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Biotech / Medical : BSD Medical (Long Term Investment Oriented) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geoffrey Wren who wrote (115)	2/16/2013 12:28:35 PM
From: pleonastic	1 Recommendation Respond to of 178

>You are quite sanguine about this stock and the company's products.< No. “Sanguine” refers to a highly positive psychological posture. My posture regarding electrohyperthermia/ablation is based on data and reasonable or proven theory; not a psychological mood. >You did not address the issue I raised, which is that while the presence of undifferentiated cells in a tumor might provide a theory of why hyperthermia might be effective, or more effective than other treatments, it is only a theory, and is beside the point when the issue is actual effectiveness.< Yes – except that, whatever fundamental things are involved, these are also important to understand. And, why are you “might-be-ing” data from many trials and actual practice that strongly indicate hyperthermia provides substantial increases in actual effectiveness of standard cancer therapies? -- with little to zero contrary results. >It might be good if you perceived why few doctors have yet been sold on this technology. < That would be good for you to perceive, also. Doctors are a notoriously conservative group (with, however, notable exceptions). Further, do you doubt that protecting their wealth is not one motive? Above all, avoid being sued! -- by sticking to common practice! No, that is not meant to be a fair statement – just an undeniable issue in a complex of issues. More to the point, new therapies are introduced by pioneering doctors; and there are precious few of those, percentagewise. >I would categorize the studies completed so far as small in number and small in scope, as shown by the studies listed on the URL you provided: < Yes, the number of studies is small, considering the importance of cancer. There are far more for drugs, I believe -- because of high potential profits to drug companies, I believe. But, you only mention a small fraction of the total trials – and pooh-pooh the patient numbers involved. However, those numbers are typically large enough to be statistically important – the chances of spurious results are pretty small; particularly when several or more trials show similar positive results. The chances of all of them being spurious are quite small. BTW, the earliest trials (two decades or more ago?) of electrohyperthermia were not so encouraging – but these were badly flawed trials. Also, BTW, my reference described 20 items, nearly all in the last two years. And, some (most?) were done outside the U.S. So the criteria for some trials might not precisely match FDA definitions; not by itself a good reason for denying the results. >There is also the matter of negative findings. Companies have been known not to publish negative findings. < So, where are those negative findings (excluding early poorly conceived/executed trials)? And, the subject findings were published by researchers, not BSD M. >And none of this is for hyperthermia only. Studies are usually of hyperthermia combined with other treatments, possibly for perceived ethical issues. But that means you do not get a pure look at hyperthermia. < That statement involves a deep misconception: microwave heating is presently used 1) for hyperthermia as an adjuvant for established cancer therapies AND 2) alone for tumor ablation. Microwave hyperthermia by itself might well also be very useful for aiding healing of injuries (for example), but such uses are not presently important. A pure look at “hyperthermia” is given by the MTX-180, which is an ablation machine. And, the BSD-500 and he 2000 series are also suitable for tumor ablation (just takes higher power delivery), but I do not know how often they are used for ablation. >There is a reason why large phase III studies are considered the gold standard, and so far it seems there are none. A fan of BSDM might hope that smaller studies end up providing extraordinary data that will shoot BSDM ahead, or that word of mouth about great success with the current machines will spread out, but more typically things go pretty slow. Cancer is a tough adversary< Yes cancer is tough – and new-therapy acceptance is slow. But, there ARE in fact Phase 3 trials (and essentially equivalent trials, in foreign countries) – with substantial positive results (even a bit positive for pancreatic cancer). And, remember, the BSD-500 and the MTX-180 are both FDA APPROVED AND IN WORLDWIDE PRACTICE. Further, the BSD-2000 has an FDA-HDE approval for cervical cancer and is also being used “off label” for other cancers. AND, the BSD-2000 series is in practice in some foreign countries. Microwave cancer therapy is actually well proven and is growing in practice.