Yeah, it does sound too good to be true. And like my pappy always said, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
But, putting that aside for the moment . .
DCA has been tested in patients and has been shown to cause toxic neuropathy.
linkey here This is what was referred to in the op article, if you read it all the way through, near the end: "DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers. " While the dosage at which DCA causes toxic neuropathy may be quite high compared to the dosage at which it normalizes some forms of cancer cells (quoted in the linked article at 25 mg/kg/day, which is quite high), it's something that will have to be watched carefully.
In addition, although there's good cause for further research, there's little chance it could cure "all cancers" since cancers vary significantly between tissue affected, and even then there can be many different cancer types for the same tissue. Also, the study published only demonstrated tumor reduction, not elimination. This might be a treatment that would work well in combination with other treatments, or it might be a good treatment to extend lifetime and quality of life in a terminal case.
Finally, there's no reason that pharmaceutical companies would not get involved if there were a good chance that it would really do what it says it will. Pharmaceutical companies have many ways of patenting their drug: whether that be patenting the exact "formula" in the pill they feed you, or patenting the delivery system used. In addition, the molecule may be modified slightly to form a molecule that IS patentable: for instance, remove one of the chlorines and replace it with fluorine. In fact, doing so may increase the efficacy of the molecule. Regardless, there's lots of research to be done before DCA could be a viable treatment for any cancer type.
syduck:
