9 ms·

The roots of the National Cancer Act

80 points by noodlesUK 5y ago

avgcorrection 5y ago
Americans are always going to proverbial war on stuff. It seems bad enough that something inanimate is trying to kill you. To imagine an enemy with malign intent on top of that doesn’t seem very helpful to me.
- C19is20 5y ago
  ...not forgetting that some other countries do the same. Allies/ sheep? Sometimes it's a fine line.
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, but please don't take HN threads on predictable generic tangents. Especially not nationalistic ones. On HN, what's interesting are the diffs (i.e. the new information) in a story—not the old saws. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nikkinana 5y ago
johnebgd 5y ago
Ken Burns documentary “Cancer: Emperor of Maladies” does an incredible job opening with some of this history. It aired on PBS 6 years ago: https://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/ https://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/ For those interested it’s still on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Emperor-All-Maladies/dp/B00UGDYU5W https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Emperor-All-Maladies/dp/B00UGD...
- GhostVII 5y ago
  The book that documentary is based on is one of my favorites, second only to the making of the atomic bomb.
  - melling 5y ago
    https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1451677618 https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/... Richard Rhodes He has a new book on EO Wilson https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/038554555X https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/03855...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
narrator 5y ago
I read a lot of medical research. A lot has something to do with cancer and the research can be summed up as "We found a new way to kill cells. This may work better on cancer cells than normal cells. Hooray! More study is needed." or "This gene or habit or whatever may have some correlation to cancer." Kind of wish they would try something different. The book "Tripping Over the Truth" was a good expose of the failed approaches to cancer research over the years.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  There is a lot of money to be made if someone comes up with a game changing cancer treatment - so the incentive is there. It is impossible to treat cancer without killing cancer cells, so I'm not sure why this is troubling to see
  - williamtrask 5y ago
    Not all treatments are equally profitable. I’m close colleagues with the cancer research dept here in Oxford and there’s more than a little cynicism about what types of pursuits get funding amongst grad students. Diet change, for example, is generally undervalued I’m told.
    - alphaoverlord 5y ago
      Not all treatments are equally likely as well. Given how good dietary science is outside of cancer, less optimistic at rigorous studies in this area.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      I think it is important to delineate treatment from prevention. I would agree that prevention may be undervalued relative to treatment. My understanding is that dietary effects on treatment have small effects on the margin. They might bump your survival a few percent, but are not going to reverse your stage 4 cancer. Dietary research is probably good ROI, but is unlikely to yield groundbreaking treatments or silver bullets, like you mentioned in the OP.
Krasnol 5y ago
I wonder if the Americans "war on X"-phrase washed out the word "war". Is it still as powerful as it should be?
- tzfld 5y ago
  As empty as "renewable revolution" or "space race"
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  I think you're onto something there. We've come to think of war — endless war — as a normal part of life in the US. Even our actual wars are now the War on Terror, not the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. We may defeat one enemy (or more likely declare victory and ditch), but there's no expectation that we'll defeat Terror, or Obesity, or Hate.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  It would be hard to tell, since it goes back over 100 years: https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html
cblconfederate 5y ago
I suggest a different name next time. The US is not known for winning wars (edit: whoa didn't realize this was flamebait, i think it is a common journalistic trope, e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/america-win-loss-iraq-afghanistan/394559/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/am... https://www.vox.com/2018/2/15/17007678/syria-trump-war-win-interview https://www.vox.com/2018/2/15/17007678/syria-trump-war-win-i... https://www.americanprogress.org/article/real-reasons-u-s-cant-win-wars-anymore/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/real-reasons-u-s-ca... nothing to do with nationalism)
- EarlKing 5y ago
  Actually, that suggests an even better idea: Abandon our bodies and let someone else clean up the mess. I mean... it's worked before. :D
- dang 5y ago
  Flamebait will get you banned here. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
civil_engineer 5y ago
Jim Allison - Breakthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MapggZMbCaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MapggZMbCaI Dr. Allison recently was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his persistent decades-long pursuit of using our own immune system to combat cancer. I was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma in early 2017, and I have been cancer-free for almost five years. Thank you, Jim.
- akoluthic 5y ago
  Only about 10% of cancer patients respond to immunotherapy at the moment. While it's great when it works, we have a very long way to go in improving outcomes.
  - sungam 5y ago
    Whilst this might be true in general melanoma does respond particularly well to immunotherapy with 5 year survival rates in excess of 50% for advanced (metastatic) disease and a subset of patients effectively cured.
  - sorenn111 5y ago
    I wonder how much of this rate is affected by patients who try immunotherapies have failed frontline treatments and then try an immunotherapy later.
  - jcims 5y ago
