>I certainly do get the sense that medical progress has stalled. I think that's a mistaken impression. There are hundreds of new drugs you've never heard of b

>I certainly do get the sense that medical progress has stalled. I think that's a mistaken impression. There are hundreds of new drugs you've never heard of because you don't need them. I'm on the other end - I'd be dead already but for a drug invented in the '90s. The fact that we haven't cured cancer is more because cancer is a really, really tough problem than because there's anything fundamentally wrong with the way we're going about attacking it. We understand cancer at the genetic and biochemical level much better than we did even ten years ago. Understand it well enough, that is, to realize we completely underestimated the depth of the problem. But understanding is progress, even if it doesn't mean cures are imminent. You can't take what was probably the most productive period in medical history and say "See, everything is broken because the hits aren't coming as fast as they did when sulphas and antibiotics were discovered."