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It’s because there’s no roadmap to success here. The Manhattan project and the moonshot were implementation problems, not theoretical ones. By 1939 we knew tha

It’s because there’s no roadmap to success here. The Manhattan project and the moonshot were implementation problems, not theoretical ones. By 1939 we knew that a runaway nuclear reaction was possible and Werner von Braun probably could have worked out the fuel you’d need to get to the moon on the back of a napkin. It took a lot of ingenuity to get there, but both problems seemed achievable given enough resources. On the other hand, we don’t even know where to begin to “cure cancer”, because it’s thousands of different diseases with different causes and prognoses. There are cancers that essentially are curable with enough of a headstart. Of the ones that we’ve “cured” there’s little in common in their origins and they all have wildly different treatments. Curing cancer isn’t dumping money at solving one achievable problem - it’s an open-ended investment in tackling thousands of independent problems. There are ideas for universal treatments for cancer and aging - hundreds of them. Which ones do we dump our billions and billions into investigating?

light_hue_1 3y ago
Of course we know how to begin. We're doing it as we speak! Cancer survival rates are constantly getting better. The payback for investment in biotech research has been huge and even bigger dividends are on the horizon. Look at the Hepatitis drugs and weight loss drugs that actually work. These along will address the leading causes of death today. Coming soon is xenotransplantation. Already we're experimenting with hearts. The outlook is that in 10 years we'll routinely be doing this. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10143783/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10143783/ > There are ideas for universal treatments for cancer and aging - hundreds of them. Which ones do we dump our billions and billions into investigating? There really aren't. The basic technology is mostly the same. And we have a system for deciding what to spend money on: scientists write grants, get some funding, show results, and then we repeat at a bigger scale seeing who can deliver the best results. It's not perfect, but it works. Cancer deaths today are a choice we make as a society to not invest in research. We can't "cure cancer" tomorrow, but even with the tiny resources allocated today we're making significant progress. We could do so much more! For example, in the 70s 5-year survival across all cancers was 58%. Now it's 85%.
- dralley 3y ago
  The point is that it's a problem where "9 women can't make a baby in a month". It's a slow, iterative, grinding advance in many different directions more than something that could be cracked in a decade with sufficient resources.

light_hue_1 3y ago

Of course we know how to begin. We're doing it as we speak! Cancer survival rates are constantly getting better. The payback for investment in biotech research has been huge and even bigger dividends are on the horizon. Look at the Hepatitis drugs and weight loss drugs that actually work. These along will address the leading causes of death today. Coming soon is xenotransplantation. Already we're experimenting with hearts. The outlook is that in 10 years we'll routinely be doing this. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10143783/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10143783/ > There are ideas for universal treatments for cancer and aging - hundreds of them. Which ones do we dump our billions and billions into investigating? There really aren't. The basic technology is mostly the same. And we have a system for deciding what to spend money on: scientists write grants, get some funding, show results, and then we repeat at a bigger scale seeing who can deliver the best results. It's not perfect, but it works. Cancer deaths today are a choice we make as a society to not invest in research. We can't "cure cancer" tomorrow, but even with the tiny resources allocated today we're making significant progress. We could do so much more! For example, in the 70s 5-year survival across all cancers was 58%. Now it's 85%.

dralley 3y ago
The point is that it's a problem where "9 women can't make a baby in a month". It's a slow, iterative, grinding advance in many different directions more than something that could be cracked in a decade with sufficient resources.