[01:03.830 --> 01:06.650]  Good morning and welcome to the third day of HOPE.
[01:07.470 --> 01:11.610]  Welcome to everyone here in Queens and to everyone watching this around the world.
[01:13.250 --> 01:16.970]  At the end of everything today at 6 o'clock, we do have our closing ceremonies.
[01:17.130 --> 01:22.950]  We gladly invite everyone here to join us in person and everyone online to take part in the festivities as well.
[01:24.110 --> 01:25.510]  And now to our next talk.
[01:27.290 --> 01:30.090]  Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide.
[01:31.050 --> 01:36.950]  In the U.S., the statistics are that one out of every two people will have cancer at some point in their lives, including me.
[01:37.470 --> 01:39.150]  I've had cancer in the past.
[01:40.970 --> 01:44.270]  The way things are going in research, we'll never find a cure for it.
[01:44.710 --> 01:47.250]  We need a new way of thinking about this, a new approach.
[01:48.390 --> 01:56.110]  Our next speaker will explain what cancer really is, why so many get it, and why it's been so difficult to treat.
[01:56.830 --> 01:59.450]  Everyone, please welcome our next speaker, Karamoon.
[02:02.150 --> 02:03.950]  Hi, I'm Karamoon.
[02:04.730 --> 02:07.170]  Welcome to my talk for HOPE 2022.
[02:07.830 --> 02:14.750]  It's called Hack Cancer, how hackers can help save 9.5 million lives a year.
[02:16.030 --> 02:18.450]  I'm going to start by telling you a story.
[02:18.810 --> 02:20.090]  It's my story.
[02:21.090 --> 02:25.930]  It's a nightmare, really, but there's still a chance it could turn into a fairy tale.
[02:26.210 --> 02:27.510]  More on that later.
[02:28.550 --> 02:37.750]  So in July 2016, so that's six years ago, I was suddenly diagnosed with terminal cancer.
[02:38.450 --> 02:43.610]  I was 36 at the time, two young kids.
[02:44.030 --> 02:49.070]  My son was eight and my daughter three.
[02:51.910 --> 02:56.190]  And I was not really given any time to live.
[02:57.030 --> 03:00.550]  Realistic life expectancy was seven to nine months.
[03:00.810 --> 03:01.910]  That's with treatment.
[03:02.710 --> 03:10.390]  The cancer I had, or cancer I have rather, is bowel cancer, colorectal cancer.
[03:10.770 --> 03:20.270]  One of the most common cancers and one of the most common cancer killers in most countries.
[03:23.030 --> 03:34.050]  I found that the cancer had spread to the abdominal membrane, and that's why the life expectancy was really seven to nine months, realistically.
[03:36.410 --> 03:42.490]  I quickly found out that in the UK there was no serious treatment being offered.
[03:43.510 --> 03:54.130]  I could have some treatment to help extend my life a bit, maybe reach that nine months, you know, possibly a bit longer.
[03:54.350 --> 03:55.190]  So I was 36.
[03:56.550 --> 03:59.670]  I might kind of do slightly better than the average.
[04:00.230 --> 04:05.290]  But I found out there were very few outliers in 2016.
[04:05.290 --> 04:19.750]  So typically, cancer patients with colon cancer spread to the abdominal membrane got seven to nine months of life after diagnosis with treatment.
[04:21.110 --> 04:23.070]  So things were looking pretty bleak.
[04:24.370 --> 04:35.650]  And fortunately, a friend of mine, Eben Upton, who you probably know of, he's my co-founder of Raspberry Pi.
[04:37.330 --> 04:48.010]  He told me that there were still some of the HIV patients alive from the first waves of HIV in the 1980s.
[04:48.010 --> 04:58.050]  He said what had happened was some patients would get access to new drugs through clinical trials, and this would give them a little bit longer to live.
[04:58.630 --> 05:05.930]  And then another trial would come up, and they'd get a bit more time to live.
[05:06.130 --> 05:11.990]  And it's like they were kind of riding a wave of new drugs.
[05:11.990 --> 05:17.510]  And of course, now, HIV is manageable as a chronic disease.
[05:17.930 --> 05:21.890]  In fact, recently, I think there's been some curative treatments as well.
[05:23.030 --> 05:26.330]  So that was my intention.
[05:27.330 --> 05:36.530]  Could I get access to some new treatments and live a bit longer and make it through this?
[05:37.910 --> 05:45.870]  As you might have gathered, I lived a lot longer than seven to nine months, because I'm here now, six years later.
[05:47.750 --> 05:54.110]  So, yeah, my story is, basically, I realised there was no proper treatment in the UK.
[05:54.110 --> 06:11.830]  I had the option of treatment in Japan, because I'd been spending the past few years before the diagnosis, I'd been dividing my time between the UK and Japan, most of the time in Japan.
[06:13.270 --> 06:20.590]  So I knew I could get treated in Japan, and I had heard the cancer treatment and healthcare in general in Japan was considerably better.
[06:21.350 --> 06:27.970]  I had not really had any healthcare in Japan, but I had heard it was very, very good.
[06:28.430 --> 06:41.010]  Cutting edge treatments, really high standard of clinical excellence everywhere in all parts of the healthcare system, with the notable exception of mental health.
[06:41.150 --> 06:43.490]  But that's a topic for another time.
[06:44.330 --> 06:48.790]  So I went to Japan and started getting treated.
[06:48.790 --> 06:51.490]  I went through a lot of treatment.
[06:52.290 --> 07:04.610]  I had four years of surgeries, chemotherapy, various chemotherapies, molecular targeted therapy, various radiation therapies, metabolic therapy.
[07:06.250 --> 07:15.550]  I had hypothermia therapies, so heating up the cancer tumors to damage the cancer and make chemotherapy work better.
[07:15.890 --> 07:22.110]  So I basically had all the kinds of cancer treatments except for hormone treatment.
[07:22.110 --> 07:24.870]  That wasn't relevant in my case.
[07:25.610 --> 07:37.410]  After four years of doing seven kinds of treatment and doing many of them repeatedly, I got to the stage called NED, N-E-D, no evidence of disease.
[07:37.930 --> 07:54.210]  And my immunotherapist said, you've got to this stage, but you should keep doing treatment for another year to make the chance of the cancer returning much lower.
[07:54.930 --> 08:00.790]  So I did another 12 months of low-dose chemotherapy.
[08:00.790 --> 08:04.790]  So this is chemotherapy where you have a low dose, but there are no breaks.
[08:04.990 --> 08:07.030]  It's just chemotherapy every day.
[08:08.510 --> 08:13.210]  The side effects are better than regular chemotherapy.
[08:14.170 --> 08:17.230]  But it's still, yeah, kind of unpleasant.
[08:17.990 --> 08:23.850]  So now I'm a real outlier.
