Destroying disease with electricity…

[CharonY]

No they don't. We had this discussion earlier somewhere already. There are different tracks to submit and as a member you only need to secure the comments of two referees. In other words, you as author ask others around and need to get two positive comments. Now let's see. You are prominent enough to become member of the academy. It must be awfully hard to find two people to say something nice about your manuscript, no?

 

Also, cell manipulation and lysis in microfluidic channels have zero applications regarding treatments. They are purely analytical devices. Some other references named in this thread do not deal with infectious diseases at all(according to the OP this is supposedly be about viral or bacterial infections).

Edited July 25, 2009 by CharonY

[Mokele]

I agree that in vivo studies with controls are a must, but experimenters have to start somewhere. I spent a lot of time extracting antigens in vitro because access to in vivo methods would have required further purification steps by HPLC or column chromatography. It was too messy to perform in vivo. I was testing in vitro as a precursor to in vivo work.

 

Oh, I 100% agree. But you aren't making grandiose claims based only on in vitro data. That's the issue - in vitro alone isn't enough to support the claims tossed around in this thread.

 

IMHO it is easier to use electrotherapy which can be made portable and allow patients some form of motion rather than IV drips of colchicine. I don't know the reason though.

 

Eh, 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. The most important part is how effective each is.

 

This is where it gets a bit more controversial. For viral diseases, the evidence seems to be entirely anecdotal and uncontrolled. However, I don't know...I was reading about Jung at the weekend, and he was prepared to use methods which would be considered highly unscientific but he seems to have considered them acceptable as long as the patient was cured.

 

Jung was a crackpot, and there's good reason we've abandoned such lazy methods.

 

I think of my dear old Mum who has diabetes type II and if electrotherapy claimed to work for her, I would seriously consider it. However, the claims made for viral treatment are on shaky foundations and it is difficult to find any controlled studies, let alone any double blind studies.

 

But why accept anything based merely on proximity? An annecdote is still just an annecdote, and you can't distinguish it statistically from luck.

 

OK here´s some meat for you to chew on:

from my site: http://www.geocities.com/a57ngel/bio.../articles.html

"From China came the first results of a larger case study which uses the Electro-Carcinoma treatment with over 10,000 patients in the period of 1987 to 2000. One of the central results: in just over 30% of the cases, it brought about the dissolution of the tumors, and in somewhat more than 40%, to the reduction of the tumor. "

 

I don't want "I heard from somewhere". Link to the publication directly from the study, so I can examine every aspect of the methods.

 

"A study from somewhere proves I'm right, but I can't actually link to the study, so just take my word for it."

 

It is found that subjecting body parts containing cancerous tissue to a plurality of magnetic field pulses, with characteristic frequencies above about 5 kHz and intensities above about 1 Tesla, will either arrest the growth of tumors or progressively reduce the number of cancerous cells, resulting in remission of tumors"..."Twelve rats having primary DMBA-induced mammary carcinomas were treated daily with a conventional Magneform machine. A primary mammary gland carcinoma induced by a carcinogen, such as DMBA or NMU, is highly virulent, as outlined in substantial detail in P. M. Guillino, et al., Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 54, no. 2, February 1974. It is common for such a tumor in a rat to increase in size by about 10 to 30 fold in about 30 days, and if left untreated almost invariably will ulcerate within about 45 days. Ten of the rats are treated daily with 20 pulses at 5 Tesla and 8 KHz."..."It can be seen from the above table that after thirty days the tumors were either diminished in size, stabilized, or at least controlled relative to untreated tumors"

 

First, it's a patent - not peer reviewed.

 

Second, the sample sizes are so small as to be worthless.

 

Third, there's no control group. Worthless.