6 ms·

More money is not what is needed here--we already pour tons of money into cancer research. What's needed are new ideas. If you really want to fight cancer, skip

engtech 14y ago
No, more money is needed. 41% of deaths are due to cancer. It really is one of the biggest problems we have as a species and we should spend more effort on it rather than the things we do spend effort on. But I wholeheartedly agree that rather than trying to be a billg and earn money to fund philanthropy, the world needs more researchers.
- jseliger 14y ago
  > No, more money is needed. 41% of deaths are due to cancer. It really is one of the biggest problems we have as a species and we should spend more effort on it rather than the things we do spend effort on. The first sentence and the next two aren't at all related. It's possible that the amount of money we're collectively spending right now is all that can be used effectively, and more money will yield at best highly diminishing returns.
- brazzy 14y ago
  > 41% of deaths are due to cancer. That's not even true if you look only at rich countries - cardiovascular diseases cause more deaths. The amount of effort, let alone money, spent on cancer research is already obscene compared to what is spent on other serious problems.
  - engtech 14y ago
    You're right. When I was looking at news articles this morning, I came across the 41% number, but that is obviously wrong or geo-specific. cancer.org states that 15% of deaths worldwide are due to cancer, with 50% being spread amongst other non-communicable diseases. http://www.cancer.org/research/infographics/rising-global-cancer-epidemic-text-alternative http://www.cancer.org/research/infographics/rising-global-ca... "In 2010, 65% of all deaths worldwide were due to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like heart disease, lung disease, diabetes and cancer. 15% of all deaths worldwide, nearly 8 million people, were due to cancer alone. The number of deaths worldwide from cancer dwarfs the number of global deaths from malaria and HIV/AIDS, as is projected to exceed 13 million by 2030."
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    So if i move to a poorer country, I have less of a chance to get cancer?
    - thisrod 14y ago
      Yes. If you live in a poor country, you're likely to die some other way before you get cancer.
- bluetshirt 14y ago
  People are going to die. If it's not cancer, it'll be heart failure. I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is.
  - jwoah12 14y ago
    Would you stand by that statement if you were diagnosed with terminal cancer tomorrow? Your spouse? Child? The point isn't to keep sick people alive longer, it's to make them not sick.
  - gngeal 14y ago
    "I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer." Given that the average costs of bringing up any single individual are nowadays probably at an all-time high, it makes sense to invest something into keeping those people from dying prematurely. Also, this is less about keeping sick people alive longer, but about making them unsick, or even prevent them from becoming sick in the first place (prevention, timely diagnosis, study of the immune system behavior and reactions related to the cancer onset).
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is. When I was a kid childhood leukemia was a death sentence. These days survival rates are in the 80% and up range. The goal isn't non-dead sick people. It's well people. Attacking that problem doesn't mean that you can't attack the problem of too many people too. Hopefully in a more productive way than having a horrible, lingering, painful disease solve it for us.
    - vwinsyee 14y ago
      Yup -- the first thing public health students learn is the WHO definition of health: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." In my clinical trials course, equal emphasis was put on extending life and increasing quality of life (e.g., as measured by quality adjusted life-years (QALYs)).
- AYBABTME 14y ago
  If research was better paid, more people would be researchers. So more money is needed. As much as I'd like to do my share in X, if I can't make a living of it, I won't dedicate my whole life to it. Some will, but many won't.
  - dreoe 14y ago
    And if it didn't require 12 hours a week (or some similarly horrible figure) writing grant proposals instead of doing actual research
    - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
      There's really no way around the need for written grant proposals, so the solution seems like "research teams should allocate a decent wage for a good grantwriter". Surely there are talented technical writers out there who would happily join with these noble causes, if only the jobs were there (and financially viable for the writer).
michaelochurch 14y ago
More money is not what is needed here--we already pour tons of money into cancer research. What's needed are new ideas. If you really want to fight cancer, skip the startup and go to graduate school. Computational and mathematical approaches to understanding and fighting cancer are still in their infancy. There is a lot of scope for smart, motivated people to do good. There are a zillion[0] talented young programmers who have figured out that the VC-istan game is rigged (I like to believe that I helped with that) and who would readily work on machine learning for cancer research at a market salary. [0] Zillion probably means "tens of thousands", but that's a lot. A good programmer costs $125k to hire and is worth $1-2M to the economy. Thousands of programmers = major muscle. Tap that piece of A! (A meaning "awesomeness potential".) $100-150k, machine learning, saving lives? Shit, you'll be turning people away. If it's government-funded it doesn't have to be in a high-COL area where 100-150k, while respectable, isn't raise-a-family money. But you could do this out in a place like Minneapolis where people can raise a family on that and (bear with me, here) therefore actually find programmers with more than 10 years (!) of technical experience who want to stay on real work (!!) instead of becoming useless executives (like VC-istan's VeePees of BizDevolution) because they can actually raise kids on what they make (!!!). It's about the people. But the nature of the real world is that it takes money to hire people. So, indirectly, it is about the money. We should spend less money on pointless, illegal wars and more on the disease that's actually (if we don't fucking do something) going to kill a large portion of the people reading this.
- altertoad 14y ago
  what do ya mean rigged
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    If you're on your first VC-funded startup, you'll probably get torn up by liquidation preferences and dilution for executive hires (that you had no say in; they were VC injections) and various other things, and not get very rich. You could end up worse off than an employee (because they get to take real salaries; you're hosed if your equity gets zeroed). You'll have to play a second time (capitalizing on your reputation, having joined Those Who Have Completed An Exit) to get what you came to the game for. It's like the record industry: you make money on your second album, because the record company has leverage to screw you on the first one. If you're a manager or executive-level hire, you're probably never going to get the investor contact you were promised and, if you do, you probably won't be allowed to say much, so the networking you were promised won't happen. If you're an engineer, you're probably not going to get the "leadership" (executive) position you were promised. It'll be given to some external asshat when the company goes in to "scaling"/social-climbing mode and starts hiring "real X's" (i.e. not the fools who worked for 90 hours per week and 50% of market salaries, judged not to be good enough for prime time). Only a tiny percentage of VC-funded startups have a real engineering culture (pre-apocalyptic Google) where you can do well as an engineer without becoming a manager. If that's what you want, your odds are better (not great, but better) at a place like Google. Most VC-funded startups grow too fast to keep a decent culture, and the executive positions often get handed out by VC to their underachieving friends who couldn't make it on their own. That's what I mean by "rigged".
_delirium 14y ago
Lack of money is precisely why you should not go to graduate school, because graduate students (and post-docs, and adjunct faculty) in these areas already massively outstrip available funding. The claim that more people should go into the field would be more credible if there were good jobs available for those who already did. Part of the reason for the lack of good jobs is that there is actually not much money put into cancer research, relative to Valley-type companies. Google's declared 2012 R&D budget was $6.7 billion. The National Cancer Institute's entire budget in 2012, which is parceled out among all eligible institutions in the country, was $5.1 billion. It's no surprise that, as a direct result, it's easier to find good jobs in the Valley than in cancer research: Google alone can offer more funding to aspiring researchers than the entire national cancer strategy can.

