In Michael Crichton’s book “The Andromeda Strain”, there is a mention of a strange drug that could kill every single cell organism while leaving humans unaffected and IIRC cure cancer too.
In clinical tests however, the side-effects of that drug were so horible, that they had to stop any further research. The drug was named in the book, but I can’t remember its name now.
It is perhaps an overstatement to say that not one single sentence in any book by Michael Crichton contains a reference to actual scientific knowledge, but it is certainly very close to the truth.
So the odds of this drug being real are extremely tiny indeed.
It seems contradictory to me that it could simultaneously “leave humans unaffected” and still have horrible side effects.
Also, if there were a single drug that could cure cancer (which is practically impossible for a single substance, because there are so many different kinds of cancer) it would be used despite its side effects. Most of the traditional chemotherapy drugs used against cancer (as well as radiation treatment) have really, really nasty side effects, but they’re still used.
Remember, Verrain? He works at The Wistar Institute.
I’ve had many conversations with him on biology, chemistry and oncology. I have asked him ‘Will there ever be a magic bullet?’
‘No. There are too many variables, and too many different kinds of cancer [long list of the number of things that have to go wrong for cancer to start in the first place] [Long list of reasons why certain drugs don’t work on some cancers]. There will never be one drug that cures all cancer’
Since I’ve never chatted with Michael Crichton, I’m gonna go with Verrain on this one.
I read the book several years ago, so I don’t remember all of the details. As far as I remember, it was OK as long as the patients continued to take the medicine. The problems started when they stopped taking it.
And I am not sure about cancer. Maybe it wasn’t mentioned in the book.
You might want to keep in mind that “The Andromeda Strain” was written in 1969.
A massive dose of bleach would kill all foreign organisms in the human body. Like you said, though, its the side affects that keep this miracle drug price low.
Boy! I remember that drug, even though I read the book in grade school 30+ years ago. IIRC, it was kanamycin.
I was terribly disappointed any time it was mentioned in grad school or medical school - which wasn’t often. It’s just an antibiotic (specifically, an aminoglycoside).
It is sometimes used in serious infections, but it is toxic – mostly kidney damage, ototoxicity (damage to the inner ear causing hearing loss or balance problems) and sometimes muscle weakness, especially in parkinson’s or Myathenia gravis. There are other issues that make it less commonly used than other drugs of the same class–e.g. it can be inactivated by penicillin-like drugs, especially in cases where the kidney is already compromised, so it can’t be used in one-two knockout combos like ampicillin/gentamycin (which is very effective and widely used in a hospital along with measurements of serum levels through the day to limit the risk of toxic effects).
The imaginary version of kanamycin Crichton described seems to be a combination of several real antibiotics that were “hot” when he was in medical school. Doxycycline was usedas part of certain chemoptherapy cocktails at the time (I’m not an oncologist, though its derivatives are still used in chemo cocktails, AFAIK, doxycycline itself is used in few if any current chemo regimens)
I don’t specifically recall him mentioning a problem with going off the drug, but it would fit with something doctors worried about then (bacterial overgrowth and imbalance, especially in the colon, after the use of “super-powerful” antibiotics). There turned out to be some limited validity to this (e.g. a bacterial condition called pseudomembranous colitis, which has the unique property of being a known side effect of all the drugs used to treat it!) The principle is sound, and I believe it may be a more important notion someday, but it isn’t today. I wish I could say more (the role of commensal and other “normal” bacterial flora has always been a particular interest of mine) But I’ve been exhausted all day, and I’m tired enough now that I probably shouldn’t be posting.
So, like, none of this is medical advice, dig?
Crichton was one of my favorite authors when I was growing up. I also read his nonfiction books on medicine, like Five Patients, but I have to say that I had to unlearn a lot of the details I learned from him (e.g. his description of how daily rounds were or should be ideally conducted may have reflected the practice at Mass General when he was there, and does indeed highlight a few points that would be useful insights for laymen, but it only got me in trouble as a med student, until I realized why I mistakenly thought I should be presenting cases that way and changed. He hated medical school, and tried to drop out at the end of each year, but was talked into staying (per his autobiography). I hate to say it, but I think it shows in his medical writing.
Oh, man. You got that right!
Thank the lucky stars my medical writer role model was Samuel Shem, MD. 
“They can always hurt you more”
I looked it up. It was Kalocin. Antiviral, antibiotic, antifungal and antiparasitical. Patients were taken off of it and died within 6 hours.
…In the Crichton-verse that is…