The first euphoric hopes in the search for methods of treating oncological diseases arose in the 40s of the twentieth century, when, during the Second World War, they began to study in more detail the effect of chemical warfare agents on the body: mustard gas S(CH2CH2CI) 2 (mustard gas) and nitrogen mustard RN(CH2CH2CI)2 (trichloroethylamine). It is a chemical warfare agent. In the human body, mustard gas reacts with the NH groups of nucleotides that make up DNA. This contributes to the formation of cross-links between DNA strands, due to which this section of DNA becomes inoperable. For the first time as a chemical weapon of mass destruction, it was used by Germany against the Anglo-French troops, in 1917, near the Belgian city of Ypres, which determined the name of this substance.
According to the Chemical Encyclopedia, mustard gas is an active protoplasmic poison that only a gas mask and chemical protective clothing can protect against. It is included in the list of substances that were tested on concentration camp prisoners during the Second World War, in order to obtain scientific information for geneticists and pharmaceutical companies. Behind the pharmaceutical modification of mustard gas, what is called cytostatics in medicine today, tens of thousands of tortured destinies are hidden. New generation drugs used today in oncology as alkylating agents are derivatives of the same mustard gas. Severe, irreversible side effects that occur after the use of these so-called (medicinal) substances are divided into immediate complications, immediate complications and delayed, long-term complications.
Immediate complications (vomiting, nausea, drug fever, hypotensive syndrome, various types of allergic reactions) are observed in the first hours after drug administration. Immediate complications (myelodepression, dyspeptic syndrome, neurological disorders, toxic lesions of the urinary system, damage to the pancreas, lung and myocardial damage, immunosuppression) appear during chemotherapy more often towards the end of the course of treatment. Delayed complications (the same as with the next complication, but manifesting up to six weeks after the end of the course of treatment, liver dysfunction, deepening of myocardial disorders, bone marrow damage). Long-term complications develop 6-8 weeks after the end of the course of chemotherapy and exacerbate existing disorders against the background of a teratogenic and carcinogenic effect.
However, one of the principles of palliative medicine says: “Every cancer patient with a primary malignant neoplasm, after radical (surgical) treatment and chemotherapy, is considered conditionally healthy.”
Materials used:
- Medicines – M.D. Mashkovsky – Moscow – 2005
- Chemistry – a large encyclopedic dictionary – 1998
- Crooked roads of science – chapter-shadows of the past – J. Cemiszewski – Warsaw – 2001
