Cancer Vaccine Candidate ImmuneFx Enters Human Study

Prefatory Note

Young cancer victim

The struggle against cancer, a disease that has been reliably detected in humans and other animals as far back as 3000 BC, and which, almost uniquely, continues to strike fear in the human heart, is certainly a horrid and tough opponent. Not for nothing it has been called the Emperor of Diseases. But while the advent of modern medicine in the late 19th century supported by mostly untrammeled scientific research has accelerated the rate of discoveries and cures for many old scourges, including cancer, these victories, encouraging as they are, should not obscure the fact that we are perhaps 500 or, as some have suggested, even 1500 years behind where we ought to be, all thanks to the obstructionist role played throughout this evolution by religion, especially the Christian variety dominating European culture since the fall of the Roman empire and the fading of the science-friendly hellenic world.  Even in the 21st century, the medical knowledge lag caused by religious establishmentarians (those who condemned Galileo, for example, were mainstream religious, not fanatics) and today's fundamentalists embedded in the Catholic and Protestant folds, has stirred up ugly controversies, the most notable of them all perhaps the stem cell research kerfuffle.

The battle between conservatives and progressives on this issue cannot  be decided within the narrow confines of its suposedly "fair" ethical framework. Those who habitually clamor for the protection of human life at all stages, including from the very moment of conception, are also usually quite blind or utterly supoortive of basic social policies that would greatly improve the lives of countless people, already on this earth, living in poverty. And we are not even going to mention here this crowd's unyielding support for US jingoism and its companion imperialist policies. The monumental suffering, death and destruction caused by these criminal policies leave these people cold. In their ledgers embryos matter, fully formed humans not that much. Especially if they  have run afoul of the American empire's rules. So that's the part of the debate that's usually (conveniently) left out by contemporary mainstream ethicists arbitrating the argument. In any case, it's a fair assumption that absent religion's role in blocking or braking the development of science and medicine, an incalculable number of humans and other sentient beings would have been spared the horrors of cancer and similar illnesses. Think about this as we move forward, including the not insignificant fact that still at this stage of the game cancer research still needs to rely on charity campaigns to fully fund many of its leads. Isn't that disgraceful considering the obsene amounts squandered on the military and the criminal wars of no benefit to anyone except the ruling 0.0001%?  And yet, despite all these obstacles, the 21st century may be at last the one that buries this damned disease. —P. Greanville