    I'm just a layperson in this and could be wrong here, but my understanding is that cancer tends to survive by accumulating complementary pathogenic properties that individually are of little threat to the body. One of these properties is increased expression of ‘programmed death ligand 1’ (PD-L1), a surface protein on the cancer cell that binds with ‘programmed death protein 1’, a person on the surface of T-cells that, when bound, inhibit the T-cell response. I could be wrong here as well, but most immunotherapies today are of the 'checkpoint inhibitor' variety, which interfere with this binding process in one way or another. To me this is similar to removing an invisibility cloak from the cancer cells. Now the immune system gets a shot at these cells b/c there's nothing indicating otherwise. In the case of some cancers, like melanomas and some lung cancers they may look sufficiently broken that the immune system just kills them naturally. But if the cancer cells still resemble healthy tissue, it's not super clear to me what is going to provoke a kill response. I do think it's likely we will ultimately have customized therapies in which cancer cells are extracted, unique features are identified and custom mRNA packages created to emulate those features sufficiently to provoke the immune system to kill them. That, in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, would likely create an effective response.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
Fifty years of loudly covering up for profitable carcinogens.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I share your concern that we (as a society) seem more focused on treating cancer than in addressing whatever environmental factors increase the risk. I'm curious about how much this stems from the U.S. legal system's approach to liability. IIUC, a company can contaminate the air/land/water to shocking degrees, but will only be held liable if the government chooses to enforce environmental regulations or an individual can prove that that particular source of contamination caused a particular harm to that individual. So, for example, if I were to dump 1000 gallons of dioxin in some aquifer, and a few more people got prostate cancer than one would statistically expect, I may end up paying only the cost of defending a law suit. Despite the myriad of evidence that I should have known that it was taking a major gamble with the lives of current and future people. And if I or my company was found guilty, in all likelihood I'd only have to pay for the harm to the particular persons who sued me. Which, with "proper" incorporation, I could walk away from with most of my personal wealth intact. If I'm correct about this, it seems very far from true justice to me. Nor does it seem like an effective deterrent. My current view (which I hold lightly) is that a more just policy would be that (1) such crimes carry the same legal penalties as attempted mass murder or attempted terrorism; (2) all corporate veils are ignored; and (3) there is no limitation of liability for stockholders, even for publicly traded stocks.
  - elmomle 5y ago
    Is (3) either implementable or necessary (for the former case, are you liable the if you hold stock the moment the decision is made? What if the decision is kept secret from public stockholders?)? Agreed, though, that quality of life would be higher if decisions that materially degrade the quality of life for members of a society were judged as crimes against society, with antediluvian punishments (lifetime imprisonment at least, and stripping of all assets from the family) for all culpable corporate officers. Of course this also runs into problems, chief of which is: when does something materially degrade quality of life? How many tons of carbon emissions is permissible, for example? Once something is known to be bad, does a public oversight panel determine how much is to be allowed for a given company? And if so, how do you avoid (1) dramatically slowing innovation (which would be fine except we're still in competition with other countries) and (2) corruption of such processes over time?
koprulusector 5y ago
Well, if it’s had anywhere near the success as the “War on Drugs” …
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  great comment. super smart.
sadfev 5y ago
All these “War on” political grandstanding does is kill a lot of people, increase a lot of taxes and inflate the poor into destitution. War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Cancer. Same pig but different shades of lipstick. US govt has become unbelievably bloated and overreaches every aspect of life today. Slogans like these help them keep expanding and hurting the people.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  > War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Cancer. One of these is not like the others.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're repetitive and tedious. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666852. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've unfortunately been posting a ton like this (unsubstantive flamebait and name-calling). Please don't! We're trying for a different sort of forum.
  - sadfev 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - sadfev 5y ago
      - vimy 5y ago
        PG is banned? That's the first I'm hearing of that.
        tptacek 5y ago
        pg is not banned on HN.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Amazing to me how many commenters here are looking at a successful government initiative that’s massively improved survival rates for a number of diseases, and the takeaway they can’t wait to share with the world is, but the name is dumb.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  It's a general attitude. Not restricted to some agency or initiative.
- specialist 5y ago
  We live in an age of miracles. I just don't get it. All the complaining about our society's lack of progress. Wut? Maybe it's corporate media; cynicism, fear, outrage. Maybe it's growing inequity; hard to appreciative living hand-to-mouth. Maybe people will settle down after we reach the next plateau; Society always freaks out for a few decades when technological progress shakes the ant farm. It's too bad. -- My one prescription for people (individuals) getting an (positive) attitude adjustment is go find the Milky Way. Mountain top, away from city lights, cold clear night, no moon. The entire night illuminated by star light alone. It's hard to not have an overwhelming sense of awe while looking up at the Milky Way. It's hard to believe we have all the answers when you're just hanging out with the stars.
