5 ms·

I'm really getting sick of my favorite people dying of cancer. I hope he had some fun.

by Tloewald 13y ago

tomjen3 13y ago
I just hate cancer, and I can't believe we don't have the cure yet, but I guess there just isn't enough money in it.
- reaperhulk 13y ago
  Just in case you're not being facetious...Cancer is a label that groups a huge variety of diseases that involve "unregulated cell growth" (thanks Wikipedia!). Curing "cancer" is extremely difficult because it isn't one thing.
  - anu_gupta 13y ago
    I was tempted to reply saying something similar, but he's a troll, and I don't think there's much point feeding it.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Curing any cancer is extremely easy. The hard part is the host surviving the cure :( RIP. Never read many of his stuff but what I read was very good. I do hope he hadn't suffered much at the end.
    - kolinko 13y ago
      http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1500#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1500#comic
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    Then at least the cure for one type of cancer. I am okay with there being different cures for different types. What I am not okay with is that is that I haven't seen a cure for any type of cancer that doesn't boil down to lets kill a ton of cells using methods that are slightly less likely to kill normal cells than cancer cells.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Many types of cancer that were uniformly fatal 50 years ago now have near-100% survival rates. The easier ones have been cracked. The hard ones are left. The reason cancer is so hard to fight is that it's not so much a single type of bad cell but an evolutionary process (see: clonal evolution) that continues to generate hardier bad cells. Cancer is when cells become individually fit (in an aggressive way) at the expense of the organism. Cancer isn't one undesirable mutation; a typical cancer cell has at least 5 detectable mutations. It's a process. The perversity is that cancer treatments are themselves carcinogenic (of different cancers) because the stress on the body (exposure to cellular toxics) causes faster mutation and creates more opportunities for mutant cells (that thrive amid the toxin, at least differentially) to take over. This is also why cancer can stop responding to treatment. It's like antibiotic resistance. People are working on more targeted treatments (including minimally invasive ones like radiofrequency ablation) than the typical systemic chemotherapy. The problem is that these are best used with early detection. At Stage IV, the cancer is likely to be all over the body and systemic treatments are necessary... but there are limits to how far those work.
      - tomjen3 13y ago
        I want to thank you for that answer, it is the first explenation I have been given that doesn't simply point out that doctors and their relatives also die of cancer (but what single doctor can found even a single research cure? FDA approval would take years and not be very certain at all). But you say that some of the easier cancers have already been cured (near 100% survival rate, which is as good as it gets since it would always be possible to discover too late), or mostly so: do you know why this haven't been more widely published or talked about? I mean we haven't cured all infectiones diseases (or even the common cold), but when the cure was found for polio it was massively published, to the extends that court rooms took a break to hear the announcements.
        XorNot 13y ago
        Because not all people get all cancers. There are a lot of different types of cancer. If you get really really lucky, you get a benign tumor which can just be cut out and is pretty much gone forever. A lot of people, and Mr Banks...not so much.
  - thingification 13y ago
