Monday, April 6, 2015

McCarthy Current Event #6


Honors Chemistry                                                                                       April 6th, 2015
                       
“Curing cancer with a single, risk-free shot” by Douglas Quenqua
Citation
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102523610"Personalized Cancer Vaccines May

The article “Curing cancer with a single, risk-free shot” by Douglas Quenqua was an informative take on the varying cures of cancer. In the beginning of the article it discusses how long it takes for doctors to invent a working drug to cure any kind of disease. On average it normally takes about 12 years with 2 billion dollars spent over those two years to successfully introduce a new type of drug or vaccine to the market. The article then focuses on Dr. Kim who founded Inovio, a company that develops vaccines that fight life-threatening diseases. Their method of success is to deliver small snippets of DNA to tell the immune system to recognize the incoming disease such as cancer, HIV, and even Ebola. Overall the article was very informative and went into the science of vaccines and how they work.
The article is relevant to society because 40% of men and women get cancer at one point in their lifetime. With the help of companies like Inovio billions of lives could be saved. The article is also very relevant because it discusses the new methods used to fight diseases like cancer. It’s interesting to see how the methods have evolved over the years, and how they are improving. However, the most important that about the article is article is it gives humanity hope that one day we can officially find a cure for cancer and other life ending diseases that plague our society.
In general I found the article engaging and easy to read. However, there were moments where I did not fully understand the scientific terms. It would be easier if they simplified the scientific process behind the creation of disease fighting vaccines. I also wish the article would have spent more time getting to the actual cure for cancer instead of giving a exorbitant amount of background information. That being said I thought the article was very informative and gave me hope for the future of our society when dealing with diseases like cancer.


3 comments:

  1. Julian’s current event reviewed one of the most interesting topics I’ve read about in science recently. I was surprised to learn about new findings that state there might be cures for major sickness’ such as cancer. I really liked how Julian presented his current events. He wrote about the cure explaining what it was and how it is distributed. Julian was able to decipher what he thought was the most important part of the article and that’s what he wrote about. I also liked Julian’s reasoning on the article’s importance to society. He wrote how cancer impacts many people in america at least once throughout their life and to find a cure for it could save many lives. If I could change anything about this review it would be to use direct quotes from the article to make his review stronger. I’d also try putting in more information about the cure in direct relation to cancer since that seems to be the main focus of the article.. Julian talks about the general information of the company but he doesn’t specify how it works in relation to cancer. Overall, I enjoyed reading Julian’s article.

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  2. Julian’s current event reviewed one of the most interesting topics I’ve read about in science recently. I was surprised to learn about new findings that state there might be cures for major sickness’ such as cancer. I really liked how Julian presented his current events. He wrote about the cure explaining what it was and how it is distributed. Julian was able to decipher what he thought was the most important part of the article and that’s what he wrote about. I also liked Julian’s reasoning on the article’s importance to society. He wrote how cancer impacts many people in america at least once throughout their life and to find a cure for it could save many lives. If I could change anything about this review it would be to use direct quotes from the article to make his review stronger. I’d also try putting in more information about the cure in direct relation to cancer since that seems to be the main focus of the article.. Julian talks about the general information of the company but he doesn’t specify how it works in relation to cancer. Overall, I enjoyed reading Julian’s article.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Julian’s review on ““Curing cancer with a single, risk-free shot” by Douglas Quenqua was very well written. First of all, Julian addressed everything involved with doing research and making cures for cancer. He also presented facts about diseases like cancer. This was good because it provided general background information. Another thing Julian did was he named explained who the doctor was and the company that was trying to make these vaccines. He explained how this idea was relevant to society, which was also good. One more thing I liked about Julian’s review was that it was easy to follow. One thing I think Julian could have done to make his review even better is if he included more about how the company was creating these vaccines. Also Julian could have included more information about the company itself. I found this article very interesting because it could have a very big and positive impact on us in the future.

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