That girl who moved here from California so that she could legally kill herself because she had brain cancer might, as it happens, have jumped the gun:
Like many original ideas, Matthias Gromeier's notion that polio might kill cancer tumors was met with disdain. But two decades later, the use of the virus known for crippling and killing millions is showing promise against one of the most virulent forms of cancer -- glioblastoma brain tumors. Two patients Scott Pelley meets in the first clinical trial for the treatment have been declared cancer free by doctors.
Gromeier and his team genetically modified the virus, rendering it safe for use in animal models and in humans.
He explains how it works. "All human cancers, they develop...protective measures that make them invisible to the immune system and this is precisely what we try to reverse with our virus," he says. "We are actually removing this protective shield...enabling the immune system to come in and attack."
The modified virus actually begins to kill tumor cells, but the resulting detritus spurs the patient's own immune system into action by enabling it to recognize the cancerous cells as the threat they are. And so it is a two-step process, initiated by the virus and then carried to completion by the immune system.
What we have here, then, appears to be yet another case in which "settled science" becomes unsettled; everyone thought he was a lunatic - you simply don't use a paralytic agent to cure cancer. Unless, of course, you do.
