Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
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Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
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Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#2I don't have anything to add, but still wanted to say thanks for sharing. One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!)
Edit: I've thought of something worth adding. I've been told that certain datasets related to biology and chemistry are normally paywalled. I wonder if restricted access to information due to copyright is also hampering the field's ability to iterate more quickly. It seems like a field that's serious about rapid iteration could make as much data and information available to the public to encourage increased collaboration and propagation of knowledge. Is Nature still considered the most prestigious journal?
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#3I don't have anything to add, but still wanted to say thanks for sharing. One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!) Edit: I've thought of something worth adding. I've been told that certain datasets related to biology and chemist…
It's important to understand that there'll never be "a cure for cancer". Cancer is not a single disease. It's more like a meta-disease. There are tons of different types of cancer and the path for treatment is not the same.
We've made tremendous progress in the last 20-30 years. There are some cancers that *are* effectively curable. And others still vex us just as much as they always have.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#4I don't have anything to add, but still wanted to say thanks for sharing. One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!) Edit: I've thought of something worth adding. I've been told that certain datasets related to biology and chemist…
It's important to understand that there'll never be "a cure for cancer". Cancer is not a single disease. It's more like a meta-disease. There are tons of different types of cancer and the path for treatment is not the same. We've made tremendous progress in the last 20-30 years. There are some cancers that *are* effectively curable. And others still vex us just as much as they always have.
[deleted]
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#5I don't have anything to add, but still wanted to say thanks for sharing. One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!) Edit: I've thought of something worth adding. I've been told that certain datasets related to biology and chemist…
It's important to understand that there'll never be "a cure for cancer". Cancer is not a single disease. It's more like a meta-disease. There are tons of different types of cancer and the path for treatment is not the same. We've made tremendous progress in the last 20-30 years. There are some cancers that *are* effectively curable. And others still vex us just as much as they always have.
[deleted]
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#6I don't have anything to add, but still wanted to say thanks for sharing. One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!) Edit: I've thought of something worth adding. I've been told that certain datasets related to biology and chemist…
It's important to understand that there'll never be "a cure for cancer". Cancer is not a single disease. It's more like a meta-disease. There are tons of different types of cancer and the path for treatment is not the same. We've made tremendous progress in the last 20-30 years. There are some cancers that *are* effectively curable. And others still vex us just as much as they always have.
Compare: "When will we finally cure parasites", or "limb injuries".
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's important to understand that there'll never be "a cure for cancer". Cancer is not a single disease. It's more like a meta-disease. There are tons of different types of cancer and the path for treatment is not the same. We've made tremendous progress in the last 20-30 years. There are some cancers that *are* effectively curable. And others still vex us just as much as they always have.
Compare: "When will we finally cure parasites", or "limb injuries".
With limb injuries, are you predicting that we'll never figure out a way to regrow limbs? It is my understanding that there's nothing inherently impossible about regrowing limbs, we are only limited by our lack of knowledge and existing capabilities.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compare: "When will we finally cure parasites", or "limb injuries".
With limb injuries, are you predicting that we'll never figure out a way to regrow limbs? It is my understanding that there's nothing inherently impossible about regrowing limbs, we are only limited by our lack of knowledge and existing capabilities.
I don't think GP was making any predictions, the comment was making an analogy to overly general disease specifications.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#9I don't have anything to add, but still wanted to say thanks for sharing. One of my friends passed away earlier this year due to cancer and one of the questions I've kept wondering about has been about our slow progress in curing cancer. (Which admittedly stems from my own utter ignorance on the subject!) Edit: I've thought of something worth adding. I've been told that certain datasets related to biology and chemist…
I often wonder this myself. Maybe it is just that difficult a problem. Or maybe it's because Big Pharma doesn't have strong motivation when the treatment is more lucrative than a cure (Tamoxifen treatment can continue for up to 10 years after radiation and chemo for breast cancer, Diabetes treatment life-long, etc.). Maybe it's some of both.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#10The little anecdote about Peter Thiel about shitty physicists going into biology reminded me of a chapter from Richard Feynman's book, "Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman".
So it turns out Richard Feynman, after working in Los Alamos on the first nuclear bomb, and before going on to win a Nobel in Physics, actually did a stint as a biologist at CalTech. In fact he was doing some of the earliest work on ribosomes... so fundamental that he could have been the first person to discover that most all ribosomes were functionally equivalent:
"It would have been a fantastic and vital discovery if I had been a good biologist. But I wasn't a good biologist. We had a good idea, a good experiment, the right equipment, but I screwed it up: I gave her infected ribosomes the grossest possible error that you could make in an experiment like that. My ribosomes had been in the refrigerator for almost a month, and had become contaminated with some other living things. Had I prepared those ribosomes promptly over again and given them to her in a serious and careful way, with everything under control, that experiment would have worked, and we would have been the first to demonstrate the uniformity of life: the machinery of making proteins, the ribosomes, is the same in every creature. We were there at the right place, we were doing the right things, but I was doing things as an amateur -- stupid and sloppy."
So one of the world's best physicists almost became one of the world's most prominent molecular biologists, but actually fucked up the experiment for practical reasons.
I think this really underscores how not every problem is fundamentally a math problem... In the real world, especially with biology there's a shit ton of practical tedious things to deal with that can hamstring even the most brilliant experiments.