades for thousands of patients. They've gotten enough experience to recognize and mitigate the issues that may develop.

In my specific case, they weee concerned that I might have a heart issue that was unknown (I don't). For the sake of my own safety, I was given the treatment in ICU. For most patients, this is unneeded.

Actually, my biggest risk was contracting a superbug with my severely weakened immune system. The last NIH patient who died from the superbug was a few rooms away in ICU at the NIH Clinical Center at the same time as me. (I knew the doctors were taking extra precautions with me, but I was totally unaware of was what happening down the hall from me.)

https://www.google.com/amp/www.nbcnews.com/health/health-new...

My biggest side effect has been vitiligo, the loss of color in my skin. The treatment caused my immune system to attack my melanocytes in addition to my melanoma cells. This is actually a great prognostic indicator.

If that's the worst of it, I can handle it, especially considering the alternative.

I don't know all the technical measurements and details, but, yes, the researchers did feed them parts of my tumor.

Absolutely agreed.

I hope that I'm wrong. Many more patients can possibly be saved with more widespread use of this treatment. Of course, the FDA needs to modernize their own approval processes to deal with such personalized treatments. It's my understanding that my lab-expanded lymphocytes needed to be individually approved by the FDA.

I do know that my specific trial at NIH was sponsored by Lion Biotechnologies as part of that company acquiring a license to reproduce the laboratory processing for the TIL ACT.

Since this was conducted under a research trial by the US government, the treatment did not cost me (or my health insurance) a penny.

I am told that the treatment and follow-ups cost the research program budget at least a million dollars per patient.

You've listed the main side effects of the treatment: pain, fever, and delirium.

About 20-30 minutes after receiving a dose of IL-2 by infusion, my body would undergo violent bed-shaking rigors for 10-20 minutes. I had the worst chills I've ever had, followed by breaking out in a hot sweat when it had passed. This was very unpleasant.

After each successive dose, the effects would worsen.

Essentially, the doctors were trying to take my body to the brink of experiencing a cytokine storm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm) to jump-start my immune system.

This was a pretty miserable part of the treatment, but (in the end) obviously worth it.

Also, besides the overall success of my treatment, other than regular followup scans, I don't require any further medications of any sort. It's a one-and-done treatment. I'm certain that Big Pharma doesn't like these treatments.

Five years ago, I had my own immune system rebooted to (so far) eliminate my Stage IV melanoma cancer in a trial at the National Institutes of Health. At that time, without further treatment, I probably had six to twelve months to live.

In essence, the tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) adoptive cell therapy was as follows:

1. The doctors removed a melanoma tumor that was growing in my neck.

2. In the lab, white blood T cells (T lymphocytes) that were attempting to attack the cancerous tissue in my tumor were isolated into at least five different petri dishes. The white blood cells' growth was stimulated using IL-2.

3. Those samples that grew the most and attacked the cancerous tissue (2 of the samples, in my case) were then expanded to a total of 130 billion lymphocytes in the lab.

4. I returned to NIH for a week of immune system preparation, specifically the almost complete suppression of my own active immune system using harsh chemotherapy. This was to allow my body to accept the new lab-grown immune system.

5. Once my immune system was sufficiently suppressed, I received all 130 billions of the lab-grown lymphocytes. The immune system was then stimulated by having five large doses of IL-2 every eight hours over a two day period. (Note: This was hellish.)

6. After a week or so, my immune system had recovered and I was released from the NIH Clinical Center to return home. I was given an anti-biotic to take for 4 to 6 months to reduce the possibility of contracting a specific pneumonia (PCP).

7. I returned to NIH monthly for scans monthly for the first three months. After month one, my tumors had shrunk 33%. After month two, 66%. After month three, they were almost complete gone. My immune systems had essentially been immunized against some of the mutations contained in my cancerous melanoma cells.

8. I was declared NED (no evidence of disease after 15 months) and a complete responder to the treatment after 21 months.

Now, almost five years post-treatment, I have had CT scans and brain MRIs every six months with still no signs of melanoma. My doctors have told me that I'm likely cured.

Immunotherapy works. I chose this trial because the I liked the fact that my own immune system was being boosted to fight my cancer.

Further info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor-infiltrating_lymphocytes

My doctor is Dr. Steven Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute.

As a young widower myself, I can relate to many of the emotions and grief expressed in the article.