[08:24.270 --> 08:43.790]  My kind of case is actually going to be written as a paper by a Japanese surgeon and kind of provides a case study and a pathway for patients to hopefully get curative cancer treatment.
[08:45.170 --> 08:54.990]  In my case, if I can stay with no evidence of disease for another year, so I've had two years so far, no evidence of this disease.
[08:55.210 --> 08:57.310]  And for the past year, I've had no cancer treatment at all.
[08:58.150 --> 09:04.030]  If I can stay for another year, probably by getting some more immunotherapy.
[09:05.150 --> 09:14.630]  When I get to the three-year mark of no evidence for this disease, the chance of the cancer recurring drops off dramatically for colon cancer.
[09:14.730 --> 09:16.230]  And it's different for different cancers.
[09:16.910 --> 09:24.530]  Some cancers, yeah, tend to recur in the first couple of years, colon cancer, first three years.
[09:25.270 --> 09:35.210]  But if I can make it to three years with no evidence of disease, then the chance of the cancer coming back drops off dramatically.
[09:35.610 --> 09:40.490]  And then this story really could be a fairy tale, not a nightmare.
[09:41.630 --> 09:46.970]  So I'm going to just give you some background information of like understanding cancer.
[09:46.970 --> 09:53.230]  Um, and then I'm going to talk about my kind of blueprint for curing cancer.
[09:53.630 --> 10:02.750]  And finally, how you scale that cure so that everyone everywhere can get really effective cancer treatments.
[10:03.410 --> 10:07.670]  Um, there's obviously big financial barriers in, in some countries.
[10:08.050 --> 10:11.750]  So, um, background for cancer.
[10:12.110 --> 10:14.550]  So I'm going to explain what cancer is.
[10:14.550 --> 10:17.170]  Um, why you should care.
[10:18.050 --> 10:21.230]  Why there seems to be so much cancer around.
[10:21.590 --> 10:23.870]  And why is it so hard to treat?
[10:24.190 --> 10:27.250]  And particularly, why does it seem impossible to cure?
[10:28.750 --> 10:30.150]  So what is cancer?
[10:31.410 --> 10:38.170]  Well, cancer is a group of diseases, and they seem to be diseases at the cell level.
[10:38.170 --> 10:40.890]  So to do with the cells of the body.
[10:41.170 --> 10:43.150]  This may not be correct.
[10:43.150 --> 10:46.550]  It may be more, um, operating at a higher level.
[10:47.290 --> 10:57.850]  Um, there are various models for trying to understand cancer, but the cellular model, um, seems to be at least useful.
[10:59.330 --> 11:05.750]  And it's a set of diseases that are to do with cell division and cell death.
[11:06.730 --> 11:09.090]  So what happens when cells divide?
[11:09.090 --> 11:11.670]  So when you get new tissue growing?
[11:13.070 --> 11:16.750]  And what happens when cells are meant to die?
[11:17.310 --> 11:24.230]  And I think you can probably guess that, um, yeah, cancers, there are many issues with the cell division.
[11:25.030 --> 11:32.070]  Um, you see this here, this sort of rapidly dividing cells, these tumors growing inside people.
[11:32.790 --> 11:43.950]  And cell death, you hear about, um, people talk about the cells ignoring the signals to die, um, or hiding from the immune system so the immune system doesn't kill them.
[11:44.810 --> 11:52.110]  Um, these kind of cells, when, when they become cancerous, they form these tumors and they spread.
[11:52.370 --> 11:54.610]  So there are non-cancerous tumors.
[11:55.450 --> 12:01.550]  Um, but one of the key points is that a non-cancerous tumor doesn't spread.
[12:01.550 --> 12:09.210]  It might grow, it might grow a lot, might cause a problem if it's pushing against, um, an organ or against some nerves or whatever.
[12:09.630 --> 12:14.030]  Um, but a non-cancerous tumor shouldn't spread around your body.
[12:14.550 --> 12:19.390]  Um, uh, non-cancerous tumors can become cancerous.
[12:19.670 --> 12:27.990]  So that's why, um, yeah, it's a good idea to get checked out medically quite regularly for that kind of thing.
[12:29.710 --> 12:35.130]  Um, so it's kind of unique that cancer can spread around the body.
[12:35.270 --> 12:45.970]  It's very odd because when rogue cells are like floating around in your blood or your lymphatic system, uh, they're recognized and they get killed.
[12:45.970 --> 12:55.910]  Um, if they make it to somewhere, they shouldn't be able to like stick on to the side of an organ and start multiplying and growing.
[12:56.410 --> 12:58.330]  But cancer cells do, right?
[12:58.490 --> 13:03.630]  Can cancer cells get past the many mechanisms that your body has against cancer?
[13:04.790 --> 13:06.830]  So that's what cancer really is.
[13:06.970 --> 13:08.730]  So it's, it's a group of diseases.
[13:08.750 --> 13:14.430]  We usually talk about cancer in terms of the organ it started in, like where's the primary tumor.
[13:15.350 --> 13:21.730]  Um, that may be, um, less useful in the future.
[13:22.330 --> 13:27.310]  Maybe it's more important to look at the genetic mutation that caused the cancer.
[13:28.090 --> 13:29.870]  Um, we're not really sure yet.
[13:30.190 --> 13:36.370]  So I, I say we, um, I know quite a bit about cancer because I've got it.
[13:36.550 --> 13:43.350]  Um, but yeah, I'm not a doctor, so, um, I'm not giving any medical advice at any point in this talk.
[13:43.510 --> 13:47.390]  Um, and I never would give any medical advice because I'm not a doctor.
[13:48.390 --> 13:48.990]  Okay.
[13:49.430 --> 13:53.770]  So, yeah, we talk about like where the primary tumor was.
[13:53.910 --> 14:01.990]  So in my case, for example, um, primary tumor was in the sigmoid colon, which is the S-shaped bit of your large intestine.
[14:02.770 --> 14:15.270]  And unfortunately, when my cancer was found, it had already spread to lymph nodes, liver, um, abdominal membrane, uh, later it spread to my right lung as well.
[14:15.270 --> 14:18.670]  Um, so next, why should you care?
[14:19.190 --> 14:26.910]  Well, the very short answer is that either you're going to get cancer or someone close to you will.
[14:27.450 --> 14:31.270]  Now, um, that's the reality in 2022.
[14:32.950 --> 14:41.330]  I'm, you know, working on changing that reality for you and, uh, other people in the world, um, more of that later.
[14:41.330 --> 14:52.870]  Um, but yeah, that's the reality basically is that you're going to get cancer or someone you know, um, has or will get cancer.
[14:53.190 --> 14:55.970]  And obviously we need to change that.
