2 ms·

Compared to current expenditure and human resources spent on treating and understanding cancer, what would constitute a real "decision to cure cancer" for you?

Compared to current expenditure and human resources spent on treating and understanding cancer, what would constitute a real "decision to cure cancer" for you? Twice as much, ten times as much? Do billionaires and powerful politicians (or their loved ones) deliberately die of cancer because they collectively decided not to find a cure for cancer? Are you willing to entertain the idea that we don't yet fully understand cancer or even our own biology, and that said understanding may not be a "simple" function of money and brains, but requires a bit of luck as well? Most historical breakthroughs in science weren't an outcome of bruteforcing the problem with shitloads of money and manpower. People tend to fixate on the Manhattan Project too much; it is not a great analogy, because by 1940, the understanding of the fundamentals was basically complete. We don't understand cancer nearly as well as we understood nuclear fission at that time. Hell, we don't understand aging very well yet, and cancer is a typical disease of old age.

melling 4y ago
Apollo project aka Moon Landing was the analogy. I do believe that was brute forced. And as I already pointed out, even if we fail, we can still save millions of lives. Plus the cost to treat people is spiraling out of control. https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/National%20Documents/Costs-of-Cancer-2020-10222020.pdf https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/National%20D...
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Once again, the physics behind space travel was already well known and it was mostly the technicalities that needed addressing. Compared to human metabolism, navigation in space is rather straightforward math. A lot of the necessary stuff was already discovered by Newton's time, in the 17th century. We know a lot less about our own bodies than about celestial bodies, simply because relevant observation is nowhere near as easy. Observing and measuring activity of cells in vivo, within living human beings themselves, is a fundamentally hard problem. We can do a lot of stuff in mice, but mice are rather different from us and results in mice usually don't translate to workable therapies for people. Our problems with cancer, Alzheimer's etc. are problems of understanding, not technicalities. Imagine trying to fly to the Moon without knowledge of Kepler's gravity laws. No amount of money can compensate for such massive ignorance.

melling 4y ago

Apollo project aka Moon Landing was the analogy. I do believe that was brute forced. And as I already pointed out, even if we fail, we can still save millions of lives. Plus the cost to treat people is spiraling out of control. https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/National%20Documents/Costs-of-Cancer-2020-10222020.pdf https://www.fightcancer.org/sites/default/files/National%20D...

inglor_cz 4y ago
Once again, the physics behind space travel was already well known and it was mostly the technicalities that needed addressing. Compared to human metabolism, navigation in space is rather straightforward math. A lot of the necessary stuff was already discovered by Newton's time, in the 17th century. We know a lot less about our own bodies than about celestial bodies, simply because relevant observation is nowhere near as easy. Observing and measuring activity of cells in vivo, within living human beings themselves, is a fundamentally hard problem. We can do a lot of stuff in mice, but mice are rather different from us and results in mice usually don't translate to workable therapies for people. Our problems with cancer, Alzheimer's etc. are problems of understanding, not technicalities. Imagine trying to fly to the Moon without knowledge of Kepler's gravity laws. No amount of money can compensate for such massive ignorance.