'Magic mushroom' drug lifted 'cloud of doom' for cancer patients

(CNN)Patrick Mettes was overcome with frustration. He was anxious. 

His bile duct cancer seemed to bring him more anguish than his wife, Lisa Callaghan, ever realized, she said at a news conference Wednesday.

In search of solace, Mettes volunteered for a study in which he was given a synthetic version of psilocybin, a compound found in mind-altering "magic mushrooms," as a potential treatment for his anxiety and depressed mood.

During the study, Mettes' psychedelic trip was akin to "a space shuttle launch that begins with the clunky trappings of Earth, then gives way to the weightlessness and majesty of space," Callaghan said, recalling what Mettes wrote in a journal entry.

"I believe it helped him, and both of us, live life fully up to the very end," she said.
Mettes later suffered a massive heart attack. He survived but decided to stop chemotherapy. The Brooklyn, New York-based television news director, whose portfolio included CNN's "American Morning," died at the age of 56 in 2012.

Callaghan believes the psilocybin helped Mettes overcome his fear of death, she said.
"He was not afraid of death, and in fact, he seemed to grow through the process of dying," she said of her late husband. "My brother was with us quite a bit during that time and says that he felt that Patrick's spirit grew as his body declined."...

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/01/health/magic-mushrooms-cancer-patients/index.html

Wiki: SV40 (Simian vacuolating virus 40)

SV40 is an abbreviation for Simian vacuolating virus 40 or Simian virus 40, a polyomavirus that is found in both monkeys and humans. It was named for the effect it produced on infected green monkey cells, which developed an unusual number of vacuoles. Like other polyomaviruses, SV40 is a DNA virus that has the potential to cause tumors in animals, but most often persists as a latent infection.

SV40 discovery revealed that between 1955 and 1963 around 90% of children and 60% of adults in USA were inoculated with SV40-contaminated polio vaccines.[1]...

...The hypothesis that SV40 might cause cancer in humans has been a particularly controversial area of research.[11] Several methods have detected SV40 in a variety of human cancers, although how reliable these detection methods are, and whether SV40 has any role in causing these tumors, remains unclear.[12] As a result of these uncertainties, academic opinion remains divided, with some arguing that this hypothesis is not supported by the data[13] and others arguing that some cancers may involve SV40.[...

...An analysis presented at the Vaccine Cell Substrate Conference in 2004[28] suggested that vaccines used in the former Soviet bloc countries, China, Japan, and Africa, could have been contaminated up to 1980, meaning that hundreds of millions more could have been exposed to the virus unknowingly.

Population level studies show no evidence of any increase in cancer incidence as a result of exposure,[29] though SV40 has been extensively studied.[30] A thirty-five year followup found no excess of the cancers putatively associated with SV40.[31].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40

9/11 survivor known as 'Dust Lady' in iconic photo dies at 42

New York (CNN)Many remember the haunting photograph: A woman wearing business attire and pearls is covered head-to-toe in white dust, her hands held out helplessly before her, as she makes her way out of the World Trade Center's damaged North Tower on September 11, 2001.

She survived that day, getting out before both towers of the trade center crumbled and killed 2,753 people in the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

But the woman in the photos, known to most as the "Dust Lady," died Tuesday, her family said. Marcy Borders was 42.

She had been battling stomach cancer since last year, daughter Noelle Borders told CNN...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/26/us/9-11-survivor-dust-lady-dies/index.html

9/11 firefighters ARE getting cancer at a faster rate than others, chief medical officer reveals

via dailymail.co.uk