7 ms·

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

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.
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  >It is impossible to treat cancer without killing cancer cells best treatment would be to find root cause and prevent cancer cells from growing in the first place, I'd imagine gene therapy will one day be used to help with this. Early detection would also drastically improve outcomes
  - folli 5y ago
    That's the problem: there's no single root cause to cancer. Every cancer type has an additional dozen subtypes with different causes. It's a mess.
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      I find this video [1] interesting as it pertains to the root cause of cancer. Compelling theories anyway. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06e-PwhmSq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06e-PwhmSq8 [video]
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Prevention /= treatment, but I agree prevention is good too. The HPV vaccine is a great example of this, reducing one's chance of cervical cancer by up to 99%, depending on the source
inglor_cz 5y ago
What else would you do with those cells? Keep them alive? Our immune system is probably strong enough to whack most cancers before they become a macroscopic problem. Most hopeful treatments of today are in direction of engaging the immune system against cancer cells. If I had to guess, the ultimate solution would be resolving immunosenescence. Our immune systems are getting worse over time, so the chance of a runaway malignity grows with age. But we might be able to prevent or reverse this loss of function.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > Our immune system is probably strong enough to whack most cancers before they become a macroscopic problem. Cancer cells are your cells. And this is the heart of the problem, the majority of the time the immune system is a-ok with what cancer cells are doing. It's not rare at all to find cancers so big that they have had a major effect on the bloodflow to healthy cells around them simply because they consume that much in terms of resources. They can get so large that they will quite literally rearrange your organs and disrupt their functioning. And all the while not a peep from your immune system. Of course this doesn't hold for all cancers, in all situations, your immune system can and does detect certain types of cancer, sometimes in an early enough stage that it is able to eliminate the threat. Good read (a bit old, 2002): https://jlb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1189/jlb.71.6.907 https://jlb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1189/jlb.71.6.907
  - monocasa 5y ago
    The majority of the time, it seems that the immune system does it's job. 'The majority of the time _that it has already become a macroscopic problem_ the immune system didn't do it's job' is sort of a tautology.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      That's a fair criticism, but those are the cases that people are worried about, not the ones where the immune system generates the appropriate response. Just like we don't really care about regular moderate rain but we do care about rain that overwhelms our ability to deal with it. I'm not even sure what the stats are on the cases where a cancer got nipped in the bud at the single or just a few cells stage, but now I'm interested and I'm going to try to find out if this has been researched or not, that has to be a tricky problem to determine the answer to.

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.
ren_engineer 5y ago
>It is impossible to treat cancer without killing cancer cells best treatment would be to find root cause and prevent cancer cells from growing in the first place, I'd imagine gene therapy will one day be used to help with this. Early detection would also drastically improve outcomes
- folli 5y ago
  That's the problem: there's no single root cause to cancer. Every cancer type has an additional dozen subtypes with different causes. It's a mess.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    I find this video [1] interesting as it pertains to the root cause of cancer. Compelling theories anyway. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06e-PwhmSq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06e-PwhmSq8 [video]
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Prevention /= treatment, but I agree prevention is good too. The HPV vaccine is a great example of this, reducing one's chance of cervical cancer by up to 99%, depending on the source

inglor_cz 5y ago

What else would you do with those cells? Keep them alive? Our immune system is probably strong enough to whack most cancers before they become a macroscopic problem. Most hopeful treatments of today are in direction of engaging the immune system against cancer cells. If I had to guess, the ultimate solution would be resolving immunosenescence. Our immune systems are getting worse over time, so the chance of a runaway malignity grows with age. But we might be able to prevent or reverse this loss of function.

jacquesm 5y ago
> Our immune system is probably strong enough to whack most cancers before they become a macroscopic problem. Cancer cells are your cells. And this is the heart of the problem, the majority of the time the immune system is a-ok with what cancer cells are doing. It's not rare at all to find cancers so big that they have had a major effect on the bloodflow to healthy cells around them simply because they consume that much in terms of resources. They can get so large that they will quite literally rearrange your organs and disrupt their functioning. And all the while not a peep from your immune system. Of course this doesn't hold for all cancers, in all situations, your immune system can and does detect certain types of cancer, sometimes in an early enough stage that it is able to eliminate the threat. Good read (a bit old, 2002): https://jlb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1189/jlb.71.6.907 https://jlb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1189/jlb.71.6.907
- monocasa 5y ago
  The majority of the time, it seems that the immune system does it's job. 'The majority of the time _that it has already become a macroscopic problem_ the immune system didn't do it's job' is sort of a tautology.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    That's a fair criticism, but those are the cases that people are worried about, not the ones where the immune system generates the appropriate response. Just like we don't really care about regular moderate rain but we do care about rain that overwhelms our ability to deal with it. I'm not even sure what the stats are on the cases where a cancer got nipped in the bud at the single or just a few cells stage, but now I'm interested and I'm going to try to find out if this has been researched or not, that has to be a tricky problem to determine the answer to.