In 2003 or so they found there are enzymes that only occur in cancer cells. They're in the Cytochrome P450-II series and occur in many species. The first to be played with was the CYP17 variant.

Gerry Potter worked for a pharmaceutical company and designed a drug that reacts with that enzyme to kill only that cell. CYP17 is expressed only in prostate cancer.

The drug (he called it "pro-drug" because it turns into the dug that does the work by reacting with the CYP17 enzyme which then kills only the cancer cell. This worked in the petri dish, rats and on monkeys, was patented and his company sold it for $2B.

Then he was hospitalized for bipolar disorder and spent three weeks drawing pictures of molecules claiming he was working on the cure for cancer. Suuuuuuuue Gerry.

After three weeks he'd figured out the general case version which works via the CYP1B1 pathway. He gets out, goes back to work and begins trying to make the drug he designed in the funny farm.

So he looks in the big book of molecules to find the closest one - you start with that and add or subtract things till you get what you want.

Problem is, this molecule already existed in nature. Dafuq? It exists most in tangerine peel.

(as an aside if you look up world cancer rates they're (off the top of my head and approximately) 250 per 100K at the low end (South Africa) and 350 per 100K at the high end (Denmark). Curiously the poorest counties have the lowest rates, the reason for that may be they out of necessity have to grow their own vegetable. More on this later. Now, where are tangerines grown? Tangiers/Morocco. But that country doesn't show up in any cancer stats. Buf if you look on the Moroccan government website and dig (Chrome translates Arabic just fine) you will find a) everybody chain smokes there b) the cancer rate s 100 per 100K, nearly a third of the lowest country on the WHO list)

It also exists in plums, asparagus and strawberries but not as much as tangerines. Now, when he was investigating this initially, the peel extract worked. When he made his second batch it barely worked but he noticed he used regular tangerines the second time and organic tangerines the first time and found that the plant makes the molecule in response to mold. When we spray anti-fungals this is attenuated up to 90% Also, it's bitter as hell and we've bred this out to a large extent.

We began spraying anti-fungals around 1900 and it reached near ubiquity after WWII during the rise of synthetic fertilizer, insecticides and stuff to feed the increasing population we called the boomers.

When you have some time compare the rate of cancer since 1900 to the rte of adoption of sprayed produce.

As to the poor and their vegetables, they can't afford sprays. So not only do they eat more vegetables (which we know reduces cancer rates) but they eat less sprayed produce.

This is actually what's killing the bees and amphibians too. People get all bent over neonicotinoid insecticides but do not understand this has not been proven in a lab. It's the antifungal instead.

http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/

Never the less, we're banning neonicotinoid junk all over the place now and ignoring the antifungal sprays. No doubt they'll get this eventually when the bees don't stop dying. They're already gone from here and have had that ecological niche backfilled by native bees and flies.

So. Is cancer a fungus? No. But, if you know anything about cancer and mycology you recognize they have similar properties so while it's not correct to say "cancer is a fungus" it's less incorrect to say "they have nothing to do with each other". That's kinda the Dunning Kruger effect in action.

So, what happened to Potter's CYP1B1 discovery? Nothing. It's not patentable. Pharmaceutical company have zero interest in it.

They aren't interested in curing cancer they're interested in making money. Nobody is gonna put up the $100M to do FDA trials (you can't kickstart 100M) so he can't say it cures cancer while drugs to are for that, don't work much at all past 5 years. Oh irony how I love you.

The good news is you can just buy this stuff OTC.

Caveat: you have to take it forever and 1/5 people lack the allele on gene P53 that makes it work. The next goal is to find something that kills that stem cell that keeps producing defective copies we call cancer.

From a computer standpoint CYP1B1 is like a busy bit. It's asserted (expressed) at the beginning cell division and destroyed upon successful error checking. If it exists in a cell, it means "delete me". Given sufficient raw materials the human body does that every time. In deficit, not so much.

It turns out as well cancer happens all the time and can be found in all living things. Most of the time the body kills it off. When it lacks the precursors to do so, you get a tumor.

I got all this from this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Sparkes

and have talked with Brian Schaefer a bit, he wrote one of the paper about this. These guys would hang out at the Starbucks at Yonge and Roncesvalles ad sor o hold court, they'd help people who the medical system told "you're terminal get our affairs in order" and they all without fao got better in six weeks because of this stuff. I've met many of them. It's rather incredible but more incredible that it's ignored.

This is especially ironic to me because in 1988 I was arguing a point I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was correct and an entire newsgroup felt the opposite way and had all manner of irrational nonsense as an argument and I thought myself "Christ, you could have the cure for cancer and could day so and the net would just ignore you.

Potter made his big discovery 8 years ago. It's not like I haven't mentioned all this before countless times. It does no good because people have such faith in their doctors - who haven't ever heard of it.