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> Why? Breast cancer is cancer of the breast tissue. It’s a different disease to prostate cancer, which is again a different disease to colon cancer and leukaem

> Why? Breast cancer is cancer of the breast tissue. It’s a different disease to prostate cancer, which is again a different disease to colon cancer and leukaemia. Yet most cancer treatment at the moment is not so specific. The exact same drugs are used to treat many different forms of cancer[1]; lukæmia is indeed treated with the same drugs as breast cancer is. > Breast or prostate cancer are the most common cancers in women and men respectively. The most common form of cancer is lung cancer[2], and while breast cancer takes a second place, prostate cancer is fairly low down the list at 5. Furthermore, in terms of lethality, both take a rather strong backseat to many other forms[3] > I don’t think it has anything to do with identity politics and everything to do with the medicine. I see no evidence for your claim that breast cancer is so fundamentally different and the link I posted indicates that the same treatments are very much used for different locations of cancer. - [1] https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000910.htm https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000910.htm - [2] https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/worldwide-cancer-data https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/worldwide-c... - [3] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-deaths/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-de...

gus_massa 6y ago
There are some specific treatments for breast cancer with hormones. More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer#Hormonal_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer#Hormonal_therapy
Delk 6y ago
Many anti-cancer drugs target cell division, or DNA replication, or something along those lines. It wouldn't be surprising that the same agents are used against different kinds of cancers (which consist of different kinds of cells/tissue), since the common factor in all kinds of cancer is uncontrolled growth. The drugs might still be more effective against one type of cancer than against another for whatever reasons. I'm not knowledgeable of those reasons, but a bit of research might tell something about them. Chemotherapy drugs have hiked cure rates for testicular cancer to somewhere around 90%. I think I've read that it was somewhere around 50% before the discovery of those drugs in the 1960's or 1970's. The same combinations of drugs (or some of the same drugs combined with something else) are also used for other kinds of cancer, such as ovarian or cervical cancer if my memory serves. Yet those drugs or drug combinations still aren't quite as effective against those other types of cancer as they are against testicular cancer. That's probably just a matter of them happening to work well against some specific kinds of neoplasms, not a matter of what anybody wants them to work against. You may be right that some types of cancer get more attention because they primarily affect intimate organs, and thus provoke stronger emotions. However, for example the chemotherapy that's still used for testicular cancer was discovered decades ago, and probably has nothing to do with any kind of identity politics. TC is also rare enough that it's probably off most people's radars, and the reason it's got a ~90% cure rate is probably just that a treatment was discovered that happens to work against it. While emotional reasons may certainly direct the general interest towards particular kinds of cancer, I disagree with your general notion that a cure for a particular kind of cancer would be for some reason less likely than a general one. On the contrary, finding a specific drug (or having a general drug work better against one or a few types of cancer than others) would be much more likely than a cure-all. There's even an example of the former, and it's not because of present-day identity politics.

gus_massa 6y ago

There are some specific treatments for breast cancer with hormones. More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer#Hormonal_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer#Hormonal_therapy

Delk 6y ago

Many anti-cancer drugs target cell division, or DNA replication, or something along those lines. It wouldn't be surprising that the same agents are used against different kinds of cancers (which consist of different kinds of cells/tissue), since the common factor in all kinds of cancer is uncontrolled growth. The drugs might still be more effective against one type of cancer than against another for whatever reasons. I'm not knowledgeable of those reasons, but a bit of research might tell something about them. Chemotherapy drugs have hiked cure rates for testicular cancer to somewhere around 90%. I think I've read that it was somewhere around 50% before the discovery of those drugs in the 1960's or 1970's. The same combinations of drugs (or some of the same drugs combined with something else) are also used for other kinds of cancer, such as ovarian or cervical cancer if my memory serves. Yet those drugs or drug combinations still aren't quite as effective against those other types of cancer as they are against testicular cancer. That's probably just a matter of them happening to work well against some specific kinds of neoplasms, not a matter of what anybody wants them to work against. You may be right that some types of cancer get more attention because they primarily affect intimate organs, and thus provoke stronger emotions. However, for example the chemotherapy that's still used for testicular cancer was discovered decades ago, and probably has nothing to do with any kind of identity politics. TC is also rare enough that it's probably off most people's radars, and the reason it's got a ~90% cure rate is probably just that a treatment was discovered that happens to work against it. While emotional reasons may certainly direct the general interest towards particular kinds of cancer, I disagree with your general notion that a cure for a particular kind of cancer would be for some reason less likely than a general one. On the contrary, finding a specific drug (or having a general drug work better against one or a few types of cancer than others) would be much more likely than a cure-all. There's even an example of the former, and it's not because of present-day identity politics.