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Thursday, May 28th, 2015

Cuba’s Had A Lung Cancer Vaccine For Years, And Now It’s Coming To The U.S.

Author:     Erin Schumaker
Source:     The Huffington Post
Publication Date:     05/14/2015 9:59 pm EDT
 Link: Cuba’s Had A Lung Cancer Vaccine For Years, And Now It’s Coming To The U.S.
Stephan:   I've lost six friends over the past 15 years to lung cancer, just a few of the 156,953 men, women, and children who die of this disease every year. I can only wonder how many might still be alive if we had not embargoed Cuba. Note also that Cuba gives the drug away to patients as part of their universal healthcare system. Once it gets through trials in the U.S. how much do you think a course of treatment will cost? $5,000 a month? $10,000 a month? You know damn well the illness profit industry is not going to be selling it for a dollar or giving it away as they do in Cuba. As this report notes: " life expectancy for Cubans is 79 years, on par with the United States, despite the fact that its economy per person is eight times smaller."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in Cuba. Credit: USA Today

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in Cuba.
Credit: USA Today

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) headed to Havana on a historic trade mission in April, he returned with the promise of an important commodity: a Cuban-developed lung cancer vaccine.

The vaccine, called CimaVax, has been researched in Cuba for 25 years and became available for free to the Cuban public in 2011. The country’s Center for Molecular Immunology signed an agreement last month with Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York to import CimaVax and begin clinical trials in the United States.

“We’re still at the very early stages of assessing the promise of this vaccine, but the evidence so far from clinical trials in Cuba and Europe has been striking,” Dr. Kelvin Lee, Jacobs Family Chair in Immunology and co-leader of the Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at Roswell Park, told The Huffington Post.

When President Obama loosened the United State’s 55-year long trade embargo against the island nation in December, he allowed for such joint […]

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