Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Cancer is a whole spectrum of diseases with different causes, effects, mortality rates, etc. This question is only a little less silly than asking why we haven't cured all disease yet.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
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.'"
Pffft, I plan on being 100% robot by then. I'd like to see cancer bite my shiny metal ass.
This simple fact undermines the above hypothesis.
Not if they all used to die of sleeping sickness before the age of 30.
Without knowing what did kill them and at what age, the existence of these populations might equally well support the hypothesis, might it not?
What was the life expectancy of these Pacific island or pre-Western diet African populations? Did they have anything approaching "Western" medicine for coping with all their other ailments?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"It's more lucrative to treat a disease than it is to cure it."
While true at face value, the implication here is that a "cancer cabal" profits as a whole when cures are withheld and it collectively decides to release only incrementally improved treatments. But there is no such cabal, quite the opposite, there is intense competition among researchers and pharma companies and no collective decision, only individuals more than willing to "break the ranks".
Heck, curing a single type of cancer say prostate or leukemia will guarantee you a Nobel prize and a life time of doing whatever you want whenever you want both from a professional and personal point of view - regardless if the cure is monetizable (patentable) or not. And you expect us to believe researchers are actively hiding cures for the sake of the pharma industry ? Please, not even the Mafia can command such allegiance.
As someone who has had cancer, I have learned a lot. Most importantly, all the various cancer charities are complete frauds. Despite taking in untold Billions of dollars, the number of people dying from cancer has increased, not decreased over the last 20 years. And nobody has ever had their cancer cured because someone wore a pink ribbon or yellow wristband or walked 10 kilometers.
If you had bothered to actually read even the slashdot article (you don't even need the links), you would understand why the number of people dying of cancer increases. Everyone who has died so far has died of something. Many of the causes people were dying of, we have minimalized or fully eliminated in the last 150 years, Nearly no one dies of the bubonic plague anymore for instance, and most of the other infections are in retreat. With every cause we eliminate, all the remaining causes get a bigger share. And in the end, there are two main causes remaining: coronary diseases and cancer. Everyone of us, given that he dies not of anything else before, will in the end die of either coronary diseases or cancer, which means that they will increase their share, if we further eliminate the other causes for an premature death.
What is actually increasing is the average age humans die because of coronary diseases or cancer. That means, we are able to push the time further away, when cancer or coronary diseases will get us.