After all these years, BNCT will never be a big player in the treatment modalities. Prevention (not smoking) and early detection (mammography) will always provide the best benefits for the costs. I would expect to see new biochemical detection methods in the future.
"Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca> wrote:
<snip>
Up to 90 percent of the 157,200 lung cancer deaths that will occur this year could have been prevented if people did not smoke.<snip>
Even with the most advanced treatments today, just 15 percent of lung cancer patients survive five years.
<snip>...........I wonder what "most advanced treatments" they mean. Although BNCT (Boron neutron capture therapy) is not quite there yet, the Italian technique of performing it on explanted organs has recently demonstrated excellent results on liver cancer -- and the researchers explicitly noted the technique's applicability to the much larger problem of lung cancer.
So it seems to me are really dragging our feet on providing cancer treatment to hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe the profit margin just isn't there and insurance companies wouldn't like it ? ( not to mention the antinukes, who would no doubt be appalled at any medical treatment involving nuclear reactors !)
Jaro