engtech 14y ago

No, more money is needed. 41% of deaths are due to cancer. It really is one of the biggest problems we have as a species and we should spend more effort on it rather than the things we do spend effort on. But I wholeheartedly agree that rather than trying to be a billg and earn money to fund philanthropy, the world needs more researchers.

jseliger 14y ago
> No, more money is needed. 41% of deaths are due to cancer. It really is one of the biggest problems we have as a species and we should spend more effort on it rather than the things we do spend effort on. The first sentence and the next two aren't at all related. It's possible that the amount of money we're collectively spending right now is all that can be used effectively, and more money will yield at best highly diminishing returns.
brazzy 14y ago
> 41% of deaths are due to cancer. That's not even true if you look only at rich countries - cardiovascular diseases cause more deaths. The amount of effort, let alone money, spent on cancer research is already obscene compared to what is spent on other serious problems.
- engtech 14y ago
  You're right. When I was looking at news articles this morning, I came across the 41% number, but that is obviously wrong or geo-specific. cancer.org states that 15% of deaths worldwide are due to cancer, with 50% being spread amongst other non-communicable diseases. http://www.cancer.org/research/infographics/rising-global-cancer-epidemic-text-alternative http://www.cancer.org/research/infographics/rising-global-ca... "In 2010, 65% of all deaths worldwide were due to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like heart disease, lung disease, diabetes and cancer. 15% of all deaths worldwide, nearly 8 million people, were due to cancer alone. The number of deaths worldwide from cancer dwarfs the number of global deaths from malaria and HIV/AIDS, as is projected to exceed 13 million by 2030."
- darkarmani 14y ago
  So if i move to a poorer country, I have less of a chance to get cancer?
  - thisrod 14y ago
    Yes. If you live in a poor country, you're likely to die some other way before you get cancer.
bluetshirt 14y ago
People are going to die. If it's not cancer, it'll be heart failure. I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is.
- jwoah12 14y ago
  Would you stand by that statement if you were diagnosed with terminal cancer tomorrow? Your spouse? Child? The point isn't to keep sick people alive longer, it's to make them not sick.
- gngeal 14y ago
  "I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer." Given that the average costs of bringing up any single individual are nowadays probably at an all-time high, it makes sense to invest something into keeping those people from dying prematurely. Also, this is less about keeping sick people alive longer, but about making them unsick, or even prevent them from becoming sick in the first place (prevention, timely diagnosis, study of the immune system behavior and reactions related to the cancer onset).
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is. When I was a kid childhood leukemia was a death sentence. These days survival rates are in the 80% and up range. The goal isn't non-dead sick people. It's well people. Attacking that problem doesn't mean that you can't attack the problem of too many people too. Hopefully in a more productive way than having a horrible, lingering, painful disease solve it for us.
  - vwinsyee 14y ago
    Yup -- the first thing public health students learn is the WHO definition of health: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." In my clinical trials course, equal emphasis was put on extending life and increasing quality of life (e.g., as measured by quality adjusted life-years (QALYs)).
AYBABTME 14y ago
If research was better paid, more people would be researchers. So more money is needed. As much as I'd like to do my share in X, if I can't make a living of it, I won't dedicate my whole life to it. Some will, but many won't.
- dreoe 14y ago
  And if it didn't require 12 hours a week (or some similarly horrible figure) writing grant proposals instead of doing actual research
  - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    There's really no way around the need for written grant proposals, so the solution seems like "research teams should allocate a decent wage for a good grantwriter". Surely there are talented technical writers out there who would happily join with these noble causes, if only the jobs were there (and financially viable for the writer).

