Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Hopeful news in recent days about an old and dear desideratum: a cure for cancer. Or at least for a cancer, and a nasty one at that. The news comes about because investors in GlaxoSmithKline are greedy for profits, and has already inspired a bit of deregulation to boot.  The FDA has paved the road for a speedy review of a new BCMA drug for multiple myeloma, essentially cancer of the bone marrow. This means that the US govt has removed some of the hurdles that would otherwise (by decision of the same govt) face a company trying to proceed with these trials expeditiously.  This has been done because the Phase I clinical trial results have been very promising. The report I've seen indicates that details of these results will be shared with the world on Dec. 11 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.  The European Medicines Agency has also given priority treatment to the drug in question.  GSK's website identifies the drug at issue as "GS...

A name from my childhood, when for a period I was fascinated by the history of microbiology. Virchow was born in 1821 and lived until 1902. He was involved in anthropology, politics, etc. but is best known for his contributions to medical research. Virchow is considered the father of modern pathology. He applied cell theory, already then much discussed, to explain the effects of infection on organs and tissues of the human body. The basic insight was that the causes of disease are to be found not at the tissue level, but at the cellular level. This led him to especially groundbreaking work in the area of cancer, where he was the first to hypothesize that cancerous cells were originally normal healthy cells, not invaders. He also made great strides regarding thromboembolism, setting out the hypothesis that pulmonary thrombi are carried from the veins of the leg by the flow of blood, then doing the experiments that proved this point. Unfortunately, where there is light there...

"Drug development based on herbal cannabinoids has been slow in the U.S. largely because of the scheduling issue and reluctance of the National Institute on Drug Abuse to approve research studies. A great deal of the current dispensary-based knowledge about the uses and efficacies of various strains has been the product of popular trial and error, a potentially dangerous and irreproducible way to approach science." That's a quote from Anne Wallace, writing in MJ Investor News. I'll let you consider the implications without further ado.