[14:59.310 --> 15:07.490]  So what we need is effective cancer treatments that don't destroy your body and that are affordable for everyone, everywhere.
[15:08.270 --> 15:10.050]  So that's what I'm working on.
[15:10.470 --> 15:19.170]  Um, you can find out some of the stuff I'm doing from, um, my website, makecancerhistory.jp.
[15:20.110 --> 15:21.810]  Um, that's JP for Japan.
[15:22.050 --> 15:23.990]  So makecancerhistory.jp.
[15:24.250 --> 15:36.830]  If you want to find out more about my personal story and how I am alive, um, six years after, um, a terminal diagnosis with seven to nine months to live.
[15:36.830 --> 15:51.350]  Um, if you go to hackcancer.jp, so that's hackcancer.jp, that forwards to, um, like redirects to, uh, my GoFundMe page and you can see the updates there.
[15:51.670 --> 16:03.910]  I've done, I don't know, almost a hundred videos about, um, well, over the past six years, I've been doing videos about the treatments I've been having and the results and that kind of thing.
[16:03.910 --> 16:10.970]  Um, so if you go to hackcancer.jp, you can find out all about, um, yeah, my story.
[16:11.230 --> 16:20.510]  If you go to makecancerhistory.jp, you'll see the work I'm doing here in Tokyo, um, to try and, yeah, make cancer history.
[16:22.070 --> 16:25.670]  So, next question is, like, why is cancer so common?
[16:26.630 --> 16:33.130]  Um, lots of high-profile cancer cases, you, you certainly know people with cancer.
[16:33.990 --> 16:46.710]  Um, you have to be a bit careful because, of course, now, I say now, but recently we have a lot of social media, so we hear about things maybe, um, that we wouldn't have heard about in the past.
[16:46.710 --> 17:06.610]  It does seem cancer is becoming more common in young people, uh, that could be due to environmental factors, um, it could be lifestyle issues, um, there are kind of some odd things like the number of non-smokers who get lung cancer is going up.
[17:06.610 --> 17:11.930]  So maybe that's, um, due to pollution, um, maybe air pollution, obviously.
[17:12.310 --> 17:20.470]  Um, but it could be other forms of pollution as well because some pollutants are co-carcinogens, so they work with other things to cause cancer.
[17:20.470 --> 17:27.110]  So there could be pollution in water, um, that's combining with other things in your body causing lung cancer, for example.
[17:27.110 --> 17:35.530]  Um, and of course, I mean, people are living a lot longer now, which is a fantastic thing.
[17:36.230 --> 17:40.770]  Um, but yeah, in most countries there's rising life expectancy.
[17:41.150 --> 17:52.170]  Um, a lot of diseases that used to kill people are now, um, yeah, becoming controlled, either as chronic diseases or in a few cases even cured.
[17:52.170 --> 17:56.190]  So maybe that's a reason why cancer seems to be more common.
[17:56.830 --> 18:04.830]  Um, we also have a lot more detection and early detection, uh, and screening, you know, that kind of thing.
[18:05.210 --> 18:17.810]  So I think, um, people are being picked up with screening as finding the cancer or people are going into the healthcare system with another disease and the cancer is discovered.
[18:17.810 --> 18:23.670]  In my case, my cancer was discovered just because of some side effects, um, to an antibiotic.
[18:24.050 --> 18:34.330]  So I, I, um, had a chest infection, got a very standard course of antibiotics, broad spectrum antibiotics, got a bad reaction.
[18:34.950 --> 18:36.570]  Doctor was a bit suspicious.
[18:37.410 --> 18:42.130]  She pushed me for some testing and, um, lo and behold, terminal cancer.
[18:42.130 --> 18:46.550]  Not what I was expecting from a, a cough and some medicine.
[18:48.270 --> 18:53.890]  So finally, why is cancer so hard to treat and why does it seem almost impossible to cure?
[18:58.240 --> 19:03.860]  Well, it seem, it is hard to treat because it's a group of diseases.
[19:04.400 --> 19:09.900]  So drugs for one type of cancer don't necessarily help with another type of cancer.
[19:09.900 --> 19:20.760]  Um, as cancer kind of grows and even spreads in the body, it's almost becoming different, a different disease.
[19:21.220 --> 19:26.080]  So like metastatic cancer is a cancer that's spread out of the body, out of where it started.
[19:26.580 --> 19:36.720]  Um, so that's like a generally a stage three or stage four cancer is fundamentally different as a disease to cancer that's in one place.
[19:37.400 --> 19:46.100]  Um, another reason, I mean, think about my case is that there's often no symptoms until the cancer spreads.
[19:46.320 --> 20:03.040]  So in my case, um, when I had these antibiotics, that caused some side effects because there was a big tumour in my intestine, um, and which caused a lot of pain when I, I took those antibiotics.
[20:03.040 --> 20:17.920]  Um, so yeah, some, some, some cancers almost only found in late stage, uh, ovarian cancer tends to be no symptoms until it's, um, it's spread, which is, um, yeah, very upsetting.
[20:18.460 --> 20:22.520]  Um, other cancers are in kind of places where they can spread easily.
[20:22.680 --> 20:29.980]  So breast cancer tends to spread quite early, I think, because, um, it can spread through the lymphatic system.
[20:30.640 --> 20:37.880]  So it has access to all, all those lymph nodes in the chest, um, gets into the muscle wall, spreads through the body, gets into the bones.
[20:38.860 --> 20:42.720]  Um, yeah, so that's one reason.
[20:43.440 --> 20:51.580]  Um, another, perhaps obvious reason is that the treatments are so brutal.
[20:51.900 --> 20:54.300]  Um, cancer treatment is, is horrific.
[20:55.400 --> 21:00.780]  Um, it's, it's hard to describe just how unpleasant it is.
[21:00.780 --> 21:06.340]  It's, uh, radiation treatment that burns your skin, uh, makes you go gray.
[21:06.580 --> 21:12.760]  It causes hair to fall out, maybe causes, um, other tumors in your body.
[21:13.580 --> 21:30.740]  Um, chemotherapy that attacks anywhere in your body where, um, cells are being replaced, like lining of the stomach, the intestine, all that kind of, you know, all those parts of your body, um, hair follicles.
[21:31.200 --> 21:35.080]  Um, yeah, they're really, really, really nasty drugs.
[21:35.200 --> 21:36.280]  The treatments are really nasty.
[21:36.740 --> 21:37.860]  Cancer surgery.
[21:38.160 --> 21:49.240]  So, um, surgeons do something called cytoreductive surgery where they, they basically cut out or burn out any visible cancer.
[21:49.240 --> 21:52.980]  Um, that they, they, they, they can safely remove.
[21:53.280 --> 21:56.020]  Now, in my case, the cancer would spread a lot.