dang 5y ago
All: Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article and rush to the thread to complain about it. Find something interesting to comment about instead. That's a new addition to the site guidelines and relevant in a case like this. I've changed the title (to the first sentence of the article) to try to cut down on the flamebait, but it shouldn't be appearing here in the first place. It's not what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
photochemsyn 5y ago
It's a bit odd to see an article on the efforts to reduce cancer incidence that doesn't include the terms 'carcinogen' or 'mutagen' anywhere in its body, or that doesn't reference Rachel Carson's significant role in the understanding that many pesticides and herbicides have carcinogenic properties, and doesn't even reference the well-studied linkages between tobacco and lung cancer. Obviously, the industries involved in producing agricultural and industrial chemicals have an interest in suppressing this aspect of the cancer story, but entirely ignoring it is pretty ridiculous on the part of NPR. Clearly there are a wide variety of both naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals that can damage DNA and otherwise cause the cell cycle to go out of control, which is thought to be the fundamental process leading to cancers. A major part of the reduction in the incidence of cancer has been the removal of such substances from the water and food supply, right? The recent judgment against Bayer/Monstanto over the carcinogenic properties of their Roundup-Ready formulation wrt non-Hodgkins Lymphoma is one such example. (Note there that it's the surfactants causing the problem most likely, not the glyphosate itself, although without the surfactants the plants don't absorb the glyphosate). As far as the 'war on cancer' theme, one of the most curious books on the topic is about the German 'war on cancer' in the Nazi era, a period when the science of carcinogens (and toxicology in general) was making a lot of advances. It's a bit disturbing as well [1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691070513/the-nazi-war-on-cancer https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691070513/th... I can't help thinking that NPR's silence on this rather fundamental feature of cancer, i.e. the role of environmental carcinogens, is in some way related to the money they take from their advertisers in the fossil fuel / pharmaceutical sector.
- vharuck 5y ago
  >I can't help thinking that NPR's silence on this rather fundamental feature of cancer, i.e. the role of environmental carcinogens, is in some way related to the money they take from their advertisers in the fossil fuel / pharmaceutical sector. I think their "silence" is related to the small proportion of cases linked to environmental contaminants or carcinogens besides alcohol and tobacco. I work with my state's cancer prevention program, and cancer incidence and mortality rates are heavily and undeniably correlated to behaviors and social determinants: alcohol consumption, smoking rates, exercise, access to healthcare, poverty. The only environmental causes worth any money or time are radon gas and sun exposure. In a morbid way, we'd love a localized environmental cause. That'd be easy to fix compared to convincing people to exercise and get colonoscopies. It's just that "hot spots" are almost always statistical anomalies that occur about as often as expected. Usually in communities near industrial zones, because they're high poverty (so already prone to high incidence), low population (better chance of deviating far from the mean rate), and have been convinced that all unknown chemicals are highly carcinogenic. There are so many of these communities, it would be surprising to not see one or two a year with a very high number of similar cancer diagnoses. And, please believe me, I have never seen a dime from anyone besides the state government. I've never been told to avoid any topics when combing through data for any patterns. And I have never gotten the sense anyone I work with, especially the epidemiologists who interview communities when a cancer cluster is feared, are on the take. It is incredibly unlikely that major news media, cancer researchers, practicing oncologists, and all public health experts working on cancer are corrupt.
DrScump 5y ago
"After adjusting for cancer stage, the mortality improvement in expansion states from the periods before and after expansion was no longer evident (HR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02; P = .94), nor was the difference between expansion vs nonexpansion states (DID HR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02; P = .84)."
- vharuck 5y ago
  I'm going to assume your point is "Expansion of Medicaid/Medicare did not have as much of an impact as most think, and the results in my quote provide some evidence." Please correct me if I'm wrong. Stage at diagnosis is not independent from healthcare coverage, so adjusting for it loses some information. If people can catch cancers at earlier stages because they gained access to affordable screening, that's a good thing attributable to the expansion. If you'd like to make another point with the stage-adjusted rates, please state it and cite the source.
1cvmask 5y ago
In ancient Egypt they tried to treat breast cancer with rudimentary methods around 3000 BC: Our oldest description of cancer (although the word cancer was not used) was discovered in Egypt and dates back to about 3000 BC. It’s called the Edwin Smith Papyrus and is a copy of part of an ancient Egyptian textbook on trauma surgery. It describes 8 cases of tumors or ulcers of the breast that were removed by cauterization with a tool called the fire drill. The writing says about the disease, “There is no treatment.” https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/history-of-cancer/what-is-cancer.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/history-of-cance...

