Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Did... did you just call Richard Feynman a "tool"?
I can’t be sure, but I suspect Eddy was being fatuous.
Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
51–60 of 111 posts
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. (Doctor here) Im not sure who the target audience is for the article, but it strikes me as one where if the author were more knowledgeable on the subject, they would have many of the answers to what they are asking. It reads to me like someone writing "why are there still bugs in programming? Is it because of too many buttons on the screens?" Im in agreement with you that most people don't grasp just how medicin…
Most of the body is cells. Most of cancer would be rogue cells. Cancer can be cured if you can: 1. Identify rogue cells 2. Destroy the rogue cells. You can use technology to do both and pretty much ignore biology.
I'll admit this gave me a really good laugh.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#53Even the improvements in 5yr survival could be the fact that detection has improved. Cancer detected much earlier then before naturally improving the 5yr numbers.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the body is cells. Most of cancer would be rogue cells. Cancer can be cured if you can: 1. Identify rogue cells 2. Destroy the rogue cells. You can use technology to do both and pretty much ignore biology.
Pathologist here (doctor who diagnoses cancer), who happens to have a degree in physics and works on diagnostic ML problems, including cancer. Cancer is not a simple anomaly detection problem. I mean, there's that, but so much more. These cells, each one of them, by their very nature, looks exactly like your normal healthy cells, on the outside. It's what's inside the cell that's going to kill you. The uncontrolled r…
A biopsy is predicated on the idea that you can identify good from bad. You might not be able to identify the origin cell but you would be able to pick out metastasization.
You certainly can take pictures. And not to be too reductive: cells are visible in a light microscope. The point is that the scale that cells are at is not really at the quantum level. People have been interacting with individual cells for decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTiKFCkPaUE
I also have a degree in physics but in addition I have a degree in computer science. 36 Trillion is not a very large number for modern computers anymore. I am sure even today we could build machines that would filter the cells in your blood by images and do it at 10s of millions per second.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pathologist here (doctor who diagnoses cancer), who happens to have a degree in physics and works on diagnostic ML problems, including cancer. Cancer is not a simple anomaly detection problem. I mean, there's that, but so much more. These cells, each one of them, by their very nature, looks exactly like your normal healthy cells, on the outside. It's what's inside the cell that's going to kill you. The uncontrolled r…
What an incredible perspective on the world given your background. Thank you for taking the time to write all of that out.
I also appreciate the details response but unfortunately did not refute my argument or even provide me with additional knowledge.
Obviously we all know how many base pairs there are and how many cells are in the human body. The comparisons to many of the fields in physics are invalid since cells are microscopic objects that dont have relativistic energies.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the body is cells. Most of cancer would be rogue cells. Cancer can be cured if you can: 1. Identify rogue cells 2. Destroy the rogue cells. You can use technology to do both and pretty much ignore biology.
Pathologist here (doctor who diagnoses cancer), who happens to have a degree in physics and works on diagnostic ML problems, including cancer. Cancer is not a simple anomaly detection problem. I mean, there's that, but so much more. These cells, each one of them, by their very nature, looks exactly like your normal healthy cells, on the outside. It's what's inside the cell that's going to kill you. The uncontrolled r…
> where'd the thing come from? And where's it going?
Today I learned cancer is basically Cotton Eyed Joe.
Seriously, though, excellent write up!
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#57That we haven't cured cancer is a problem of culture. And I'm not talking about that culture that we put in paintings and films, but about the more fundamental one that tells everybody what's the proper way to live a life. That base level of culture that tells people they should have kids and buy a car and a house (though not necessarily in that order), and go to a grill party from time to time. That part of culture that tells people is better to die of cancer than risk a leak of something dangerous from a laboratory, or letting the ayatolahs produce biological weapons.
In Vinge's novel "Rainbow's End" there is a particular fragment about how they had automated biological research, with robots at big connected research factories making all the experiments. Such factories would go a long way to shorten the "long cycles" the article mentions, and they perhaps would democratize bio-sciences research. I don't think there are any technological obstacles to building those factories; robots have been employed at factories for a long time and there many robots already used in expensive biological labs. But note the word "expensive". In cultural terms, "expensive" means "big commitment that has to be more important than anything else that can be bought with that money.". This is the cultural part I refer to. As a society, we discuss many things, but biological research is very, very low in that awareness list. In Europe, for example, putting spyware on people's phones is way higher in the agenda. And thus, the public would never approve a 20% (or any other number) of the government budget going towards biological research, unless they had material evidence that that money would indeed cure cancer. For the same reason, they wouldn't use use 20% of their savings to invest on biotech. But if, by the right means, those perceptions could be changed, we would see a revolution in biology and really substantial breakthroughs in life-expectancy.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the body is cells. Most of cancer would be rogue cells. Cancer can be cured if you can: 1. Identify rogue cells 2. Destroy the rogue cells. You can use technology to do both and pretty much ignore biology.
I'll admit this gave me a really good laugh.
But will you have the last laugh?
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pathologist here (doctor who diagnoses cancer), who happens to have a degree in physics and works on diagnostic ML problems, including cancer. Cancer is not a simple anomaly detection problem. I mean, there's that, but so much more. These cells, each one of them, by their very nature, looks exactly like your normal healthy cells, on the outside. It's what's inside the cell that's going to kill you. The uncontrolled r…
A biopsy is predicated on the idea that you can identify good from bad. You might not be able to identify the origin cell but you would be able to pick out metastasization. You certainly can take pictures. And not to be too reductive: cells are visible in a light microscope. The point is that the scale that cells are at is not really at the quantum level. People have been interacting with individual cells for decades…
Imagine thinking you're teaching a pathologist anything about evaluating neoplastic cells.... Like even as a doctor who's not a pathologist I wouldn't dare because I know just how much I don't know compared to them. A CS grad thinking they can jump in on that is peak tech-centric hubris.
Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
#60This lecture[0] by Robert Austin, a physicist who has done extensive work in biomedical including cancer-related research, proposes a fundamentally different theory for how cancer develops and progresses. Namely, the mutational theory of cancer is wrong, and also the now conventional treatments we have for treating cancer patients, that is chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are often worse than the disease (both modalities promote metastasis of cancer as they evolve and migrate away from the source of the toxic stressors). Highly recommended to anyone who has an interest in the subject.