[21:56.320 --> 22:04.100]  So, yeah, six hours of surgery with the surgeon hunting around to see what he could, um, safely cut out.
[22:05.040 --> 22:13.540]  And then of course, with cancers like, um, colon cancer, you tend to have bits of your intestine removed.
[22:13.740 --> 22:16.340]  Uh, maybe your intestines can be reconnected afterwards.
[22:16.980 --> 22:18.360]  Very often they can't.
[22:18.540 --> 22:25.680]  So you have a colostomy bag where the intestine comes out of the wall of your stomach and of the abdominal wall.
[22:26.060 --> 22:26.180]  Sorry.
[22:26.440 --> 22:31.400]  And, uh, attaches to a plastic bag to collect waste that you have to empty many times a day.
[22:31.800 --> 22:42.380]  Um, I had that for five years, had a reversal surgery done a year ago, but I still have, you know, short intestine, big, big bit of my intestine removed.
[22:42.380 --> 22:47.580]  That causes trouble every single day of my life from, from now onwards.
[22:47.880 --> 23:02.180]  Um, with breast cancer, removing, um, either part of, um, part of the breast, maybe a lumpectomy, um, or, you know, whole, um, mastectomy.
[23:02.180 --> 23:15.900]  Again, with lung cancer, if it's a, an isolated tumor, tumor surgeon can do a wedge resection, take out a little bit of lung, um, could have to remove a whole lobe of the lung or an entire lung.
[23:16.820 --> 23:31.580]  Um, so, um, um, patients generally have to, um, stop treatment because, well, either they die, um, or because the treatment is just so brutal.
[23:31.940 --> 23:35.040]  The side effects and the damage to the body is just, is just too tough.
[23:37.660 --> 23:46.860]  So, how about actually getting to a cure and sorting out, um, some of this mess that is cancer treatment?
[23:47.300 --> 23:53.980]  So, obviously, well, not obviously, but it's important to say that some people are cured of cancer.
[23:53.980 --> 24:05.020]  Like, cancer is a curable disease, and it seems that most types of cancer are curable, and there are people who have been cured.
[24:06.320 --> 24:17.540]  Possibly in two years' time, I'll be giving a talk at HOPE again, and I'll be saying, semi-confidently, that I'm a terminal patient who was cured.
[24:18.260 --> 24:27.260]  But the percentage of patients cured is very, very low, and especially the percentage of late-stage patients cured is almost zero.
[24:28.740 --> 24:32.740]  Now, I have to state again, I'm not a doctor.
[24:33.060 --> 24:35.500]  Um, I'm not pretending to be one.
[24:35.660 --> 24:38.660]  I'm a patient who has gone through a lot of treatment.
[24:39.040 --> 24:40.680]  I've studied cancer a lot.
[24:40.860 --> 24:43.100]  I've talked to lots of doctors.
[24:43.100 --> 24:44.860]  I've talked to cancer researchers.
[24:45.280 --> 24:46.940]  I've talked to hundreds of patients.
[24:48.100 --> 24:57.200]  And I, and quite a few Japanese cancer specialists, have observed something in Japan over the past few years.
[24:57.760 --> 25:05.420]  In my case, over the past six years, which is the time I have been very unwillingly involved in cancer.
[25:05.420 --> 25:19.120]  And basically observed that there are four things that help cancer patients live longer and potentially even get cured.
[25:19.760 --> 25:23.980]  So the first thing is the condition of the patient's immune system.
[25:24.980 --> 25:38.300]  All right, so that's really a key thing because it's the immune system that cures the cancer, I believe, at this time.
[25:39.320 --> 25:45.920]  meaning that, um, when you have, let's say you have cancer surgery.
[25:47.720 --> 25:50.160]  And the cancer hasn't spread.
[25:50.540 --> 25:52.400]  A surgeon removes the tumor.
[25:53.140 --> 25:59.480]  And then you have this microscopic disease left behind.
[26:00.180 --> 26:05.600]  Uh, you may have cancer cells floating around the body called, uh, circulating tumor cells.
[26:06.920 --> 26:11.620]  And the immune system hopefully can deal with those and the cancer doesn't recur.
[26:13.900 --> 26:19.480]  The problem with this is that when you have surgery, there's a lot of immune suppression, right?
[26:19.480 --> 26:21.160]  So it suppresses the immune system a lot.
[26:21.400 --> 26:24.800]  If you have radiotherapy, suppresses the immune system a lot.
[26:25.980 --> 26:29.460]  If you have chemotherapy, it suppresses the immune system a lot.
[26:31.500 --> 26:38.300]  Now, if you have radiotherapy or chemotherapy, that kills some of the cancer cells.
[26:38.300 --> 26:44.880]  Because the immune system can see this, hopefully, and starts attacking cancer cells.
[26:46.600 --> 27:05.680]  So you can see there's kind of this, like, balance, like, seesaw kind of balance between the cancer treatment, killing cancer cells, which is obviously good, and particularly destroying tumours that were damaging the patient, but also causing immune suppression.
[27:07.000 --> 27:09.720]  So the condition of the immune system is really, really important.
[27:11.060 --> 27:13.560]  And then access to the newest treatments.
[27:14.840 --> 27:17.260]  It just seems to be a recurring theme.
[27:17.520 --> 27:31.940]  When you look at long-term cancer survivors, they got the newest treatments, clinical trials, or just the latest treatments available, or using old treatments, but in newer ways, right?
[27:31.940 --> 27:36.860]  That's that William Gibson quote, the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
[27:39.480 --> 27:44.460]  The next thing that seems to be a key factor is the total amount of treatment.
[27:45.040 --> 27:53.440]  So can the patient deal with more and more treatment, especially, you know, chemotherapy or this molecular-targeted therapy?
[27:53.440 --> 27:55.580]  Can they have a lot of immunotherapy?
[27:58.420 --> 28:12.640]  So you can see already how these factors are related, because more treatment, if their treatment's that damage the immune system, then that's going to, like, tip the balance in the wrong direction.
[28:14.160 --> 28:16.820]  And the fourth thing is the variety of treatments.
[28:17.440 --> 28:23.280]  So long-term survivors tend to have a wide variety of treatments.
[28:23.560 --> 28:26.000]  So there are eight ways of treating cancer at the moment.
[28:26.360 --> 28:27.600]  I've had seven of them.
[28:29.260 --> 28:40.260]  And within those ways of treating cancer, so chemotherapy being one, I've had a whole cocktail of different chemotherapies and molecular-targeted therapies.
[28:40.880 --> 28:43.900]  I've had two types of radiation therapy.
[28:45.420 --> 28:50.440]  So a lot of varieties of treatment seems to be a key factor.
[28:50.440 --> 28:55.700]  And that's probably because it stops the cancer being able to evolve.
