Novak retires because of poor prognosis of his brain cancer.

Not good news for Bob Novak. The Washington Post just announced his retirement.

He's a public figure so his private personal battles tend to become public events, but it looks like his political reporting days are over and he is now entering a very private period. I'd pray for an improved prognosis, or failing that, a good death. But that's presumptuous of me. He's now, at the end of a long life, entering the period we all face sooner or later, the end of his life. It's a period most Americans avoid thinking about. Perhaps we should all just pray for him.

I will.

Bob Herbert on Ted Kennedy

I haven't known what to say about the news of Ted Kennedy's brain cancer. I know that I feel shocked, and immensely saddened for him and his family, but the words just aren't there.

Ted's older brother John was inaugurated President in January 1961. I was age 18 and I graduated High School that following May. Ted was the little brother who was elected Senator in 1962 while his two older brothers were President and Attorney General. From then on in everything that mattered to America in the 60's and 70's the Kennedy family was always at center stage challenging us to be better.

As the rest of the Kennedy's were assassinated or died off, Ted Kennedy remained to keep that great candle lit. He always reminded the Senate and the nation what the Kennedy's stood for in American national politics - “struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

The Kennedy family has been part of the backdrop of my entire adult life. They have continually challenged America to be better than it was the day before. That's almost five decades.

But that's mostly just about me, not about Ted. What are the right words now?

As is so often the case, Bob Herbert at the New York Times has gotten close to the right words. Go read them.

Elizabeth Edward's cancer recurs; John NOT withdrawing from race.

NPR announced that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards, has learned that her cancer has recurred. The form is "treatable, but incurable."

However, in the announcement, they stated that John Edwards will continue to try to become the Democratic nominee for President.

Great News! Jane Hamsher's back from her surgery!

Jane Hamsher, who was blogging away with great aplomb at Firedoglake, was informed by her physician that her breast cancer had recurred and she required immediate surgery. So she did.

Now, in an incredibly short time, she has gotten out of the hospital and returned to her keyboard. This is great news. As good as the bloggers at Firedoglake are, there is a massive hole when Jane is not blogging.

Drug (DCA) may cure most cancers - Drug Co's don't want it.

Dichloroacetate (DCA) has been used for years to treat some rare metabolic disorders, and has been found to be relatively safe. Now it may be a magic solution to cure all kinds of cancer. So what's the problem? Why aren't all the drug companies panting to test and sell it? Well, there seems to be this minor problem with the economic system.

This is from Truthseeker:

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.

Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis’s experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020).

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don’t get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become “immortal”, outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.

“The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play:
they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy,” says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.

Wonderful, isn't it? There's just one problem. DCA is out of patent. It sells as a generic drug now. The drug companies are not going to waste the money that would be required for human testing because there is no possibility of getting the money back from sales. There is no monopoly possible on the drug. Private enterprise in the Free Market isn't going to touch it. Looks like a Socialist program is going to be required.

Does this mean the right-wingers won't touch the testing because it requires government funding??