Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought

Time for the antivax doomsday cult to extol the virtues of cancer.

Any horse cancer drugs out there I can take?
- You should inject bleach using a flash light.
- Any horse cancer drugs out there I can take?
  In my day Laetrile was the quack conservative medicine for cancer.
it's naaatural
- Guys, just look at the economy! Infinite, uninhibited growth is a GOOD THING!!!!
It's just a cold.
god wants the children to have incurable tumors
- I mean don't people already spout this crap?

LOL I just remembered that some folks in the anti-covid-vax/maga category have been referring to the mRNA covid vaccines as 'the cancer vaccines' based on disinformation that they would 'interact with your genes' and 'give you cancer in 2 years'

Seeing this headline [Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought] I had to look to see if it was the cancer-targeting vaccine or some mouth-breathers talking about the covid ones 😅

I'm going to preface this by saying I had the moderna series and all boosters. Also had COVID once, ironically the weekend before Id scheduled a booster. I entirely believe that the vaccine is effective at reducing infection rates and severity.
have been referring to the mRNA covid vaccines as 'the cancer vaccines'
Ironic, because they literally started as "cancer vaccines", literally a niche cancer treatment. When they were first approved in 2008.
based on disinformation that they would 'interact with your genes' and 'give you cancer in 2 years'
We really don't know the long term consequences of mRNA vaccines. The COVID vaccine is the first application of them at large scale, and the first application of them where we'd normally expect most recipients to still be alive and mostly healthy ten years down the road (again, because they were originally created as a cancer treatment).
Check in in 2030 and we'll know whether or not we made a good bet on that one. We probably did, but there's a reason the manufacturers were given immunity from liability for anything that comes of the COVID vaccines.
- There is a common misconception that long term effects will manifest long after the injection. All vaccines with longterm effects manifested their effect shortly after the injection. It makes little sense that you will have adverse reactions months or years later because the compounds are long gone from your system.
  There was also the misconception that the vaccine was rushed and that steps were skipped or shortened during testing. That is not the case. The administrative processes were prioritized and there was a huge amount of test candidates so testing could be done much quicker. The normal process is not longer because they want to gather more long term data but because it just takes longer to gather it.
- We really don't know the long term consequences of mRNA vaccines.
  We know they are way safer than the old DNA vaccines because they don't literally give you a small dose of the virus like the old vaccines.

Can't wait for it to be specifically priced for only the 1% to be able to afford. Just like all the other cancer drugs that work.

It’s for rich folk. Not for us poors. Elysium.
Why be that cynical about it? All technology is only for the rich when it's first introduced.
- I don't believe I'm being cynical, I think I'm being realistic.
  Recall that the formula for insulin was given for free to the university of toronto and now most people in the USA cannot afford insulin even though the cost of creation has not changed since the 1950's.
  It was only extremely recently that 35 dollar insulin became available in the USA and that's still obscenely overpriced.
  Reference: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country

You know what this sounds like to me?

Like Moderna is gonna ask $10k a poke.

Edit: ITT: Pharma bros telling me how awesome artificially-inflated medication prices are.

Sure would be nice if capitalism didn't exist 🤪
- It wouldn't exist at all if capitalism didn't exist.
  People would just get cancer and die like they used to.
  Capitalism is the reason we (and you) have nice things.
Damn you weren't kidding about the Pharma Bros. The fuckin Tankies are glad to not be the dumbasses in thread for once
Oh, what villains! Developing a cure for cancer and asking for ten thousand dollars for it!
In terms of cancer treatment, do you have any idea how small ten thousand dollars is?
- america is just sad
When it's inevitably going to be a lot less than that, will you eat your words?
- If it cost ten thousand dollars I'd throw an enormous party. That's already a very small price for a cancer treatment.
- The article suggests the vaccine prevents the recurrence of a specific cancer by 44% vs conventional treatment alone. So let's be pessimists and say it only prevents recurrence by 22%. Should we eat our words that still 1/5th of people who'd otherwise die or suffer horribly from a recurring cancer now don't?
  I think I would be more skeptical of the eventual price of this treatment and less about its effectiveness.
- As soon as you stop eating that pharma boot, homie.

I hope so much that this isn't a predecessor to this.