[28:55.700 --> 29:04.280]  One of the reasons why cancer survives and patients don't is that the cancer evolves very quickly.
[29:05.820 --> 29:08.380]  Very simple Darwinian evolution, right?
[29:08.440 --> 29:10.240]  You have a cancer treatment.
[29:10.460 --> 29:13.720]  It kills 90% of the cancer cells in your body.
[29:13.960 --> 29:18.040]  The remaining 10% happen to be resistant to that treatment.
[29:18.120 --> 29:21.520]  And that forms a new population of cancer cells.
[29:21.520 --> 29:28.180]  And, yeah, so having a big variety of treatments seems really important.
[29:30.540 --> 29:41.060]  So those kind of four factors, I guess you could call them, they suggest to us what a cure should look like, right?
[29:41.360 --> 29:50.120]  Combination of treatments, treatments that have less impact on the patient, particularly on the immune system.
[29:52.000 --> 29:56.840]  And treatments, like, with a view to having more treatment in the future.
[29:57.140 --> 30:02.800]  Kind of admitting that if the patient's going to survive, they're probably going to need a whole series of treatments.
[30:03.120 --> 30:09.440]  So we should carefully choose the treatments that are going to keep the patient in a good condition.
[30:13.040 --> 30:19.860]  So, finally, I mean, how would you scale this kind of thing and make it into a proper cure?
[30:19.860 --> 30:20.460]  Cure?
[30:21.780 --> 30:30.460]  Well, you know, some countries have almost no cancer treatment, right?
[30:30.620 --> 30:39.380]  So many countries in Africa, for example, there'll be no radiotherapy, or there'll be one radiotherapy machine for a country of 20 million or whatever.
[30:40.020 --> 30:44.020]  A place like Malawi, there's almost no cancer treatment there.
[30:44.800 --> 30:52.680]  Some countries have really great cancer treatment, but it's very uneven in terms of access.
[30:52.680 --> 30:54.640]  So the U.S. would be a good example.
[30:54.880 --> 31:03.840]  There's some fantastic cancer treatments in the U.S., but not accessible for the majority of Americans.
[31:04.840 --> 31:22.520]  Cancer patients I know in the U.S. who are terminal say that generally in the U.S., you need about a million dollars as a terminal patient to kind of live as long as possible with your cancer.
[31:22.680 --> 31:32.180]  So if you wanted to do the best, get the best treatments or whatever, it's going to cost you about a million dollars.
[31:33.500 --> 31:36.000]  Yeah, so it's very uneven treatment.
[31:36.960 --> 31:42.680]  In other countries, the treatment is uneven depending on cancer type and age of patients.
[31:43.080 --> 31:53.040]  So in the UK, for example, really good surgical technique, quite poor in other areas of healthcare related to cancer.
[31:53.600 --> 31:57.840]  So overall, quite poor cancer care.
[31:59.920 --> 32:01.400]  I don't like saying that.
[32:01.620 --> 32:02.680]  I'm British.
[32:03.780 --> 32:09.780]  But yeah, I would not be alive six years later if I'd stayed in the UK for treatment.
[32:10.060 --> 32:10.840]  Absolutely not.
[32:11.680 --> 32:19.200]  If I was an amazing case, maybe would have lasted a year, year and a half.
[32:19.760 --> 32:28.420]  If I was one of those amazing outliers in the UK, certainly wouldn't have been here six years because most of the treatments I've had are not available in the UK.
[32:28.420 --> 32:36.520]  Some that are, just the quality in the UK is poor compared to what I've had in Japan.
[32:37.540 --> 32:41.360]  So one thing that we really need to do is use refactoring.
[32:42.260 --> 32:55.520]  So we need to look at treatments that we've already got, treatments that are effective or more effective than not.
[32:56.100 --> 32:58.480]  Maybe it would be a more honest way of putting that.
[32:58.820 --> 33:00.500]  But refactor them.
[33:00.900 --> 33:08.280]  So without changing the treatment outcome, find a way to make the treatment more accessible, particularly cheaper.
[33:10.120 --> 33:14.560]  And that goes for other medical technology.
[33:15.080 --> 33:21.080]  So things like the CT scanners and the PET scanners, MRI scanners.
[33:21.280 --> 33:22.760]  They are massive machines.
[33:22.760 --> 33:23.900]  They're very expensive.
[33:24.580 --> 33:28.560]  They're not improving over the years.
[33:28.560 --> 33:31.020]  They're still massive and expensive.
[33:31.560 --> 33:33.460]  They have very high power consumption.
[33:34.300 --> 33:35.640]  They're so heavy.
[33:35.840 --> 33:38.420]  They are often in the basements of hospitals.
[33:38.800 --> 33:42.580]  So we need to refactor those, re-engineer those.
[33:43.160 --> 33:47.580]  Treatment machines, radiotherapy machines, make cheaper versions.
[33:53.360 --> 34:08.140]  We need to look at cancer drugs where the patents have expired and then you can make a biosimilar drug, which is a slight alteration, but the drug functions in the same way.
[34:08.770 --> 34:12.120]  And that could be done by non-profit organizations.
[34:14.260 --> 34:18.920]  And again, we could sort of have open source drugs.
[34:20.100 --> 34:27.760]  Especially one thing we need to do is share knowledge among cancer patients and doctors and researchers.
[34:28.120 --> 34:30.160]  So that's one of the big areas I'm working on.
[34:31.080 --> 34:36.080]  So, yeah, I educate cancer patients around the world.
[34:36.080 --> 34:39.640]  I run free online seminars about treatments.
[34:40.660 --> 34:45.520]  I have, yeah, provide information for doctors as well.
[34:45.860 --> 34:52.180]  And, yeah, I'm working on getting doctors, patients and researchers together to share the knowledge.
[34:52.800 --> 34:58.240]  Obviously, in the tech community, we know a lot about community and knowledge sharing.
[34:59.260 --> 35:12.900]  But in the medical community, well, not even call it a community, but there's a lot less skill when it comes to sharing knowledge, right?
[35:13.940 --> 35:26.960]  Researchers are publishing medical papers instead of making wikis where people can annotate and add comments and edit things, for example.
[35:27.740 --> 35:34.980]  You know, we need to get medical professionals coming to hacker conferences instead of just talking to each other at medical conferences.
[35:37.360 --> 35:45.880]  So, as I said before, like, if you go to makecancerhistory.jp, you can see some of the work I'm doing.
[35:46.360 --> 35:48.320]  You can get in touch with me.
[35:48.880 --> 35:55.520]  And if you go to hackcancer.jp, you can find out more about my personal situation.
[35:55.520 --> 36:01.400]  You can watch educational videos on living and dying with cancer.
[36:03.800 --> 36:09.220]  I'm always very open to questions and contacts.