    That might depend on how you look at it: http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/nuclear-mutations http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/n... High risk, ambitious ideas are more than worth a try.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    I wouldn't just say cancer is about "unregulated cell growth". What it's about is a conflict of interest at the cellular level. Some cells become individually fit at the expense of the highly specialized civilization called an organism. It's not just "growth" (mass effect) that makes them so dangerous, because if it were only that, the cancer would just displace stuff (like a benign tumor which, contrary to the name, can kill you-- especially in the brain, where displacement can be fatal because location/connection matters). In addition to reproduction, cancers steal resources from (and starve) or invade healthy cells and cause organs to fail. The underlying theme isn't just "cell growth". It's about cells that override the body's mechanisms for coupling individual fitness with the body's needs. Much of what makes the disease hard to treat is that cancer cells become increasingly fit (individually speaking) over time, and while systemically damaging the environment (e.g. chemotherapy, radiation) works great if it kills all of them, if it doesn't, it leaves an even more fit subset alive.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- stevoski 13y ago
  A third of people in rich countries die from cancer. There's plenty of money in it. It is just that unregulated cell growth is an extremely difficult problem to solve.
  - daniel-cussen 13y ago
    We need more regulation! But yeah, there seems to be tons of money in the problem. Take into account how many rich people don't want to die and have cancer. And, while there are many different kinds of cancer, they all just boil down to unregulated cell growth. Could that be solved programmatically? I think so, provided we could interpret existing genetic code and write it from scratch. But we are far from this--at the moment, we can't even read it in long strands very well.
    - sgt101 13y ago
      The underpinning assumption seems to be that genetic code works as a program - that there is computation as understood in the sense of Church/Turing. I don't know if that is true. I do know that no one knows if it is true. The other stronger assumption is that the processes that underpin how cells work are mechanistic in the way that we understand mechanistic processes, that is to say that there is no hidden step that invokes "a new physics". Again I say I do not know if this is true, but no one knows that it is true. We are silly apes at the beginning of an intellectual adventure that may last for hundreds of thousands of years, or more. Or it may not, we may snuff ourselves out, or we may find that things are as simple as our current theories seem to intuit. However I would point to the following; until recently (20 years) cosmologists were utterly unaware of 80% of the universe as it is now perceived, there are five models of probability in common use in statistics even though there are probably (geddit) an infinite number of models, no one knows what life is, no one can adequately define intelligence, no one can adequately define consciousness; no one can describe the processes that define a cell; no one can make a list like this that is not risible (seriously). The point is, we know shit, and it's really not surprising given how big the universe is and how long we've been in the game of trying (with any degree of seriousness) to understand it.
- Vivtek 13y ago
  "The cure for cancer" is about an ill-defined goal as "the right way to earn money" - it's a very complex topic and we're making a shitload of progress on it every year. Which doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
- kolinko 13y ago
  There is a lot of money invested in this, it's just that it's terribly hard, and - as others said - there is no simple cure. http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1162 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1162
  - sbarre 13y ago
    That's pretty sobering for a comic
    - Retric 13y ago
      Yea, this also struck me rather hard. http://xkcd.com/931/ http://xkcd.com/931/
- ams6110 13y ago
  Or maybe it's just one of those things in the real world that doesn't have any easy answers.
- soitgoes 13y ago
  They're doing very well with testicular cancer treatment. About 90% are cured regardless of stage. Treatment of other cancers hasn't progressed as well unfortunately.
incision 13y ago
Agreed. For some incredibly interesting reading on the history of battle against cancer I highly recommend The Empreror of All Maladies [0]. 0: http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography/dp/1439170916 http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography/dp/...

