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Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

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Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#71

Post by Eric_WVGG »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #15

This idea of "curing cancer" as if cancer was a monolithic disease really needs to die. Cancer is just a catch-all term for somatic cell mutations that become unmanageable. There are as many ways to get "cancer" as there are ways to mutate cells into these sort of uncontrollable states. And there are cures for multiple cancers today (Imantinib, Herceptin, etc). There actually have been enormous recent strides in drug…

nice little comic about that — https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#72

Post by magicalhippo »

petermcneeley wrote: post #40
Zenzero wrote: post #35

Earlier 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.

How to draw an owl:

1. Draw some circles.

2. Draw the rest of the owl.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#73

Post by 317070 »

dsign wrote: post #57

That 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…

I love the ambition, but also like to point out that today we still have smokers, that you can find cigarettes everywhere and that the number of smokers are on the rise again.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#74

Post by cyberax »

grishka wrote: post #21

This article is a good illustration of what's wrong with the current predominant approach in biology — it's all about genes and proteins, it's all way too reductionist to yield any meaningful higher-level outcomes. It's like trying to understand and manipulate an alien technology equivalent to a computer running a React web app, except you're only ever looking at and manipulating individual transistors in the CPU. As…

Levin's work smells like bullshit.

And it's also just as reductionist, trying to represent everything as electrical interactions.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#75

Post by killjoywashere »

Zenzero wrote: post #70
petermcneeley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appeals to authority tend not to fly in a hacker community which is all about questioning authority and the status quo. It is usually much better to respond with logic and refutation.

I really can't tell if you're trolling at this point but in the chance you aren't, I'll bite. Appealing to the authority of a pathologist is safe in my book given the subject matter and the education of the counterparty. There is a lower bound of requisite knowledge beneath which it's not worth even trying to entertain your claims about just "find and destroy rogue cells". You can't even begin to respond with logic a…

Looking through his comments, I think he's young and, as tends to go with youth, frustrated. This comment elsewhere in thread suggests he may be coming around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895503

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#76

Post by petermcneeley »

Zenzero wrote: post #70
petermcneeley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appeals to authority tend not to fly in a hacker community which is all about questioning authority and the status quo. It is usually much better to respond with logic and refutation.

I really can't tell if you're trolling at this point but in the chance you aren't, I'll bite. Appealing to the authority of a pathologist is safe in my book given the subject matter and the education of the counterparty. There is a lower bound of requisite knowledge beneath which it's not worth even trying to entertain your claims about just "find and destroy rogue cells". You can't even begin to respond with logic a…

Where did I say "just model with supercomputers"? Thats the biology problem it is super hard!

I am literally saying that avoiding the hard problem is going to work in the general case. I would argue that radiation therapy is in this vein.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#77

Post by exact_string »

petermcneeley wrote: post #54
killjoywashere wrote: post #48

Earlier 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…

The information you can get from light miscroscope images is quite limited though.

On the other hand, maybe it would be enough to filter out every cell that is not identified as a blood cell. This should be an easier task.

Probably we could direct only a small part of blood into this filtering machine at a time. Sounds like it would be still more like a machine detecting if there are cancer cells present in the bloodsteam rather than a machine eliminating metastasization.

I think the "cure cancer without biology" approach makes somewhat sense (I assume you would still need some biology :) ). Don't many surgeries already fall into this category? Let's say we made an automated colonoscopic machine that scanned the whole intestine and destroyed all abnormal colonic crypts. Now if this machine worked well, you would essentially cure at least those colon cancers that go through some aberrant crypt stage.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#78

Post by jghn »

petermcneeley wrote: post #64
Zenzero wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Appeals to authority tend not to fly in a hacker community which is all about questioning authority and the status quo. It is usually much better to respond with logic and refutation.

I'm assuming you realize that the cancer community has been inundated by people from other domains for decades, right? If only those cancer researchers could think of this one idea that'd solve everything. And yet, somehow it persists.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#79

Post by petermcneeley »

killjoywashere wrote: post #75
Zenzero wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't tell if you're trolling at this point but in the chance you aren't, I'll bite. Appealing to the authority of a pathologist is safe in my book given the subject matter and the education of the counterparty. There is a lower bound of requisite knowledge beneath which it's not worth even trying to entertain your claims about just "find and destroy rogue cells". You can't even begin to respond with logic a…

Looking through his comments, I think he's young and, as tends to go with youth, frustrated. This comment elsewhere in thread suggests he may be coming around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895503

I am not that young. If you go back far enough in the comments you will see that I completed my physics degree 15 years ago. I studied quite a bit of biology and I personally know multiple doctors. I am more bored than frustrated.

Re: Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

#80

Post by Zenzero »

petermcneeley wrote: post #76
Zenzero wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't tell if you're trolling at this point but in the chance you aren't, I'll bite. Appealing to the authority of a pathologist is safe in my book given the subject matter and the education of the counterparty. There is a lower bound of requisite knowledge beneath which it's not worth even trying to entertain your claims about just "find and destroy rogue cells". You can't even begin to respond with logic a…

Where did I say "just model with supercomputers"? Thats the biology problem it is super hard! I am literally saying that avoiding the hard problem is going to work in the general case. I would argue that radiation therapy is in this vein.

> . I would argue that radiation therapy is in this vein.

Why?

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