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Treatment has progressed slowly because it turns out that it is extremely hard to find drugs that kill cancer cells and not regular cells, given that they are a
by GhostVII 5y ago
Treatment has progressed slowly because it turns out that it is extremely hard to find drugs that kill cancer cells and not regular cells, given that they are almost identical. It's not some big conspiracy, there is an incredible amount of money being spent on trying to find and develop these drugs.
I'm sure there are some instances where drugs to treat very rare cancers were not entered into trials because the company didn't think it was profitable - the book actually lays out one of the examples of this. But that isn't really relevant to the overall fight against cancer. The reality is that we have limited resources to develop and test new drugs, and how profitable a new cancer drug will be is a somewhat reasonable proxy for how important it is to develop.
- gregwebs 5y agoYou might try reading the book before arguing against a straw man of it. With respect to drugs we have a big issue that we have a fundamentally flawed system where we only fund proper studies for drugs with patents. There are many cancer treatments with much more promising data behind them than the latest drug company drug. But these treatments can never get a large clinical trial funded to really prove that they work since there is no way to pay for the study.
- chefkoch 5y agoDo you have an example for this?
- gregwebs 5y agoIn the mentioned book some examples that are given are Coley's toxins (a 100 year old treatment) that is highly effective for some patients. You can download a report on a particular cancer at mossreports.com and there are many pages detailing complementary treatments and the level of evidence for each of them. For example the supplements with the best evidence behind them for helping to treat most cancers are EGCg, Curcumin, Genistein, Resrevatrol, and Sulforaphane.