[36:09.760 --> 36:14.160]  So, find me online, get in touch with me, ask me questions.
[36:14.600 --> 36:16.940]  If you want to help, get in touch.
[36:17.220 --> 36:20.040]  If you need help, obviously get in touch as well.
[36:20.040 --> 36:27.860]  because, yeah, I'm working hard to make a real difference to how cancer patients get treated.
[36:28.340 --> 36:31.060]  So, thank you ever so much for your attention.
[36:31.060 --> 36:33.140]  I deeply appreciate it.
[36:33.240 --> 36:44.960]  And please do get in touch either via hackcancer.jp or makecancerhistory.jp or just look me up online, Cara Moon.
[36:45.160 --> 36:49.140]  You'll find me on Twitter and all those other ridiculous social media things.
[36:49.560 --> 36:50.240]  Thanks a lot.
[36:57.460 --> 36:58.560]  And we are...
[36:59.380 --> 37:01.340]  and we're live with Cara Moon right now.
[37:02.260 --> 37:12.720]  If anyone has any questions for our speaker, please feel free to come to the microphone over here so that we can make sure all of our friends around the world as well as our speaker can hear your question.
[37:12.980 --> 37:16.160]  We also have some questions in from the Matrix chat.
[37:18.940 --> 37:20.240]  There's a couple of questions.
[37:20.360 --> 37:23.120]  Again, if you don't want to answer these questions because they do...
[37:23.120 --> 37:25.740]  These two are a little bit on the sensitive side.
[37:26.240 --> 37:27.840]  Feel free to not answer them.
[37:28.520 --> 37:33.380]  The first one from Zap was wondering how old you are.
[37:34.240 --> 37:34.780]  Okay.
[37:35.340 --> 37:37.720]  So, I am now 42.
[37:38.540 --> 37:42.220]  So, when I was diagnosed, I was 36.
[37:42.220 --> 37:42.480]  36.
[37:43.820 --> 37:44.380]  Yeah.
[37:44.780 --> 37:46.840]  So, 36 is kind of quite young to be told.
[37:46.840 --> 37:49.040]  You've got maybe seven to nine months to live.
[37:49.980 --> 37:56.540]  And, yeah, I'm surprised and very happy to be still alive now, six years later.
[37:56.860 --> 37:59.140]  And we're very happy that you're still alive as well.
[37:59.360 --> 38:02.580]  And congratulations on getting through so far.
[38:03.400 --> 38:04.100]  Thank you.
[38:05.520 --> 38:07.160]  Can you share...
[38:07.160 --> 38:09.280]  This question is from The One Wolf.
[38:10.100 --> 38:14.760]  Could you share the order of magnitude how much the cancer treatment has cost over the years?
[38:17.320 --> 38:17.920]  Okay.
[38:18.140 --> 38:24.480]  So, first of all, I should say that I'm in Japan where we have public health insurance.
[38:24.980 --> 38:28.960]  So, a lot of my treatment is covered by public health insurance.
[38:29.420 --> 38:33.740]  In Japan, we contribute 30% to the cost.
[38:33.740 --> 38:36.620]  but that's capped as well.
[38:37.080 --> 38:38.500]  Like, there's a monthly maximum.
[38:39.380 --> 38:46.140]  I was a freelance worker, so my income dropped basically to zero when I got diagnosed and needed treatment.
[38:47.260 --> 38:59.220]  So, yeah, my monthly medical bill for standard treatment was maybe a couple of hundred dollars a month because it's limited by the Japanese government.
[39:00.420 --> 39:10.180]  all the kind of high-tech stuff like proton beam therapy and immunotherapy, that's not covered by public health insurance in Japan.
[39:10.660 --> 39:12.220]  Those are kind of cutting-edge treatments.
[39:12.840 --> 39:15.600]  So, I did crowdfunding for that.
[39:17.180 --> 39:20.980]  So, I think it's probably somewhere around $100,000.
[39:23.300 --> 39:25.200]  Maybe my life is worth that.
[39:25.320 --> 39:25.740]  I don't know.
[39:25.900 --> 39:28.600]  But, it's a scarily big number.
[39:29.220 --> 39:30.540]  But, yeah, something like that.
[39:30.780 --> 39:31.540]  Around $100,000.
[39:34.920 --> 39:38.760]  I think you kind of answered what I was about to ask.
[39:38.900 --> 39:55.400]  But, I was about to ask to what degree was your treatment of cancer in Japan standard for Japan and to what degree it was because you received some experimental treatment or you simply fought to get the best treatment possible?
[39:56.280 --> 39:56.600]  Yeah.
[39:56.920 --> 40:08.740]  So, my treatment was very much a mixture of standard treatment and, yeah, you could say experimental treatments, especially combinations of treatments.
[40:08.960 --> 40:22.220]  I was quite fortunate that my oncologists understood that the standard treatment protocol for stage 4 patients doesn't have a happy ending, right?
[40:22.340 --> 40:25.340]  It's not treatment with curative intent.
[40:25.700 --> 40:27.500]  It's like palliative treatment.
[40:27.500 --> 40:31.560]  kind of they're trying to keep you alive a bit and minimize your symptoms.
[40:32.200 --> 40:45.940]  So, I think, yeah, my oncologists were quite open-minded about that and I found a fantastic immunotherapist who is considered the father of immunotherapy in Japan.
[40:46.200 --> 40:49.920]  So, it would be similar to Dr. Rosenberg in the U.S.
[40:50.020 --> 40:52.080]  who invented immunotherapy.
[40:53.440 --> 40:58.700]  So, yeah, I had a mixture and I think having a mixture of treatments is really, really important.
[40:59.440 --> 41:02.380]  I don't mean a mixture of treatments that work and don't work.
[41:02.580 --> 41:22.620]  I mean a mixture of science-based, reality-based treatments, maybe some that don't make a great deal of difference but that help other treatments work or just prevent the cancer from becoming resistant to treatment, which generally cancer does.
[41:22.880 --> 41:25.280]  I mean it's very, very basic evolution.
[41:25.280 --> 41:34.760]  If you try and kill a population of cells and some survive, they're going to go on and make more cells.
[41:34.880 --> 41:37.360]  So, that's what you're dealing with with late-stage cancer.
[41:39.740 --> 41:50.080]  User ML 9991 2494 asks, can you share about the non-medical side of things and how that has helped you with your cancer recovery?
[41:50.680 --> 41:55.080]  Such as a support network, mental health, caregivers, etc.?
[41:55.080 --> 41:55.960]  Sure.
[41:57.140 --> 42:00.480]  So, the hacker community have been massively supportive.
[42:01.360 --> 42:06.440]  That's helped a lot with mental health but also what's called the financial toxicity.
[42:06.920 --> 42:10.560]  So, cancer is a very expensive disease to deal with.
