Walk Through Literature Part 1 - 1688 Words

David Green Bio 3 Robu Walk Through Literature Part 1 1.) Basically, Gladwell leads the reader back and forth through time, and through the history of cancer research. It begins with trials and failures of commonly used drugs and treatments, all with limited to no success. Then new, un-thought of experimental, multi pronged treatments, which attacked cancers on multiple fronts, were developed. At first too powerful, then reduced, tweaked and perfected, these new multi-pronged treatments became a cancer fighting force to be reckoned with. Demolishing childhood leukemia in its first few bouts. Then a cellular biologist who figured that mass screen testing was not utilized massively enough, decided he was going to collect man-made compounds†¦show more content†¦It would attach itself to a cancer cell and aggressively aggravate the body to draw in the bodies’ defenses to all out assault that area. In theory, if you kept the patients immune system going, you could bombard the cancer and not have to worry about chemical side e ffects. Lots of treatments like chemotherapy weaken the immune system, so this would be an interesting alternative. One would first need to figure out a way to attach a â€Å"decoy† drug to the cancer cells and have it be one that the body would want to attack. 3.) The mayo clinic article on monoclonal antibody drugs for cancer seems to be a conveniently recent development and an answer to my query in the previous paragraph. Basically they are laboratory-produced molecules that are engineered to attach themselves to cancer-affected areas of the body, and make them more visible to the body’s immune system. They also block growth signals in the cancer cells, preventing them from developing new ways to improve blood flow to them. They even have the ability to deliver radioactive and chemotherapy directly to cancer cells without having to deal with daylong chemo sessions or high-dose beam radiation. This relates to Gladwells’ approach because researchers definitely thought outside the box to come up with it. A lot of todays’ medicine treats the symptoms and or gets the body to do most of the work. With cancer, doctors usually try to get the medicine to do the work. By unveiling the