It's actually no surprise that I ended up meeting, connecting with, and eventually marrying someone who was widowed in her 30s. From the day we met, on the loss of a spouse (to cancer in both cases), we understood each other on a level that others could not.

Abstract

Physical activity is associated with reduced risk of several cancers, including aggressive prostate cancer. The mechanisms mediating the effects are not yet understood; among the candidates are modifications of endogenous hormone levels. Long-term exercise is known to reduce serum levels of growth stimulating hormones. In contrast, the endocrine effects of acute endurance exercise include increased levels of mitogenic factors such as GH and IGF-1. It can be speculated that the elevation of serum growth factors may be detrimental to prostate cancer progression into malignancy. The incentive of the current study is to evaluate the effect of acute exercise serum on prostate cancer cell growth. We designed an exercise intervention where 10 male individuals performed 60 minutes of bicycle exercise at increasing intensity. Serum samples were obtained before (rest serum) and after completed exercise (exercise serum). The established prostate cancer cell line LNCaP was exposed to exercise or rest serum. Exercise serum from 9 out of 10 individuals had a growth inhibitory effect on LNCaP cells. Incubation with pooled exercise serum resulted in a 31% inhibition of LNCaP growth and pre-incubation before subcutaneous injection into SCID mice caused a delay in tumor formation. Serum analyses indicated two possible candidates for the effect; increased levels of IGFBP-1 and reduced levels of EGF. In conclusion, despite the fear of possible detrimental effects of acute exercise serum on tumor cell growth, we show that even the short-term effects seem to add to the overall beneficial influence of exercise on neoplasia.

I'm currently almost 3.5 years post-treatment in one of Dr. Steven Rosenberg's adoptive cell therapy trials for Stage IV melanoma (which were mentioned in the article). I'm one of the lucky patients (20+%) who have experienced a complete response because of this treatment. Triggering the body's immune response does work for some patients and some cancers, and this can be a fruitful line for research.

Looking at their score example at the bottom of the page, the right-hand score is defined as a separate entity from the left-hand score. As a result, to the OMN notation reader, it's hard to see the inherent synchrony between the two hands. This would be a bitch to debug and compose (i.e., code) without its display on a standard staff, which would show the time-ordered parallelism directly.

Immunotherapy absolutely works for melanoma–I'm living proof. As a Stage IV melanoma survivor, immunotherapy via a tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) trial at NIH has extended (if not saved) my life. I'm over two years out from treatment and am currently NED (no evidence of disease).

Also, Federally-funded research at NIH continues to push the envelope at relegating cancer to a chronic disease (if not cured altogether).

Following the tradition of sports, I propose that commit id e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290 be officially retired.

Of course, we never hear about all the times the system has given false positives.

This critique appears to be projecting its author's desire for a solution to the EHR compatibility problem on to Apple. I haven't seen anything from Apple indicating that HealthKit is the answer to this problem.

HealthKit provides a way for iOS devices to integrate health-related device data for use by the iOS device owner, no more, no less.

Reading his blog, it appears he went though a similar immunotherapy trial at NIH that I underwent almost two years ago (mine for melanoma). I'm saddened to hear that it was not successful for him.

Immunotherapy treatments continue to improve, making them a viable treatment path for various types of cancer. The adoptive cell therapy approach, which Jay underwent, uses one's own immune system to fight one's cancer cells is an approach to personalized cancer treatment, compared the blunt clubs that most chemotherapies are. These treatments are moving from science fiction to science fact.

P.S. Please support the continued funding of NIH and NCI cancer research by the Federal government. These agencies represent some of the best stuff that is being done by the government.

Certainly, it appears that the insert and delete key icons are based on classic proofreader's marks.

The caret above the "a" means insert. The a with the looped line through it means delete.

Although I do prefer the idea that all peer reviewers are transparent, anonymous peer review isn't the problem per se—it's really the lack of oversight of the anonymous reviewers by the journal editorial staff that's the real problem.

The editorial staff (which unfortunately is overworked and doesn't have the time to do this) needs to review the anonymous peer reviews and compare it to feedback from the original authors. If a particular anonymous peer reviewer that is consistently at odds, then they should no longer be used.

Of course, the above is much easier said than done.

My son tells me that with SpeedChat Plus in Toontown, transmitting friend codes is much easier because only certain words are filtered out. If you want to transmit numbers, you can enclose homonyms in parentheses "(too").

Nice table. Until my wife's MacBook slid off it.

Note to self: Add a sticky mat in the future to add a little friction.