[42:10.760 --> 42:17.760]  Not just the cost of medical treatment but things like transport to various hospitals.
[42:17.760 --> 42:22.180]  if you're looking for the best possible treatment might be quite far away.
[42:22.840 --> 42:32.400]  I spent two months going every week by bullet train to a hospital in the north of Japan for proton beam therapy.
[42:32.400 --> 42:37.560]  so that's a two-hour bullet train from Tokyo.
[42:38.740 --> 42:40.500]  So, those costs are massive.
[42:40.740 --> 42:46.680]  So, the support of the hacker community has been really big like Rob T.
[42:46.980 --> 42:50.540]  Firefly arranged an interview for me on Off the Hook.
[42:51.100 --> 42:52.760]  Manuel's been really supportive.
[42:53.540 --> 42:55.360]  Mitch Altman has helped with fundraising.
[42:55.920 --> 43:00.040]  Bicycle Mark who does the Citizen Reporter podcast.
[43:00.040 --> 43:15.360]  he's done a lot of interviews with me which has shared my story and mentally has made a big difference just having that outlet to kind of talk about what was going on or what is still going on.
[43:16.920 --> 43:19.940]  I also started a YouTube channel.
[43:20.460 --> 43:26.240]  I'm not particularly a fan of Google but, yeah, doing those videos helped a lot with mental health.
[43:28.000 --> 43:34.300]  Trying to stay in the best possible physical shape so that you can tolerate more treatment.
[43:34.760 --> 43:38.220]  That's really hard to do when you're on heavy chemotherapy.
[43:38.680 --> 43:39.740]  The side effects are brutal.
[43:40.660 --> 43:45.840]  But, yeah, trying to stay fit has made a big difference I think.
[43:46.580 --> 43:47.580]  Any more questions?
[43:48.500 --> 43:51.240]  You talked about working with the immune system.
[43:51.700 --> 43:55.120]  Thoughts on countering cancer's native immune ovations?
[43:56.620 --> 44:00.580]  So, you know, we've got a couple of things to deal with.
[44:00.780 --> 44:09.500]  So, we've got, well, we've got, like, the cancer kind of suppresses the activity of the immune system.
[44:09.720 --> 44:15.340]  So, one way is it may be forcing down the number of white blood cells.
[44:16.200 --> 44:20.460]  Cancer can kind of suck in white blood cells into the tumors as well.
[44:20.460 --> 44:27.700]  then also cancer cells are able to hide from the immune system by not presenting antigens.
[44:29.420 --> 44:41.280]  And also the kind of the consequences of the tumor microenvironment mean that it's difficult for the immune system to attack the tumors.
[44:41.600 --> 44:45.760]  So, that's, you know, one approach is to have a variety of treatments.
[44:46.140 --> 45:05.340]  So, for example, I had NK cell based immunotherapy NK cells can attack bacteria, they can attack viruses, they can attack cancer cells presenting antigens that's like labelled as bad cells but also cancer cells that are not presenting antigens.
[45:05.620 --> 45:13.580]  We hear a lot in the media about T-cell immunotherapy but T-cells can only attack cells that are presenting antigens.
[45:14.260 --> 45:18.540]  I took a diabetes drug called metformin.
[45:18.740 --> 45:26.240]  I don't have diabetes But it seems a side effect of the drug is it inhibits anaerobic respiration.
[45:26.540 --> 45:36.800]  That means it stops or it reduces the cancer tumour's anaerobic respiration.
[45:37.100 --> 45:43.700]  The anaerobic respiration protects the tumour because lactic acid forms in the tumour microenvironment.
[45:43.980 --> 45:49.600]  And that destroys the immune cells, the white blood cells that are going in.
[45:49.960 --> 45:50.860]  To attack it.
[45:51.100 --> 45:53.400]  We also did hypothermia therapy.
[45:53.700 --> 46:02.400]  So that means heating up the tumours so they get heat shock proteins forming on the surface of the cells.
[46:02.660 --> 46:04.580]  And your immune system can recognise that.
[46:04.900 --> 46:14.120]  So there's a bunch of approaches to try and make the cancer more visible to the immune system.
[46:14.300 --> 46:16.580]  I also had a dendritic cell therapy.
[46:17.200 --> 46:32.000]  Dendritic cells are the ones that look a bit like octopuses and they get bits of dead and dying bad cells and they take them to your lymph nodes and they present them to the T cells and NK cells.
[46:32.000 --> 46:35.180]  So I had the dendritic therapy.
[46:36.980 --> 46:44.420]  And then the other big thing was the autologous therapies of using my white blood cells.
[46:44.880 --> 46:54.960]  So removing some of those, growing them in the lab until they were maybe a billion times more and then having those like return to me as a drip.
[46:54.960 --> 47:01.180]  So doing that to massively increase the number of white blood cells in my body.
[47:01.360 --> 47:03.640]  So, yeah, those are some of the approaches.
[47:04.800 --> 47:11.560]  But, yeah, it's the immune system that has the ability to cure cancer ultimately, I think.
[47:11.720 --> 47:17.100]  So we have to also choose therapies that are not going to trash the immune system.
[47:19.020 --> 47:21.300]  Radiation destroys white blood cells.
[47:22.000 --> 47:24.100]  Chemo destroys white blood cells.
[47:24.100 --> 47:27.260]  So using those treatments very carefully.
[47:28.080 --> 47:33.240]  Cancer surgery causes massive immunosuppression.
[47:33.940 --> 47:44.140]  So just being very careful about choosing therapies and timing them so that the patient isn't going to be completely trashed.
[47:45.720 --> 47:46.780]  Great question.
[47:47.920 --> 47:48.640]  Hello.
[47:48.900 --> 47:52.060]  First of all, thanks for coming to take the time out to speak to us.
[47:52.060 --> 47:53.240]  I had a question.
[47:53.480 --> 48:08.280]  So when you started your journey about like, you know, when they told you your condition up and, you know, you went along and started learning and experiencing more of these treatments and started learning about particularly the tradeoffs in the quality of life.
[48:08.280 --> 48:09.880]  Like, hey, I have to take this medication.
[48:09.880 --> 48:14.040]  It does X, Y and Z for me, but it also makes me feel like this and this.
[48:14.720 --> 48:21.340]  In your times of deepest struggle, when, you know, you're like, oh, wow, these tradeoffs are, this is like really big.
[48:21.440 --> 48:22.120]  This is my life.
[48:22.240 --> 48:29.700]  Like in your greatest times of struggle, how have you gotten through and, you know, carried on and be like, well, no, I'm going to keep I'm going to keep trying.
[48:29.700 --> 48:31.940]  I'm going to keep, you know, living my life.
[48:32.860 --> 48:33.380]  Yeah.
