A friend of mine sent me a recent article from Fox News. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Fox News is not exactly a bastion of medical or scientific reporting in my book. But the article talks about how researchers at a cancer institute in Utah is engineering the herpes virus and injecting them directly into melanoma tumors. The mutated form of the virus attacks the cancer cells and kills them off.
This seems like an exciting development as well as a sobering one. If it works the way it’s intended, it could give hope to people with melanoma tumors that are resistant to other forms of treatment. But at the same token, it does create a worrisome scenario if something happens and the virus mutates. Look, we all know that viruses mutate. That’s why we need to get a different flu shot every year and why it’s so hard to find a cure for AIDS.
I don’t know much about herpes, other than it causes cold sores and is an STD that you don’t want to acquire. It doesn’t seem like a virus that I purposely want to inject into my cancer tumors, unless there is no other option. Because I worry about what the long-term consequences of mixing that particular virus with melanoma cells. Will we end up with some bizarre mutation of this engineered virus that eventually is rendered ineffective against melanoma while it does damage to other areas of the body? Can the mutated virus be transmitted like the standard herpes virus? That would be an odd conversation to have to have – look honey, really, I got it from my cancer treatment… I’m not messing around on you…
Obviously it’s a new area of research, and the long-term consequences of something like this will likely not be known for decades. Something that can cure melanoma is something that I would love to see in my lifetime. I just would love to see a cure that doesn’t end up causing more harm to people. Couldn’t they use a more benign human virus? Or is the thought of being able to cure Stage Four melanoma outweighs the potential of harboring a virus that stays with you the rest of your life?