Highly recommended reading on the subject : The Emperor of All Maladies : Kindle URL - http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-ebook/dp/B003UYUP...
Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
51–60 of 167 posts
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#52This is one of the most fascinating and frightening things I have ever read. It really feels like staring cthulhu in the face. TLDR: Breast cancers, for instance, have been shown to harbor at least 1,700 different mutations, but only three of them showed up in at least 10% of patients, with the great majority of them being unique to each patient. The most recent study in Nature discussed above shows that even a singl…
All this genetic diversity seems daunting at first but I think it is also indicative of something that gives me great hope. Cancer isn't like a virus or pathogen that has evolved to avoid it our immune systems and treatments as it passes from individual. It is a degenerative state of the same system that produces healthy cells and fertile humans. It is genetically very diverse. Part of this is because cancers cells o…
A few years ago I did an analysis on common chromosomal deletions in ovarian cancers. I was hoping to find some sort of "required" genetic or metabolic structure retained by the various cell lines. Nada. It was just a big unrelated mess and deemed not interesting enough to write up by my advisor. I wish there was a Journal of Dishearteningly Negative Results.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say "better funded than sports", you're implicating advertising. But advertising revenue is in part of function of the broader economy. F-500s don't buy Super Bowl ads because they love football.
Well, let's not get excited here. I don't think anybody is saying that they think there's some capitalist in a top hat allocating funds, saying "We will put $4B into cancer research to keep the eggheads quiet, and $9B into football to distract and pacify the proles." At least, I hope nobody thinks that. But the point is that when we, as a society, allocate resources this way, it is an indication of pathological econo…
I disagree. I think what you're seeing with professional sports is just an artifact of the concentration of revenue in a very few organizations.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#54Not a surprise cancer hasn't been cured. Most diseases have not been cured, yet. Even bacterial infections. People can still die from staph infections.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#55Because, like AI, molecular biology is complicated and there are no quick hacks . Some things are meant to take time and be right. First time. Survival rates are spectacularly better than they were fifteen or twenty years ago and they are getting better all the time. Also there is no one type of lung cancer, brain tumour or bladder or bowel cancer either. There are many different types. Half the battle is identifying…
Do you have a reference for survival rates? Note that there are many confounding factors - lung cancer incidence has dropped a lot although lung cancer itself remains intractable to average cancer survival rates may have improved.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#56We can never "cure" cancer. We might be able to save most individuals from dying from it some day but cancer is just a mutation that makes a cell's behavior damaging/lethal to the host body. The only way to prevent "bad" mutation (because there is no sure way to discern 'bad' from any other mutation) is to stop mutation all together, and even if there way a way to do this (removal of radiation does not stop transcrip…
I'm voting this one up. I think that curing cancer is like eliminating all errors in a program. Cancer cells are simply cells committing mutiny and forming new organisms behind the defence lines. Like other inner enemies like spies this will remain one of the trickiest risk factors to eliminate, since they are simply parts of your organisation turned against you. If you get better, so do they.
Given the unbounded complexity of 'some part of our organism gone haywire' our best bet against cancer is probably an early detection and general purpose defence system like the immune system that we already have. So finding a one true cure for cancer is probably a utopia. The more complex the immune system, the more complex the threats that do outsmart it will become.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point in singling out sports entertainment? Apple cleared $100bb predominately selling consumer electronics, should everyone who bought an iPad feel bad for not donating that $600 to cancer research? Facebook just threw a billion around on a photo sharing company. Microsoft just threw a billion so it could acquire some more patent ammunition. Everyday billions and billions of dollars are thrown around to b…
Heh.. Perhaps you might use an apple computer to help cure cancer and you probably wouldn't use a football? >who gets to decide what spending is "right" and what's "wrong?" None. Noone. Perhaps not wrong. Interesting though. Sorry guys, guess I kind of ran this one right off the rails. We underspend on medical research proportionally. That was all. I just tried to pick something a little more interesting than the TSA…
Perhaps some scientist gets a new idea while relaxing to a game of football ... you can't really predict what would happen to our society if you start playing around with priorities. Historically such decisions had awful consequences.
Also sorting out the priorities of our society means getting rid of capitalism, and finding a new economic system that works better is (arguably) a harder problem than currying cancer.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this genetic diversity seems daunting at first but I think it is also indicative of something that gives me great hope. Cancer isn't like a virus or pathogen that has evolved to avoid it our immune systems and treatments as it passes from individual. It is a degenerative state of the same system that produces healthy cells and fertile humans. It is genetically very diverse. Part of this is because cancers cells o…
Here's something interesting about a common chemical compound called Dichloroacetic acid (DCA). Big pharma is ignoring it since it can't be patented (because it's so common). Cancer cells change the way they metabolize oxygen in a way that promotes their survival. In laboratory studies of isolated cancer cells grown in tissue culture, DCA restores the original metabolism, and promotes their self-destruction. This has…
To be fair, it is only one of many compounds that are effective against specific traits of cancerous tumors. In this case, it is effective against tumors which are poorly vascularized.
In most cases, one of the predominant features of tumor progression is the increase in vascularizing growth factors from cancer cells. Tumors which fail to start pumping out growth factors that encourage blood vessel growth often kill off the entire tumor due to lack of oxygen.
Also, the apoptosis cascade can be hijacked in many locations. Even if you get the mitochondria to start releasing Cytochrome C (the main component that triggers the cascade), cancer cells can turn this pathway off anywhere downstream of CytC, such as turning off production of one of the various caspases.
So, again, it comes down to cancer biology being incredibly complicated.
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this genetic diversity seems daunting at first but I think it is also indicative of something that gives me great hope. Cancer isn't like a virus or pathogen that has evolved to avoid it our immune systems and treatments as it passes from individual. It is a degenerative state of the same system that produces healthy cells and fertile humans. It is genetically very diverse. Part of this is because cancers cells o…
A few years ago I did an analysis on common chromosomal deletions in ovarian cancers. I was hoping to find some sort of "required" genetic or metabolic structure retained by the various cell lines. Nada. It was just a big unrelated mess and deemed not interesting enough to write up by my advisor. I wish there was a Journal of Dishearteningly Negative Results.
Depending on how "big" your negative result was, its possible to publish in journals similar to this: http://www.jnrbm.com/
Re: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
#60PhD comics handled this nicely