I'm really getting sick of my favorite people dying of cancer. I hope he had some fun.

tomjen3 13y ago

I just hate cancer, and I can't believe we don't have the cure yet, but I guess there just isn't enough money in it.

reaperhulk 13y ago
Just in case you're not being facetious...Cancer is a label that groups a huge variety of diseases that involve "unregulated cell growth" (thanks Wikipedia!). Curing "cancer" is extremely difficult because it isn't one thing.
- anu_gupta 13y ago
  I was tempted to reply saying something similar, but he's a troll, and I don't think there's much point feeding it.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Curing any cancer is extremely easy. The hard part is the host surviving the cure :( RIP. Never read many of his stuff but what I read was very good. I do hope he hadn't suffered much at the end.
  - kolinko 13y ago
    http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1500#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1500#comic
- tomjen3 13y ago
  Then at least the cure for one type of cancer. I am okay with there being different cures for different types. What I am not okay with is that is that I haven't seen a cure for any type of cancer that doesn't boil down to lets kill a ton of cells using methods that are slightly less likely to kill normal cells than cancer cells.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Many types of cancer that were uniformly fatal 50 years ago now have near-100% survival rates. The easier ones have been cracked. The hard ones are left. The reason cancer is so hard to fight is that it's not so much a single type of bad cell but an evolutionary process (see: clonal evolution) that continues to generate hardier bad cells. Cancer is when cells become individually fit (in an aggressive way) at the expense of the organism. Cancer isn't one undesirable mutation; a typical cancer cell has at least 5 detectable mutations. It's a process. The perversity is that cancer treatments are themselves carcinogenic (of different cancers) because the stress on the body (exposure to cellular toxics) causes faster mutation and creates more opportunities for mutant cells (that thrive amid the toxin, at least differentially) to take over. This is also why cancer can stop responding to treatment. It's like antibiotic resistance. People are working on more targeted treatments (including minimally invasive ones like radiofrequency ablation) than the typical systemic chemotherapy. The problem is that these are best used with early detection. At Stage IV, the cancer is likely to be all over the body and systemic treatments are necessary... but there are limits to how far those work.
    - tomjen3 13y ago
      I want to thank you for that answer, it is the first explenation I have been given that doesn't simply point out that doctors and their relatives also die of cancer (but what single doctor can found even a single research cure? FDA approval would take years and not be very certain at all). But you say that some of the easier cancers have already been cured (near 100% survival rate, which is as good as it gets since it would always be possible to discover too late), or mostly so: do you know why this haven't been more widely published or talked about? I mean we haven't cured all infectiones diseases (or even the common cold), but when the cure was found for polio it was massively published, to the extends that court rooms took a break to hear the announcements.
      - XorNot 13y ago
        Because not all people get all cancers. There are a lot of different types of cancer. If you get really really lucky, you get a benign tumor which can just be cut out and is pretty much gone forever. A lot of people, and Mr Banks...not so much.
- thingification 13y ago
  That might depend on how you look at it: http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/nuclear-mutations http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/n... High risk, ambitious ideas are more than worth a try.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  I wouldn't just say cancer is about "unregulated cell growth". What it's about is a conflict of interest at the cellular level. Some cells become individually fit at the expense of the highly specialized civilization called an organism. It's not just "growth" (mass effect) that makes them so dangerous, because if it were only that, the cancer would just displace stuff (like a benign tumor which, contrary to the name, can kill you-- especially in the brain, where displacement can be fatal because location/connection matters). In addition to reproduction, cancers steal resources from (and starve) or invade healthy cells and cause organs to fail. The underlying theme isn't just "cell growth". It's about cells that override the body's mechanisms for coupling individual fitness with the body's needs. Much of what makes the disease hard to treat is that cancer cells become increasingly fit (individually speaking) over time, and while systemically damaging the environment (e.g. chemotherapy, radiation) works great if it kills all of them, if it doesn't, it leaves an even more fit subset alive.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
stevoski 13y ago
A third of people in rich countries die from cancer. There's plenty of money in it. It is just that unregulated cell growth is an extremely difficult problem to solve.
- daniel-cussen 13y ago
  We need more regulation! But yeah, there seems to be tons of money in the problem. Take into account how many rich people don't want to die and have cancer. And, while there are many different kinds of cancer, they all just boil down to unregulated cell growth. Could that be solved programmatically? I think so, provided we could interpret existing genetic code and write it from scratch. But we are far from this--at the moment, we can't even read it in long strands very well.
  - sgt101 13y ago
    The underpinning assumption seems to be that genetic code works as a program - that there is computation as understood in the sense of Church/Turing. I don't know if that is true. I do know that no one knows if it is true. The other stronger assumption is that the processes that underpin how cells work are mechanistic in the way that we understand mechanistic processes, that is to say that there is no hidden step that invokes "a new physics". Again I say I do not know if this is true, but no one knows that it is true. We are silly apes at the beginning of an intellectual adventure that may last for hundreds of thousands of years, or more. Or it may not, we may snuff ourselves out, or we may find that things are as simple as our current theories seem to intuit. However I would point to the following; until recently (20 years) cosmologists were utterly unaware of 80% of the universe as it is now perceived, there are five models of probability in common use in statistics even though there are probably (geddit) an infinite number of models, no one knows what life is, no one can adequately define intelligence, no one can adequately define consciousness; no one can describe the processes that define a cell; no one can make a list like this that is not risible (seriously). The point is, we know shit, and it's really not surprising given how big the universe is and how long we've been in the game of trying (with any degree of seriousness) to understand it.
Vivtek 13y ago
"The cure for cancer" is about an ill-defined goal as "the right way to earn money" - it's a very complex topic and we're making a shitload of progress on it every year. Which doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
kolinko 13y ago
There is a lot of money invested in this, it's just that it's terribly hard, and - as others said - there is no simple cure. http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1162 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1162
- sbarre 13y ago
  That's pretty sobering for a comic
  - Retric 13y ago
    Yea, this also struck me rather hard. http://xkcd.com/931/ http://xkcd.com/931/
ams6110 13y ago
Or maybe it's just one of those things in the real world that doesn't have any easy answers.
soitgoes 13y ago
They're doing very well with testicular cancer treatment. About 90% are cured regardless of stage. Treatment of other cancers hasn't progressed as well unfortunately.

incision 13y ago

Agreed. For some incredibly interesting reading on the history of battle against cancer I highly recommend The Empreror of All Maladies [0]. 0: http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography/dp/1439170916 http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography/dp/...