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I don't really think it can be fixed either. Trying to cure all cancers is like trying to engineer a car that never, ever breaks for all eternity. Even if you l

I don't really think it can be fixed either. Trying to cure all cancers is like trying to engineer a car that never, ever breaks for all eternity. Even if you left this hypothetical perfect sports car in the garage, the belts and tires and tubes would start to degrade eventually. Better to try to replace each part as it breaks with an upgrade! That's my immortality plan- when my hearing breaks, get an implant. When the hip goes out, in goes a titanium one. You mind starts slipping? We're going to need some sort of prosthetic neurons, I'm thinking carbon nanotubes you inject into you spinal fluid and which self-assemble inside the brain. Eventually, enough meat has been replaced with tech that my mind can make the complete jump to software and at which point I shed this frail human form and proceed to explore the universe via self-replicating probes... Well, that's the plan anyways. But either way, to beat cancer, you going to need to fundamentally redesign the human form. ps (Elon Musk, if you are reading this, please contact me. I'm really don't want to die and I'm willing to act as a guinea pig towards that end)

samatman 13y ago
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. You think that you have organs, but really, you have cells. When those cells break in a particular way, cancer results. 99.999% of those cancers are terminated. The rest can kill. Preventing cancer is a matter of adding 9s to that statistic until death is implausible. Then, we run up against other senescence factors: our cells can only divide so many times, garbage accumulates that can't be purged, etc. It's plausible to imagine a world where we no longer die of cancer, adding 10-20 years to the average lifespan. People will start to die of obscure diseases caused by genes no longer being present in their DNA. So we work on fixing that. It's difficult, of course.

samatman 13y ago

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. You think that you have organs, but really, you have cells. When those cells break in a particular way, cancer results. 99.999% of those cancers are terminated. The rest can kill. Preventing cancer is a matter of adding 9s to that statistic until death is implausible. Then, we run up against other senescence factors: our cells can only divide so many times, garbage accumulates that can't be purged, etc. It's plausible to imagine a world where we no longer die of cancer, adding 10-20 years to the average lifespan. People will start to die of obscure diseases caused by genes no longer being present in their DNA. So we work on fixing that. It's difficult, of course.