[48:33.620 --> 48:37.040]  So that is, yeah, by far the hardest thing.
[48:37.200 --> 48:42.040]  And it's, it's very difficult just based on time.
[48:42.040 --> 48:42.560]  Right.
[48:42.560 --> 48:50.520]  So when you have terminal cancer, you're extremely busy because, A, you're trying to live your life as much as possible.
[48:50.520 --> 48:59.900]  And in my case, particularly trying to spend as much time with my kids and teaching them to pick locks and pack and all those important life skills.
[48:59.900 --> 49:12.060]  But I'm also, yeah, rushing around, looking for hospitals, finding doctors that will speak to me about the cutting edge treatments, the experimental treatments.
[49:14.300 --> 49:23.680]  So I think, yeah, one thing was that when I got annoyed and angry, which happened quite a lot, trying to redirect that into taking action.
[49:24.740 --> 49:30.520]  So the, the, like, there's this, this saying that motion beats meditation.
[49:31.420 --> 49:35.920]  And I, I believe that very strongly, that taking action is the key thing.
[49:36.640 --> 49:44.080]  In my case, it was often making a crummy YouTube video, where I tried to talk through the hell that I was in.
[49:45.700 --> 49:56.300]  So, yeah, kind of when, when I was in my, my darkest moments, it was really thinking, like, what can I actually do?
[49:56.540 --> 50:02.060]  Is there a question I can ask someone that might make it, you know, result in some useful information?
[50:02.640 --> 50:07.060]  Is there a way I can do some crowdfunding to pay for some treatment?
[50:07.400 --> 50:18.520]  So instead of kind of dwelling on things, which is like something I would do by, by my nature, trying really hard to turn that into action.
[50:19.660 --> 50:30.500]  Another really big thing is, is like being reflective, and realizing that there's a whole load of bad stuff happening.
[50:31.160 --> 50:35.660]  But the, the worst thing is like the result of all that.
[50:36.100 --> 50:44.120]  So what I mean by that, for example, is when we don't have much sleep, everything is screwed up.
[50:44.560 --> 50:49.980]  So, right, so often, I was, yeah, really at the point of giving up.
[50:50.180 --> 51:01.880]  And I had to kind of remind myself that at least part of that was sleep deprivation, because I'd spend nights vomiting on the chemo, or, you know, after the surgery, I was in pain a lot.
[51:01.880 --> 51:09.160]  And I had a chemo drug that the, I was given like a steroid to stop the fatigue.
[51:09.440 --> 51:13.000]  And the side effect of the steroid was uncontrollable sneezing.
[51:13.140 --> 51:17.700]  So you might sneeze for like an hour, you know, a few days after surgery.
[51:17.700 --> 51:20.600]  So you've got, you feel like the stitches are ripping open.
[51:21.680 --> 51:25.320]  Like, I can smile about it now, but it was, yeah, f*cking unpleasant.
[51:26.420 --> 51:33.140]  But kind of being reflective and realizing that, yeah, there's, there's sleep deprivation, there's problems with not being able to eat.
[51:33.420 --> 51:45.320]  So often, again, with those steroids, right, you're given steroids to stop the fatigue, they make you feel hungry, the chemo makes all the food taste disgusting, right?
[51:45.420 --> 51:49.800]  It attacks the inside of your mouth, it attacks the nerves in your tongue.
[51:49.800 --> 51:57.380]  And had this side effect of first bite syndrome, where it bite food, and it would send like lightning shocks into your brain.
[51:58.440 --> 52:00.380]  So yeah, pretty, pretty grim stuff.
[52:00.700 --> 52:13.580]  But always like looking where, where I could take action, whereas like meaningful action, which may be, yeah, emailing a doctor or researcher saying like, this is my situation, what can you recommend or that kind of thing.
[52:14.660 --> 52:16.960]  Do we have time for another question?
[52:17.440 --> 52:18.920]  Maybe it's the next, next week.
[52:18.920 --> 52:34.260]  Are the body scans, blood tests, DNA tests effective for, let's call it like elective or non-medically required scans to pick up on potential issues?
[52:36.500 --> 52:38.440]  So there's a lot there.
[52:39.480 --> 52:50.660]  The DNA tests at the moment are pretty unreliable, but may, like, so in terms of screening, right?
[52:50.860 --> 53:12.140]  So those kind of tests, like full genome testing, circulating tumor cells, these kind of tests we call liquid biopsies, they are not particularly reliable because, like, the companies make claims about accuracy.
[53:12.440 --> 53:18.040]  We know it's not true because if you send the same samples to different companies, you get different results.
[53:18.240 --> 53:20.040]  So someone's not telling the whole truth.
[53:20.860 --> 53:24.680]  Where they are useful is like as a first step of staging.
[53:24.680 --> 53:36.120]  So you might take a liquid biopsy and something is elevated, or it suggests there's some tumor, circulating tumor cells.
[53:36.120 --> 53:45.740]  And then a next stage after that would be traditional, like, biomarkers, and maybe a CT scan or PET scan.
[53:46.940 --> 53:51.940]  If you are older, then these things make far more sense, right?
[53:51.980 --> 54:02.080]  So if you're young, I mean, your chances of getting cancer when you're young are low, possibly increasing recently, but still low, most cancers, you know, in the over 60s.
[54:03.700 --> 54:14.720]  So those kind of early screening tests are much more helpful for older people because there's, if you get a positive result, there's more chance that really is cancer.
[54:16.000 --> 54:23.680]  The scans, like CT scans, PET scans, they obviously expose you to some radiation.
[54:24.460 --> 54:28.120]  Um, again, if you're older, that's less of an issue.
[54:28.360 --> 54:37.220]  Um, if you're younger and intending to be involved in having children or whatever in the future, then yeah, that's of, of a concern.
[54:37.480 --> 54:43.440]  So those, um, those screening tests are useful as part of a process.
[54:43.440 --> 54:48.440]  They're not, um, reason to panic, uh, in themselves, right?
[54:48.440 --> 54:56.300]  If you do one of these, um, quick, uh, rapid genome sequencing, and it says like, you've got all these mutations, you're probably going to get cancer.
[54:56.680 --> 55:02.220]  Um, that's not something to, to be, uh, particularly concerned about.
[55:02.540 --> 55:05.860]  Um, yeah, cause they're just not that accurate at the moment.
[55:05.980 --> 55:08.720]  That may hopefully change it at some point in the future.
[55:11.340 --> 55:14.980]  Once again, I want to say thank you for sharing this with us.
[55:15.500 --> 55:22.100]  This has been one of the more, uh, amazing, uh, medical talks that we've had at this event.
[55:22.580 --> 55:24.560]  And thank you for coming and joining us.
[55:24.840 --> 55:24.960]  Sure.