michaelochurch 14y ago

More money is not what is needed here--we already pour tons of money into cancer research. What's needed are new ideas. If you really want to fight cancer, skip the startup and go to graduate school. Computational and mathematical approaches to understanding and fighting cancer are still in their infancy. There is a lot of scope for smart, motivated people to do good. There are a zillion[0] talented young programmers who have figured out that the VC-istan game is rigged (I like to believe that I helped with that) and who would readily work on machine learning for cancer research at a market salary. [0] Zillion probably means "tens of thousands", but that's a lot. A good programmer costs $125k to hire and is worth $1-2M to the economy. Thousands of programmers = major muscle. Tap that piece of A! (A meaning "awesomeness potential".) $100-150k, machine learning, saving lives? Shit, you'll be turning people away. If it's government-funded it doesn't have to be in a high-COL area where 100-150k, while respectable, isn't raise-a-family money. But you could do this out in a place like Minneapolis where people can raise a family on that and (bear with me, here) therefore actually find programmers with more than 10 years (!) of technical experience who want to stay on real work (!!) instead of becoming useless executives (like VC-istan's VeePees of BizDevolution) because they can actually raise kids on what they make (!!!). It's about the people. But the nature of the real world is that it takes money to hire people. So, indirectly, it is about the money. We should spend less money on pointless, illegal wars and more on the disease that's actually (if we don't fucking do something) going to kill a large portion of the people reading this.

altertoad 14y ago
what do ya mean rigged
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  If you're on your first VC-funded startup, you'll probably get torn up by liquidation preferences and dilution for executive hires (that you had no say in; they were VC injections) and various other things, and not get very rich. You could end up worse off than an employee (because they get to take real salaries; you're hosed if your equity gets zeroed). You'll have to play a second time (capitalizing on your reputation, having joined Those Who Have Completed An Exit) to get what you came to the game for. It's like the record industry: you make money on your second album, because the record company has leverage to screw you on the first one. If you're a manager or executive-level hire, you're probably never going to get the investor contact you were promised and, if you do, you probably won't be allowed to say much, so the networking you were promised won't happen. If you're an engineer, you're probably not going to get the "leadership" (executive) position you were promised. It'll be given to some external asshat when the company goes in to "scaling"/social-climbing mode and starts hiring "real X's" (i.e. not the fools who worked for 90 hours per week and 50% of market salaries, judged not to be good enough for prime time). Only a tiny percentage of VC-funded startups have a real engineering culture (pre-apocalyptic Google) where you can do well as an engineer without becoming a manager. If that's what you want, your odds are better (not great, but better) at a place like Google. Most VC-funded startups grow too fast to keep a decent culture, and the executive positions often get handed out by VC to their underachieving friends who couldn't make it on their own. That's what I mean by "rigged".

_delirium 14y ago

Lack of money is precisely why you should not go to graduate school, because graduate students (and post-docs, and adjunct faculty) in these areas already massively outstrip available funding. The claim that more people should go into the field would be more credible if there were good jobs available for those who already did. Part of the reason for the lack of good jobs is that there is actually not much money put into cancer research, relative to Valley-type companies. Google's declared 2012 R&D budget was $6.7 billion. The National Cancer Institute's entire budget in 2012, which is parceled out among all eligible institutions in the country, was $5.1 billion. It's no surprise that, as a direct result, it's easier to find good jobs in the Valley than in cancer research: Google alone can offer more funding to aspiring researchers than the entire national cancer strategy can.