An immediate red flag:
"Now if you replace that man with a cop ..... 🤷 ... the picture changes"
- deleted
No, but it gives you autism though /s

what's really cool is this plus telomerase will give us a youth serum

How so? Cancer is something that one would be statistically likely to get eventually if you didn't first die of anything else I suppose, so it'd certainly be useful in extending effective lifespan if you already had a youth serum, but how would a treatment for cancer do anything for other age related disease?
- You get cancer all the time your body has natural mechanisms of finding and breaking down the cancerous cells. As we age some of these mechanisms start to falter, cells divide, but small errors over time accumulate.
  A youth serum is really not the goal, the goal is fixing errors in these systems, maintaining current functions and creating a new mechanism.
  This would work like a booster for this mechanisms and effectively make it possible to maintain and improve these systems. The side effect being an increase lifespan to some degree.
  I suppose this I just the cancer component, but several other things are still needed on the field of longevity research for a “youth serum” to be viable.
Here's the thing: we're not getting many people to the natural limits of the human body's age much less working out ways to go past that.
Jeanne Louise Calment was 122 when she died. There's a hypothesis that she switched identities with her mother at some point, but most scientists who study aging don't consider it credible. Many other supercentenarian claims don't hold up; they often come from places that had bad record keeping a century ago, and they just forget how many birthdays they've had. 115 seems the typical limit for most people, but even that might have very few legit claims.
There are so few people who make it that far that they're basically rounding error even when including incorrect claims. Monaco has the highest average life expectancy at 87. We should be able to add almost 30 more years to that before we even talk about extraordinary youth serums.
Better cancer treatments will be part of getting us there, but far from the only factor.
- telomeres are cells' biological clock... they get shorter with each division, and is the general cause of your body breaking down, round the 80's.
  telomerase and other chemicals can reset those telomeres, but also cause the body's existing precancerous cells to go malignant. (telomeres also limit cancer cell growth, and creating telomerase is one of the mutations required for full on cancer)
  so, if we can regrow cells telomeres without causing cancer... we have a youth serum.
  but there's already other telomerase gene therapy in development anyways...

I've heard this one before...

Safe and effective

IDK, after that I took two doses of Pfizer vaccine (which is a mRNA vaccine) I started to show some heart issues that I never had in my life. I'm even seeing a cardiologist. I'm not trying to be anti-vaccine but I admit that after that I am afraid of mRNA vaccines.

The article doesn't go into much in the way of details, so I can't begin to say how it might extend into the treatment of other cancers, but it does make it clear that this treatment is specifically for melanoma only. Which is great--it's a deadly cancer. But without more information, we shouldn't get too excited about this being able to treat other types of cancer.

I would be extremely surprised if this approach only worked for melanoma. I expect this is just the first cancer type they've tried applying it to. Some excitement is warranted here, IMO.

This will save a lot of lives in Australia and NZ. Melanoma is our bi-national cancer. Thanks, CFCs!

The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 “neoantigens.” These are proteins found only on the cancer cells, and Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells.

That’s pretty dope

You mispelled "expensive."

This is amazing news for countries with free healthcare! Even though the vaccine is expensive, it's nowhere as expensive as the care a cancer patient needs today.

Plus you can send a healthy individual back to their families and into society again.

Idk man that sounds pretty communist to me
- A country, looking after its people?! Get that communism outta here!
The shareholders of the pharma-industry will not be happy. You have to manage a disease, not heal it; that would be detrimental for the balance sheet.
And unhappy shareholders of big pharma is definitely not what we want; if they are happy, we will be happy.
- I'm very anti-pharma myself (depression is not a chemical imbalance, and pills can't solve it. Changing lifestyle factors can.) but if your statement were true they wouldn't have made this vaccine in the first place.

I got a ping off anxiety thinking about 'One Chance' the game where the end of the world was caused by exactly this, more specifically the end of all life.

You must not know how RNA works then or you would realize it is far safer than the old DNA vaccines.
- I do. Still reminds me of that game even if I don't think they are related concepts.

Ok… hooray?

During the little flu virus, whenever there would occur a yet new bunch of deaths due to hear attack, many newspapers would claim "You've seen this? And this proves that our magical Vxx works!". Yes, it does. However, it depends on what you mean by "works", for whom and for what goal. The same in this case.