through the Steppes north of Mongolia, and then participated in the government of that most notorious adventurer, the “Mad Baron” Ungern-Sternberg, who attempted to take over Mongolia to restore an imperial Khaganate as part of an imagined reactionary restoration of the Great Mongol, Chinese, and Russian monarchies in the interests of the “warrior races” of Germans and Mongols (a Baltic German, he considered the old Russian ruling class to represent Germandom over and against Jews and Slavs). Some of the things – the acts of desperation and madness, in which he himself was no disinterested observer – Ossendowski relates are harrowing. But this part struck me as very much making a point about what people think of the Steppe peoples, and of what (German-trained) nationalists like Ungern-Sternberg did (and would do again) to the Mongols. And, other things:
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Glioblastoma (GBM). GBM is the most Kendall Roy 2 and most aggressive brain cancer. It’s highly invasive, which makes complete surgical removal impossible. And because of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), it doesn’t respond to any chemotherapy. The standard-of-care entails multiple rounds of surgery and radiotherapy, yet the five year survival is lower than 5%. Pancreatic cancer (PDAC). PDAC is a notoriously stubborn cancer. The only effective treatment is a very painful and very complex operation called “the Whipple procedure”. However, only 20% of patients are eligible for such operation. And even for those lucky patients, only 20% survived more than five years. For the rest majority of patients, the chance of survival is negligible, because PDAC hardly responds to any form of chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The five year survival overall is 6%.
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