80 points by noodlesUK 5y ago

Americans are always going to proverbial war on stuff. It seems bad enough that something inanimate is trying to kill you. To imagine an enemy with malign intent on top of that doesn’t seem very helpful to me.

C19is20 5y ago
...not forgetting that some other countries do the same. Allies/ sheep? Sometimes it's a fine line.
dang 5y ago
Ok, but please don't take HN threads on predictable generic tangents. Especially not nationalistic ones. On HN, what's interesting are the diffs (i.e. the new information) in a story—not the old saws. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

nikkinana 5y ago

johnebgd 5y ago

Ken Burns documentary “Cancer: Emperor of Maladies” does an incredible job opening with some of this history. It aired on PBS 6 years ago: https://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/ https://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/ For those interested it’s still on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Emperor-All-Maladies/dp/B00UGDYU5W https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Emperor-All-Maladies/dp/B00UGD...

GhostVII 5y ago
The book that documentary is based on is one of my favorites, second only to the making of the atomic bomb.
- melling 5y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1451677618 https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/... Richard Rhodes He has a new book on EO Wilson https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/038554555X https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/03855...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

narrator 5y ago

I read a lot of medical research. A lot has something to do with cancer and the research can be summed up as "We found a new way to kill cells. This may work better on cancer cells than normal cells. Hooray! More study is needed." or "This gene or habit or whatever may have some correlation to cancer." Kind of wish they would try something different. The book "Tripping Over the Truth" was a good expose of the failed approaches to cancer research over the years.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
There is a lot of money to be made if someone comes up with a game changing cancer treatment - so the incentive is there. It is impossible to treat cancer without killing cancer cells, so I'm not sure why this is troubling to see
- williamtrask 5y ago
  Not all treatments are equally profitable. I’m close colleagues with the cancer research dept here in Oxford and there’s more than a little cynicism about what types of pursuits get funding amongst grad students. Diet change, for example, is generally undervalued I’m told.
  - alphaoverlord 5y ago
    Not all treatments are equally likely as well. Given how good dietary science is outside of cancer, less optimistic at rigorous studies in this area.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I think it is important to delineate treatment from prevention. I would agree that prevention may be undervalued relative to treatment. My understanding is that dietary effects on treatment have small effects on the margin. They might bump your survival a few percent, but are not going to reverse your stage 4 cancer. Dietary research is probably good ROI, but is unlikely to yield groundbreaking treatments or silver bullets, like you mentioned in the OP.

