Why a Cure For Cancer Is So Elusive

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "George Johnson writes in the NYT that cancer is on the verge of overtaking heart disease as the No. 1 cause of death and although cancer mortality has actually been decreasing bit by bit in recent decades, the decline has been modest compared with other threats. The diseases that once killed earlier in life — bubonic plague, smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis — were easier obstacles. For each there was a single infectious agent, a precise cause that could be confronted. But there are reasons to believe that cancer will remain much more resistant because it is not so much a disease as a phenomenon, the result of a basic evolutionary compromise. As a body lives and grows, its cells are constantly dividing, copying their DNA — this vast genetic library — and bequeathing it to the daughter cells. They in turn pass it to their own progeny: copies of copies of copies. Along the way, errors inevitably occur. Some are caused by carcinogens but most are random misprints. Mutations are the engine of evolution. Without them we never would have evolved. The trade-off is that every so often a certain combination will give an individual cell too much power. It begins to evolve independently of the rest of the body and like a new species thriving in an ecosystem, it grows into a cancerous tumor. 'Given a long enough life, cancer will eventually kill you — unless you die first of something else (PDF). That would be true even in a world free from carcinogens and equipped with the most powerful medical technology,' concludes Johnson. 'Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.'"

Comments

Re:Bollocks

[FoolsGold3151]

Death certificates are a very poor indicator of cause of death. The battle between Cancer and Apoptosis is one theory. It has some merit to it, but it also seems that tumors can be viewed as a fundamental form of life similar to a fetus having its own blood supply and largely anaerobic environment. We keep finding various pathogens in tumors and declare them to be likely causes but are probably a result not a cause. We treat "tumor burden" by lowering the number and size of tumors but we have no idea if this extends the length of life by one second or not or improves the quality of the patient's life at all. We yammer about Free Radicals but make no progress investigating its role in driving the apoptosis pathway.

Re:Why morons are so prevalent in scientific circl

[wisnoskij]

"runs counter to reproductive fitness"

Wrong. There is a huge reproductive fitness bonus for getting old useless people out of the way as quickly as possible, and more specifically a huge natural selection bonus for death after some maximum amount of years. Death is one of the major pillars of natural selection, and cancer, in many species plays a big part to ensure that we do not too many people living to 80-100+ or comparable.