While this does not help present
victims, it sets the stage for true early detection not just for lung cancer
but other while this does not help present victims, it sets the stage for true
early detection not just for lung cancer but other types as well.
Of some interest the number of
lung cancer victims annually is around 220,000 per year, all individuals
usually in their last decade of income production. In fact it has been shown that the typical
smoking cancer victim loses a decade of productive life. That means that approximately 2.2 million man
years are lost every year. If we presume
that the taxes paid by these victims is at the upper range we are plausibly
able to assign a serious value to this man year of say $25,000 in uncollected
taxes.
This is a back of the envelope
calculation aimed at an order of magnitude only but this gives us a number of at
least fifty billion per year in uncollected taxes. There is also the added direct expense of
medical costs of say $100,000 per patient for another twenty billion or so.
Yet the total state taxes
collected is around twenty five billion.
What I have just spelled out is
that cigarette smoking is revenue negative to the USA
Yet as far as I have seen no one
has ever connected the dots. Chopping a
decade of a persons life costs the government hugely today and that money is
never made up by taxes on the behavior.
New Method for Detecting Lung Cancer Unveiled
ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2011) — When lung cancer strikes, it often
spreads silently into more advanced stages before being detected. In a new
article published in Nature Nanotechnology, biological engineers and medical
scientists at the University
of Missouri
"Early detection can save lives, but there is currently no proven
screening test available for lung cancer," said Michael Wang, MD, PhD,
assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at MU and a
corresponding author for the article. "We've developed highly sensitive
technology that can detect a specific molecule type in the bloodstream when
lung cancer is present."
Worldwide and in the United
States U.S.
MU researchers used blood plasma samples to detect a change in a
specific small ribonucleic acid (microRNA) molecule that is often elevated in
lung cancer patients. The scientists put an extract of blood plasma through a
protein-based nanopore, which is a tiny hole in a thin membrane that is just
big enough for a single molecule to pass through. By applying an ionic current
to the nanopore, the scientists measured changes in the current that occur when
the microRNA molecule associated with lung cancer is present.
"That altered current acts as a signal or bio-signature that is
related to lung cancer," said Li-Qun Gu, PhD, an associate professor of
biological engineering at MU and a corresponding author for the article.
"Our new nanopore sensor is selective and sensitive enough to detect
microRNAs at the single molecular level in plasma samples from lung cancer
patients.
"While there are many research labs that focus on nanopore
applications, this is the first time that nanopore technology has been used to
detect lung cancer," Gu added. "This technology could possibly be
used in the future to detect other cancer types as well as other types of
diseases with specific DNA or RNA in the blood."
MU research published in the article was partially supported by grants
from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and University of Missouri Intellectual Property Fast Track Initiative
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