Krasnol 5y ago

I wonder if the Americans "war on X"-phrase washed out the word "war". Is it still as powerful as it should be?

tzfld 5y ago
As empty as "renewable revolution" or "space race"
JasonFruit 5y ago
I think you're onto something there. We've come to think of war — endless war — as a normal part of life in the US. Even our actual wars are now the War on Terror, not the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. We may defeat one enemy (or more likely declare victory and ditch), but there's no expectation that we'll defeat Terror, or Obesity, or Hate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
phendrenad2 5y ago
It would be hard to tell, since it goes back over 100 years: https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html

cblconfederate 5y ago

I suggest a different name next time. The US is not known for winning wars (edit: whoa didn't realize this was flamebait, i think it is a common journalistic trope, e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/america-win-loss-iraq-afghanistan/394559/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/am... https://www.vox.com/2018/2/15/17007678/syria-trump-war-win-interview https://www.vox.com/2018/2/15/17007678/syria-trump-war-win-i... https://www.americanprogress.org/article/real-reasons-u-s-cant-win-wars-anymore/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/real-reasons-u-s-ca... nothing to do with nationalism)

EarlKing 5y ago
Actually, that suggests an even better idea: Abandon our bodies and let someone else clean up the mess. I mean... it's worked before. :D
dang 5y ago
Flamebait will get you banned here. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

civil_engineer 5y ago

Jim Allison - Breakthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MapggZMbCaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MapggZMbCaI Dr. Allison recently was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his persistent decades-long pursuit of using our own immune system to combat cancer. I was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma in early 2017, and I have been cancer-free for almost five years. Thank you, Jim.

akoluthic 5y ago
Only about 10% of cancer patients respond to immunotherapy at the moment. While it's great when it works, we have a very long way to go in improving outcomes.
- sungam 5y ago
  Whilst this might be true in general melanoma does respond particularly well to immunotherapy with 5 year survival rates in excess of 50% for advanced (metastatic) disease and a subset of patients effectively cured.
- sorenn111 5y ago
  I wonder how much of this rate is affected by patients who try immunotherapies have failed frontline treatments and then try an immunotherapy later.
- jcims 5y ago
  I'm just a layperson in this and could be wrong here, but my understanding is that cancer tends to survive by accumulating complementary pathogenic properties that individually are of little threat to the body. One of these properties is increased expression of ‘programmed death ligand 1’ (PD-L1), a surface protein on the cancer cell that binds with ‘programmed death protein 1’, a person on the surface of T-cells that, when bound, inhibit the T-cell response. I could be wrong here as well, but most immunotherapies today are of the 'checkpoint inhibitor' variety, which interfere with this binding process in one way or another. To me this is similar to removing an invisibility cloak from the cancer cells. Now the immune system gets a shot at these cells b/c there's nothing indicating otherwise. In the case of some cancers, like melanomas and some lung cancers they may look sufficiently broken that the immune system just kills them naturally. But if the cancer cells still resemble healthy tissue, it's not super clear to me what is going to provoke a kill response. I do think it's likely we will ultimately have customized therapies in which cancer cells are extracted, unique features are identified and custom mRNA packages created to emulate those features sufficiently to provoke the immune system to kill them. That, in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, would likely create an effective response.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

Fifty years of loudly covering up for profitable carcinogens.

