5 ms·

I wish we spent more time studying why elephants [1] and bowhead whales [2] don't get cancer more often than they do. If we knew exactly why their cells are so

I wish we spent more time studying why elephants [1] and bowhead whales [2] don't get cancer more often than they do. If we knew exactly why their cells are so resistant to cancer we would have some ideas of what we need to do to make ours the same. 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26447685 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26447685 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25565328 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25565328

joering2 10y ago
Slim chances. I'm sorry to say that but most cancer research you hear of in media don't want to cure cancer. Its just a business. Otherwise Apple could throw 40 billions of $ in it and come up wit ha cure. At least in USA, it become such a fat cow to milk that foundations grew everywhere out of nowhere... go to your local store and say "no thank you" when cashier ask you "would you like to donate to fight cancer" and see their look like you are a murderer or something. Its next to "charity" best way for crooks to get rich tax-free while sucking on unaware populus.
- JakeAl 10y ago
  There are plenty of cures for cancer. They just don't all work all of the time on all people and it's not necessarily permanent. It all depends on the type of cancer and what the cause is. You can get the cancer in any cell in your body and often you have more than one type at a time. Plus the treatment for preventing a recurrence can be just as unhealthy as the disease. That's why there can be so many variations in treatment and survival rates. The biggest thing you are trying to stay ahead of is the cancer spreading to your lymph nodes which is where the anti-bodies and white blood cells that power your immune system are made. Crippling these makes you susceptible to other diseases like every day bacterial infections and viruses which then could end up killing you. It's certainly not because they don't want to cure cancer. Most cancers (80%) can be prevented though, and 70% of them are associated with HPV, a virus that is transmitted through sex. This is why sleeping around is unhealthy. You could be spreading it to every one you sleep with orally as well as genitally. (just another reason marrying your first love and being monogamous is healthy behavior). HPV has been associated with cervical cancer, breast cancer, throat cancer, prostate cancer, mouth cancer (noticing the pattern...). And that's just one factor associated with cancer. Eating healthy (fruits an dveggies, lower red meat especially meat treated with chemicals) reduces other types of cancers associated with your digestive system like colon cancer (and is good for the heart and circulatory system which starts affecting you the closer you get to 50). Basically your arteries harden and your circulation gets poorer as you age and that results in other problems that creep up like high or low blood pressure that causes things like chronic headaches or numb feet, being overweight which can also lead to diabetes, etc. If you take care of yourself when you are young you will have fewer problems as you age, but they are inevitable the older you get. But sometimes cancer is just a genetic mutation you inherited and you will get it anyway.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    80% of cancers can be prevented and 70% are associated with HPV? Do you a source for that?
    - girvo 10y ago
      They're completely wrong, and are using it as a bullshit (excuse my language) platform to push their "moral" righteousness. This simply proven: Based on data from 2006 to 2010, about 33,200 HPV-associated cancers occur in the United States each year: about 20,600 among females, and about 12,600 among males. Cervical cancer is the most common HPV-associated cancer among women, and oropharyngeal cancers (cancers of the back of the throat, including the base of the tongue and tonsils) are the most common among men. That's from: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/ Now let's quickly look at how many cancer cases we're looking at each year: In 2016, an estimated 1,685,210 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 595,690 people will die from the disease. From: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics So I don't know where they got their numbers from. You might also be interested in: http://www.aicr.org/research/research_science_policy_report.html http://www.aicr.org/research/research_science_policy_report.... -- which has a pretty great rundown of preventable cancer incidences. Quite interesting, really.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  Can you imagine the amount of money someone would have thrown at them if they could cure cancer? I don't think greed is what's stopping people from cutting cancer.
mrfusion 10y ago
And naked mole rats right?
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Naked mole rats don't live as long as humans. What we really need to know is how to make a human cell almost never get cancer - looking at large, long lived animals in different lineages should give us a lot of clues of the way to go.
kirtanupa 10y ago
We do know. A gene called p53 detects anomalies during DNA replication and can "arrest" the growth or replication phase, or force apoptosis (cell death). 1. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44215/title/Explaining-Elephants--Cancer-Resistance/ http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44215/... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53
- danieltillett 10y ago
  No we don't know. We know very little about the reasons for the relative absence of cancer in these organisms. The absence of cancer is not solely due to p53 differences, p53 just happens to be one of the few cancer preventing genes studied to date in these animals.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    yeah but P53 redundancies are a pretty big deal in answering that question. We have one P53 gene and if it gets damaged the cell gets to run amok. Those other animals have like 12 p53 genes, and don't get cancer. Correlation, meet causation. What is the valid counterpoint?
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      The evidence that p53 duplication is an important mechanism is very interesting, but we know p53 is not the sole answer. A good example of this is both humans and mice have one copy of the p53 gene yet humans are vastly more resistant to developing cancer than mice.
      - andrewjl 10y ago
        Could that be because humans are more complex from a biochemical standpoint than mice?
        danieltillett 10y ago
larsiusprime 10y ago
Slate star codex kind of speculates [1] that it might have something to do with scale, ie -- in order to keep growing in a creature that large, the cancer cells need to coordinate among themselves and specialize to a degree that is not needed at smaller scale. In other words, before the cancer can grow large enough to threaten the host, "the cancer gets cancer." [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/ Speculation by a psychiatrist of course, and mostly in service to a metaphor about some totally other topic, but I wonder if there's something to the theory.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  There is a lot of speculation in this area - see Peto's paradox [1] - what we are missing is lots of good data. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox
zaro 10y ago
It is much more profitable to treat cancer than to cure it. So I don't really believe it's about science. And because I can already see the down votes, let me ask you down-voters a question. With what thoughts do you imagine a CEO of a company like Phizer or GlaxoSmithKline wakes up? Is it how to cure more people, or is it how to make more money to keep shareholders happy ? And see how there is a conflict of interests, the sicker the people are the more they are willing to pay to get well and the more they need your products.

joering2 10y ago

Slim chances. I'm sorry to say that but most cancer research you hear of in media don't want to cure cancer. Its just a business. Otherwise Apple could throw 40 billions of $ in it and come up wit ha cure. At least in USA, it become such a fat cow to milk that foundations grew everywhere out of nowhere... go to your local store and say "no thank you" when cashier ask you "would you like to donate to fight cancer" and see their look like you are a murderer or something. Its next to "charity" best way for crooks to get rich tax-free while sucking on unaware populus.

