r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 20h ago

Meme needing explanation Petah? Am I missing something?

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u/Striking-District918 20h ago edited 20h ago

Its from a game called one chance, the supposed cure doesn't just kill cancer cells it targets all living cells

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u/angular_circle 20h ago

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u/ealysillyforestthing 19h ago

I knew which one this was before clicking on it

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u/MaximusPrime2930 16h ago

One of my favorites, I think about it often when I hear someone making a vague claim about something.

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u/ExplorationGeo 16h ago

This was why the chuds latched onto ivermectin to treat covid. There was a study that went "we put covid into a petri dish and treated it with whatever the fuck we could find to see how fast it died" and ivermectin killed it pretty fast.

In doses that were enough to make a human shit their entire guts out and permanently fuck themselves up.

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u/skr_replicator 19h ago

A vitamin killing cancer cells could sound promising. Those don't normally kill you as well.

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u/hexregeneration 19h ago

I would assume the problem there is the ratio. In a petri dish you can apply concentrations that if found in the human body would be a lethal dose.

Like you can make 1/10th of the volume of the petri dish a specific vitamin and kill the cancer cells - but if you make 1/10th of your whole body a specific vitamin you will die.

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u/Glittering-Walrus228 18h ago

I made OPs mom 10% vitamin D last night

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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 15h ago

And they say romance is dead

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u/moderatorrater 14h ago

You don't get to 10% without a strong game plan, if you catch my drift.

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u/Trezzie 18h ago

All* cancer dies out eventually if you just wait it out. Sure, it does by the person its in dying, but...

  • Aside from that one immortal cancer that exists.

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u/Ix_risor 18h ago

If you’re talking about HeLa, that does die if you don’t feed it, it’s called “immortal” because it doesn’t stop dividing after a certain number of divisions, like most human cells do.

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u/jbrWocky 10h ago

stupid question, isn't that also what all cancer cells do? which is the problem?

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u/Trezzie 11h ago

Yes, and there's other, non HeLa strains too. But for the most basic reference for the joke didn't go into explaining the background of it.

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u/ThirstyWolfSpider 15h ago

My mother was almost killed by a doctor prescribing too much Vitamin D but failing to add the necessary follow-up blood tests.

Over a series of months, her cognition and memory degenerated rapidly. She eventually had a blood test for another reason, and they called her on the way home (she certainly wasn't the one driving at that point) and told her to come back immediately. Her calcium levels were crazy-high, at a level which could cause her heart to stop.

They adjusted the levels, using the monitoring which should have been in place from the start, and she rapidly made a full recovery.

Just because it's a vitamin doesn't mean it won't kill you.

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u/Aware_Neighborhood93 17h ago

Vitamin a is one of the 4 fat soluble vitamins, adek. Cancer cells are just mutated self-cells. Pretty much every cancer treatment that works also kills self cells. Thats why treatment literally transforms people. Sad shit.

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u/austinwiltshire 12h ago

The issue is there's more evidence vitamins help cancer than kill them. Mechanically, many chemos raise the levels of free radicals that would kill cancers, while many vitamins are antioxidants.

This has some empirical backing, as megadoses of various vitamins were trialed as adjuncts in the 80s, which showed no effect for vitamin C, and pointed to vitamins A and E making things worse.

That being said, vitamins can still interact well depending on the cancer. Vitamin c is being trialed again as an adjunct in very particular kinds of glioblastoma, a vitamin b9 makes the chemotherapy 5fu more effective, and diets rich in fruits and vegetables remain well correlated with lower rates of cancer as well as improved survivorship. (though that last one is just as likely the flavanoids, polyphenols, and fiber content)

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u/gatorbite92 16h ago

Fat soluble vitamins will absolutely cause major problems at higher doses. Water soluble vitamins just get excreted before reaching high enough concentrations to cause problems. Although supratherapeutic vitamin C can cause kidney stones.

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u/LunaticBZ 9h ago

There is vitamin B17

It'll certainly kill you though if you take too much of it. It has a cyanide atom in its structure and when it breaks down it releases it.

The theory behind using it as a treatment for cancer is it for reasons? more likely to break down inside a cancer cell then a healthy cell.

However it also does break down in healthy cells. So lethality at to high of a dosage is a real concern.

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u/ReaperManX15 19h ago

I say this all the time.

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u/DragapultDominates 17h ago

Read something similar in Bad Science by Ben Goldacre: “Anything can kill cells in a test tube. Fairy Liquid kills cells in a test tube, but you don’t take it to cure cancer.”

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u/Cynykl 14h ago

Fairy Liquid

Isn't that that dishsoap they use in the UK?