CoastalCoder 5y ago
I share your concern that we (as a society) seem more focused on treating cancer than in addressing whatever environmental factors increase the risk. I'm curious about how much this stems from the U.S. legal system's approach to liability. IIUC, a company can contaminate the air/land/water to shocking degrees, but will only be held liable if the government chooses to enforce environmental regulations or an individual can prove that that particular source of contamination caused a particular harm to that individual. So, for example, if I were to dump 1000 gallons of dioxin in some aquifer, and a few more people got prostate cancer than one would statistically expect, I may end up paying only the cost of defending a law suit. Despite the myriad of evidence that I should have known that it was taking a major gamble with the lives of current and future people. And if I or my company was found guilty, in all likelihood I'd only have to pay for the harm to the particular persons who sued me. Which, with "proper" incorporation, I could walk away from with most of my personal wealth intact. If I'm correct about this, it seems very far from true justice to me. Nor does it seem like an effective deterrent. My current view (which I hold lightly) is that a more just policy would be that (1) such crimes carry the same legal penalties as attempted mass murder or attempted terrorism; (2) all corporate veils are ignored; and (3) there is no limitation of liability for stockholders, even for publicly traded stocks.
- elmomle 5y ago
  Is (3) either implementable or necessary (for the former case, are you liable the if you hold stock the moment the decision is made? What if the decision is kept secret from public stockholders?)? Agreed, though, that quality of life would be higher if decisions that materially degrade the quality of life for members of a society were judged as crimes against society, with antediluvian punishments (lifetime imprisonment at least, and stripping of all assets from the family) for all culpable corporate officers. Of course this also runs into problems, chief of which is: when does something materially degrade quality of life? How many tons of carbon emissions is permissible, for example? Once something is known to be bad, does a public oversight panel determine how much is to be allowed for a given company? And if so, how do you avoid (1) dramatically slowing innovation (which would be fine except we're still in competition with other countries) and (2) corruption of such processes over time?

koprulusector 5y ago

Well, if it’s had anywhere near the success as the “War on Drugs” …

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
great comment. super smart.

sadfev 5y ago

All these “War on” political grandstanding does is kill a lot of people, increase a lot of taxes and inflate the poor into destitution. War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Cancer. Same pig but different shades of lipstick. US govt has become unbelievably bloated and overreaches every aspect of life today. Slogans like these help them keep expanding and hurting the people.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
> War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Cancer. One of these is not like the others.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're repetitive and tedious. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666852. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've unfortunately been posting a ton like this (unsubstantive flamebait and name-calling). Please don't! We're trying for a different sort of forum.
- sadfev 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - sadfev 5y ago
    - vimy 5y ago
      PG is banned? That's the first I'm hearing of that.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        pg is not banned on HN.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

Amazing to me how many commenters here are looking at a successful government initiative that’s massively improved survival rates for a number of diseases, and the takeaway they can’t wait to share with the world is, but the name is dumb.

avgcorrection 5y ago
It's a general attitude. Not restricted to some agency or initiative.
specialist 5y ago
We live in an age of miracles. I just don't get it. All the complaining about our society's lack of progress. Wut? Maybe it's corporate media; cynicism, fear, outrage. Maybe it's growing inequity; hard to appreciative living hand-to-mouth. Maybe people will settle down after we reach the next plateau; Society always freaks out for a few decades when technological progress shakes the ant farm. It's too bad. -- My one prescription for people (individuals) getting an (positive) attitude adjustment is go find the Milky Way. Mountain top, away from city lights, cold clear night, no moon. The entire night illuminated by star light alone. It's hard to not have an overwhelming sense of awe while looking up at the Milky Way. It's hard to believe we have all the answers when you're just hanging out with the stars.