JakeAl 10y ago
There are plenty of cures for cancer. They just don't all work all of the time on all people and it's not necessarily permanent. It all depends on the type of cancer and what the cause is. You can get the cancer in any cell in your body and often you have more than one type at a time. Plus the treatment for preventing a recurrence can be just as unhealthy as the disease. That's why there can be so many variations in treatment and survival rates. The biggest thing you are trying to stay ahead of is the cancer spreading to your lymph nodes which is where the anti-bodies and white blood cells that power your immune system are made. Crippling these makes you susceptible to other diseases like every day bacterial infections and viruses which then could end up killing you. It's certainly not because they don't want to cure cancer. Most cancers (80%) can be prevented though, and 70% of them are associated with HPV, a virus that is transmitted through sex. This is why sleeping around is unhealthy. You could be spreading it to every one you sleep with orally as well as genitally. (just another reason marrying your first love and being monogamous is healthy behavior). HPV has been associated with cervical cancer, breast cancer, throat cancer, prostate cancer, mouth cancer (noticing the pattern...). And that's just one factor associated with cancer. Eating healthy (fruits an dveggies, lower red meat especially meat treated with chemicals) reduces other types of cancers associated with your digestive system like colon cancer (and is good for the heart and circulatory system which starts affecting you the closer you get to 50). Basically your arteries harden and your circulation gets poorer as you age and that results in other problems that creep up like high or low blood pressure that causes things like chronic headaches or numb feet, being overweight which can also lead to diabetes, etc. If you take care of yourself when you are young you will have fewer problems as you age, but they are inevitable the older you get. But sometimes cancer is just a genetic mutation you inherited and you will get it anyway.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  80% of cancers can be prevented and 70% are associated with HPV? Do you a source for that?
  - girvo 10y ago
    They're completely wrong, and are using it as a bullshit (excuse my language) platform to push their "moral" righteousness. This simply proven: Based on data from 2006 to 2010, about 33,200 HPV-associated cancers occur in the United States each year: about 20,600 among females, and about 12,600 among males. Cervical cancer is the most common HPV-associated cancer among women, and oropharyngeal cancers (cancers of the back of the throat, including the base of the tongue and tonsils) are the most common among men. That's from: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/ Now let's quickly look at how many cancer cases we're looking at each year: In 2016, an estimated 1,685,210 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 595,690 people will die from the disease. From: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics So I don't know where they got their numbers from. You might also be interested in: http://www.aicr.org/research/research_science_policy_report.html http://www.aicr.org/research/research_science_policy_report.... -- which has a pretty great rundown of preventable cancer incidences. Quite interesting, really.
grahamburger 10y ago
Can you imagine the amount of money someone would have thrown at them if they could cure cancer? I don't think greed is what's stopping people from cutting cancer.

mrfusion 10y ago

And naked mole rats right?

danieltillett 10y ago
Naked mole rats don't live as long as humans. What we really need to know is how to make a human cell almost never get cancer - looking at large, long lived animals in different lineages should give us a lot of clues of the way to go.

kirtanupa 10y ago

We do know. A gene called p53 detects anomalies during DNA replication and can "arrest" the growth or replication phase, or force apoptosis (cell death). 1. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44215/title/Explaining-Elephants--Cancer-Resistance/ http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44215/... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53

danieltillett 10y ago
No we don't know. We know very little about the reasons for the relative absence of cancer in these organisms. The absence of cancer is not solely due to p53 differences, p53 just happens to be one of the few cancer preventing genes studied to date in these animals.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  yeah but P53 redundancies are a pretty big deal in answering that question. We have one P53 gene and if it gets damaged the cell gets to run amok. Those other animals have like 12 p53 genes, and don't get cancer. Correlation, meet causation. What is the valid counterpoint?
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    The evidence that p53 duplication is an important mechanism is very interesting, but we know p53 is not the sole answer. A good example of this is both humans and mice have one copy of the p53 gene yet humans are vastly more resistant to developing cancer than mice.
    - andrewjl 10y ago
      Could that be because humans are more complex from a biochemical standpoint than mice?
      - danieltillett 10y ago

larsiusprime 10y ago

Slate star codex kind of speculates [1] that it might have something to do with scale, ie -- in order to keep growing in a creature that large, the cancer cells need to coordinate among themselves and specialize to a degree that is not needed at smaller scale. In other words, before the cancer can grow large enough to threaten the host, "the cancer gets cancer." [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/ Speculation by a psychiatrist of course, and mostly in service to a metaphor about some totally other topic, but I wonder if there's something to the theory.

danieltillett 10y ago
There is a lot of speculation in this area - see Peto's paradox [1] - what we are missing is lots of good data. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox

zaro 10y ago

It is much more profitable to treat cancer than to cure it. So I don't really believe it's about science. And because I can already see the down votes, let me ask you down-voters a question. With what thoughts do you imagine a CEO of a company like Phizer or GlaxoSmithKline wakes up? Is it how to cure more people, or is it how to make more money to keep shareholders happy ? And see how there is a conflict of interests, the sicker the people are the more they are willing to pay to get well and the more they need your products.