3 ms·

It's just kind of hard to believe that there is some kind of "magic" about cancer that will make it impervious to treatment using mid-21st century medical techn

It's just kind of hard to believe that there is some kind of "magic" about cancer that will make it impervious to treatment using mid-21st century medical technology. Just in the past 5 years there have been some pretty amazing breakthroughs related to targeting cancer cells with new drug delivery mechanisms, etc. Even with 20th century tech cancer survival rates have continued to rise. See, for example, pg 29 of this report: http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2004/results_merged/sect_01_overview.pdf http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2004/results_merged/sect_01_... Am I reading you wrong in understanding that you think that cancer will not be treatable in the mid 21st century, to at least a far greater extent than it is today? That seems the much harder case to make...

jacquesm 16y ago
Cancer is not much better treatable today than it was in the 70's of the previous century, when the 'war on cancer' was launched, it's a 5% change in the 'death' rate over 40 years. Newsflash, we've lost that war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer We are hoping but we do not know for sure that new directions and avenues researched for treatments will give us new tools to help in finding a real cure. But for the moment, and probably for the foreseeable future there is no indication that we will actually find this cure. At the moment - as crude as it may sound - if you could choose between being HIV positive or having a malignant tumor I'd pick HIV, we have a much better handle on arresting HIV than we have on stopping a cancer once started, other than by surgery, radiation and chemo therapy and a lot of good will. Once a cancer has metastasized you are living on borrowed time. Just like cancer isn't treatable by a much greater extent than it was 40 years ago I would not bet on seeing that change in the next 40 years. That does not mean we should stop researching or that we will 'just have to live with it' but I think it is a bit early to start putting dates on when a solution will be found. One of the bigger problems is that the differences between healthy cells and cancerous cells are minute, in some way you could say that the cancerous cells are the stronger ones. This makes going after cancer cells and not killing the cells around them (or even the whole organism) very difficult.

jacquesm 16y ago

Cancer is not much better treatable today than it was in the 70's of the previous century, when the 'war on cancer' was launched, it's a 5% change in the 'death' rate over 40 years. Newsflash, we've lost that war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer We are hoping but we do not know for sure that new directions and avenues researched for treatments will give us new tools to help in finding a real cure. But for the moment, and probably for the foreseeable future there is no indication that we will actually find this cure. At the moment - as crude as it may sound - if you could choose between being HIV positive or having a malignant tumor I'd pick HIV, we have a much better handle on arresting HIV than we have on stopping a cancer once started, other than by surgery, radiation and chemo therapy and a lot of good will. Once a cancer has metastasized you are living on borrowed time. Just like cancer isn't treatable by a much greater extent than it was 40 years ago I would not bet on seeing that change in the next 40 years. That does not mean we should stop researching or that we will 'just have to live with it' but I think it is a bit early to start putting dates on when a solution will be found. One of the bigger problems is that the differences between healthy cells and cancerous cells are minute, in some way you could say that the cancerous cells are the stronger ones. This makes going after cancer cells and not killing the cells around them (or even the whole organism) very difficult.