A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
nytimes.com
A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#2the better we get at keeping people alive, the older they will get
I'm generally not a fan of people either but there are kids with cancer that I feel should get some time to enjoy their lives outside of dying in a hospital if at all possible, someday.
Besides, there are still many, many millions of people in the USA who can't get insurance so even if there was a "cure" or life extension, they couldn't afford it. Don't worry, they will die for you because emergency rooms don't treat cancer. For example if I got cancer, I'd be screwed.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#3We are essentially temporary cell colonies evolved to relay life to the next generation, and as long as we are human, there will always be another cancer.
That sentence made that great article awesome.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#4the better we get at keeping people alive, the older they will get I'm generally not a fan of people either but there are kids with cancer that I feel should get some time to enjoy their lives outside of dying in a hospital if at all possible, someday. Besides, there are still many, many millions of people in the USA who can't get insurance so even if there was a "cure" or life extension, they couldn't afford it. Don…
Why don't you have insurance? It's mandatory now.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#5the better we get at keeping people alive, the older they will get I'm generally not a fan of people either but there are kids with cancer that I feel should get some time to enjoy their lives outside of dying in a hospital if at all possible, someday. Besides, there are still many, many millions of people in the USA who can't get insurance so even if there was a "cure" or life extension, they couldn't afford it. Don…
And also relatively "young" parents whose families wish they were still around.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#6the better we get at keeping people alive, the older they will get I'm generally not a fan of people either but there are kids with cancer that I feel should get some time to enjoy their lives outside of dying in a hospital if at all possible, someday. Besides, there are still many, many millions of people in the USA who can't get insurance so even if there was a "cure" or life extension, they couldn't afford it. Don…
Why don't you have insurance? It's mandatory now.
Not the OP, but I don't have insurance because I can't afford it. Furthermore, attempts to use Healthcare.gov to try and even start an application process did and continue to fail because I don't have a credit history and therefore do not exist in their system and hit a roadblock. I cannot sign up for Medicaid in my state either for the same reason.
And while it may be technically mandatory, I have so far fallen below the income level that requires it and so haven't yet been fined for being unable to afford it. I almost did this year, but managed to request an exemption because there were no plans in my area below the necessary price threshold. And even if I were fined, paying the fine is easier and cheaper than dealing with actually getting a (very shitty) plan.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#7There is a verge that is going to be crossed for cancer soon. The reason that cancer research and development is a slow, expensive, ugly morass is that 99% of the people involved are targeting biochemistry peculiar to a very small number of the thousands of relevant varieties and subtypes of cancer. A year of lab time is much the same ballpark of cost whatever you happen to be doing, give or take. So if it takes a thousand distinct cures to defeat cancer, it'll never get done.
BUT.
There are range of new approaches to cancer that are not particular and specialized to a very small number of cancers, or that can in principle be adapted with comparatively little work to target different cancer types from a common core platform.
This is what will produce meaningful control of cancer: attacking the commonalities present in many or all cancer types.
The best and most promising approach here is interdiction of telomere lengthening. All cancers must lengthen telomeres. They have to. If they can't, they wither. So block telomerase, block ALT, and cancer goes away. You can either block these mechanisms globally for a while, long enough to kill the cancer, but not long enough to kill the patient due to stem cell depletion, or combine this with any of the targeted delivery mechanisms under development to turn it off only in cancer tissue.
There are a few labs working on aspects of this, more on the telomerase side ( e.g. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/cndi-csa05111... ) than the ALT side, because ALT cancers are only about 10% of the total, and ALT is still not completely cataloged. ( See: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/42444/... )
SO.
It is foolish to talk about cancer as a thing that medical science cannot get to the bottom of. There are very clear approaches to get to the bottom of cancer and fix it.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#8the better we get at keeping people alive, the older they will get I'm generally not a fan of people either but there are kids with cancer that I feel should get some time to enjoy their lives outside of dying in a hospital if at all possible, someday. Besides, there are still many, many millions of people in the USA who can't get insurance so even if there was a "cure" or life extension, they couldn't afford it. Don…
Why don't you have insurance? It's mandatory now.
It's not mandatory in the US; you just pay a penalty the next time you file your taxes if you went too long without insurance.
Spoiler: the penalty is far less than the cost of having insurance, which means it's still cheaper to just be uninsured (so long as you stay relatively healthy) and pay up on your tax return.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#9It is entirely possible that we can completely cure cancer. Not just a treatment, but actually prevent anyone from ever getting cancer in the first place. It would be super duper difficult, but we know it is possible because of the naked mole rat. Naked mole rats are essentially immune to cancer (I say essentially because this February scientists dicovered two individuals that had cancer, the only two documented cases). It is thus possible that genetic therapy could create a population of humans with no (or almost no) incidence of cancer.
Re: A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
#10It is entirely possible that we can completely cure cancer. Not just a treatment, but actually prevent anyone from ever getting cancer in the first place. It would be super duper difficult, but we know it is possible because of the naked mole rat. Naked mole rats are essentially immune to cancer (I say essentially because this February scientists dicovered two individuals that had cancer, the only two documented case…
E.g.: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=6572
"These rodents are protected from cancer because their tissues are very rich with high molecular weight hyaluronan (HMW-HA)."