Stem Cells At The Core of Cancer?

davecb writes "The Globe and Mail reports that cancers have at their core a small number of stem cells, without which they cannot spread or reoccur. From the article: 'A spate of new discoveries about the basic biology of cancer is pushing researchers toward an astonishing conclusion: For decades, efforts to cure the disease may have targeted the wrong cells.' If true, the discoveries of Canadian and Italian research groups may give us a new path to selectively attack cancer."

Fundamental Flaw

[onion2k]

There's a huge flaw in the article. You don't kill the king in chess, you capture him.

I knew it!

[jtorkbob]

The President was right the whole time! These evil stem cell things really are evil!

Re:Fundamental Flaw

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You don't kill the king in chess, you capture him.

Yeah, in pussy chess. In girly chess you kill the king.

And in manly chess, you kill the loser. Suicides are common.

Re:Fundamental Flaw

[TheRagingTowel]

There's a huge flaw in the article. You don't kill the king in chess, you capture him.

... and then you kill him, else why would you capture him?

Operation: Eradication

[Dachannien]

Since stem cells come from embryos, and stem cells also cause cancer, the solution is obvious.

We must eradicate all embryos.

(We should probably eradicate all babies while we're at it, just to be safe.)

Core of Cancer?

[smittyoneeach]

Core of Cancer?
Easy answer.
Research me closer,
Tiny dancer.
Burma Shave

Re:Fundamental Flaw

[yibble]

For ransom, of course :)

A common practise in history.

Re:Fundamental Flaw

[VTMarik]

To force him to abdicate his throne, name you as his successor, give you his woman, and then to dress up in frilly clothes and call him your gentleman-in-waiting, why else?

Four words

[CheeseyDJ]

"Bring out the gimp"

Re:I knew it!

[Shaper_pmp]

Indeed - it's the stem cells! They're in it with the gays and the terrorists!

But the thing to remember is that there's really only a small hard-core of stem cells hiding in a huge mass of normal cells, with no real popular support. So what we should do is go in all guns blazing and take out as many of the healthy cells as we can in the cross-fire, then occupy the entire body and sell off its natural resources (dental fillings?) to Halliburton for no-bid contracts.

Furthermore, during our occupation we should beat the stem cells by fragmenting them into lots of small, decentralised groups, encouraging them to co-opt (or "radicalise") lots of previously healthy cells... so they'll seed lots of new tumours all over the body that we can wade into all guns blazing, killing healthy cells and spreading stem cells even further throughout the body, so that- Ahem.

Mission Accomplished!

(FWIW that was supposed to be "Funny", not "FlameBait"... ah fuck it- Karma to burn :-)

Aha!

[cparisi]

Stem cells are evil! This will pave the way to a constitutional amendment to ban stem cells!

cliche

[IwantToKeepAnon]

I for one welcome our new stem cell overlords.