dang 5y ago

All: Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article and rush to the thread to complain about it. Find something interesting to comment about instead. That's a new addition to the site guidelines and relevant in a case like this. I've changed the title (to the first sentence of the article) to try to cut down on the flamebait, but it shouldn't be appearing here in the first place. It's not what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

photochemsyn 5y ago

It's a bit odd to see an article on the efforts to reduce cancer incidence that doesn't include the terms 'carcinogen' or 'mutagen' anywhere in its body, or that doesn't reference Rachel Carson's significant role in the understanding that many pesticides and herbicides have carcinogenic properties, and doesn't even reference the well-studied linkages between tobacco and lung cancer. Obviously, the industries involved in producing agricultural and industrial chemicals have an interest in suppressing this aspect of the cancer story, but entirely ignoring it is pretty ridiculous on the part of NPR. Clearly there are a wide variety of both naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals that can damage DNA and otherwise cause the cell cycle to go out of control, which is thought to be the fundamental process leading to cancers. A major part of the reduction in the incidence of cancer has been the removal of such substances from the water and food supply, right? The recent judgment against Bayer/Monstanto over the carcinogenic properties of their Roundup-Ready formulation wrt non-Hodgkins Lymphoma is one such example. (Note there that it's the surfactants causing the problem most likely, not the glyphosate itself, although without the surfactants the plants don't absorb the glyphosate). As far as the 'war on cancer' theme, one of the most curious books on the topic is about the German 'war on cancer' in the Nazi era, a period when the science of carcinogens (and toxicology in general) was making a lot of advances. It's a bit disturbing as well [1] [1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691070513/the-nazi-war-on-cancer https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691070513/th... I can't help thinking that NPR's silence on this rather fundamental feature of cancer, i.e. the role of environmental carcinogens, is in some way related to the money they take from their advertisers in the fossil fuel / pharmaceutical sector.

vharuck 5y ago
>I can't help thinking that NPR's silence on this rather fundamental feature of cancer, i.e. the role of environmental carcinogens, is in some way related to the money they take from their advertisers in the fossil fuel / pharmaceutical sector. I think their "silence" is related to the small proportion of cases linked to environmental contaminants or carcinogens besides alcohol and tobacco. I work with my state's cancer prevention program, and cancer incidence and mortality rates are heavily and undeniably correlated to behaviors and social determinants: alcohol consumption, smoking rates, exercise, access to healthcare, poverty. The only environmental causes worth any money or time are radon gas and sun exposure. In a morbid way, we'd love a localized environmental cause. That'd be easy to fix compared to convincing people to exercise and get colonoscopies. It's just that "hot spots" are almost always statistical anomalies that occur about as often as expected. Usually in communities near industrial zones, because they're high poverty (so already prone to high incidence), low population (better chance of deviating far from the mean rate), and have been convinced that all unknown chemicals are highly carcinogenic. There are so many of these communities, it would be surprising to not see one or two a year with a very high number of similar cancer diagnoses. And, please believe me, I have never seen a dime from anyone besides the state government. I've never been told to avoid any topics when combing through data for any patterns. And I have never gotten the sense anyone I work with, especially the epidemiologists who interview communities when a cancer cluster is feared, are on the take. It is incredibly unlikely that major news media, cancer researchers, practicing oncologists, and all public health experts working on cancer are corrupt.

DrScump 5y ago

"After adjusting for cancer stage, the mortality improvement in expansion states from the periods before and after expansion was no longer evident (HR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02; P = .94), nor was the difference between expansion vs nonexpansion states (DID HR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02; P = .84)."

vharuck 5y ago
I'm going to assume your point is "Expansion of Medicaid/Medicare did not have as much of an impact as most think, and the results in my quote provide some evidence." Please correct me if I'm wrong. Stage at diagnosis is not independent from healthcare coverage, so adjusting for it loses some information. If people can catch cancers at earlier stages because they gained access to affordable screening, that's a good thing attributable to the expansion. If you'd like to make another point with the stage-adjusted rates, please state it and cite the source.

1cvmask 5y ago

In ancient Egypt they tried to treat breast cancer with rudimentary methods around 3000 BC: Our oldest description of cancer (although the word cancer was not used) was discovered in Egypt and dates back to about 3000 BC. It’s called the Edwin Smith Papyrus and is a copy of part of an ancient Egyptian textbook on trauma surgery. It describes 8 cases of tumors or ulcers of the breast that were removed by cauterization with a tool called the fire drill. The writing says about the disease, “There is no treatment.” https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/history-of-cancer/what-is-cancer.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/history-of-cance...