Why a Cure For Cancer Is So Elusive 366
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "George Johnson writes in the NYT that cancer is on the verge of overtaking heart disease as the No. 1 cause of death and although cancer mortality has actually been decreasing bit by bit in recent decades, the decline has been modest compared with other threats. The diseases that once killed earlier in life — bubonic plague, smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis — were easier obstacles. For each there was a single infectious agent, a precise cause that could be confronted. But there are reasons to believe that cancer will remain much more resistant because it is not so much a disease as a phenomenon, the result of a basic evolutionary compromise. As a body lives and grows, its cells are constantly dividing, copying their DNA — this vast genetic library — and bequeathing it to the daughter cells. They in turn pass it to their own progeny: copies of copies of copies. Along the way, errors inevitably occur. Some are caused by carcinogens but most are random misprints. Mutations are the engine of evolution. Without them we never would have evolved. The trade-off is that every so often a certain combination will give an individual cell too much power. It begins to evolve independently of the rest of the body and like a new species thriving in an ecosystem, it grows into a cancerous tumor. 'Given a long enough life, cancer will eventually kill you — unless you die first of something else (PDF). That would be true even in a world free from carcinogens and equipped with the most powerful medical technology,' concludes Johnson. 'Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.'"
Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Insightful)
Cancer is a whole spectrum of diseases with different causes, effects, mortality rates, etc. This question is only a little less silly than asking why we haven't cured all disease yet.
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This question is only a little less silly than asking why we haven't cured all disease yet.
It's even more silly because it asks no new questions, nor gives any new answers. The prevalence of cancer today is precisely because of improvements in the treatments of other diseases. The fact that it has been more difficult to cure is not an argument that it is never curable. In fact there are some very promising candidates even today.
Just as you say, however: there are different kinds, and as a result there will likely be many different treatments.
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True that there's many different causes and the type of cells causing the problems lead to many forms of cancer, but the basic problem with it is still the same - uncontrolled cell growth. And that is per se the problem, over time many of your cells probably go defective but as long as it's <1% of your liver and the other 99% work fine that's not really a big problem. So if you're looking to eradicate the causes that's a vast subject, but if you're just trying to find a cure then it's really one catch-al
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That's basically what the summery said " But there are reasons to believe that cancer will remain much more resistant because it is not so much a disease as a phenomenon"
How then is this insightful?
Also it is the body attacking itself (Score:2)
That makes it harder to deal with.
What some people seem to forget is that we dealt with the easy stuff in medicine already. We are getting to tougher and tougher problems to tackle, hence why it takes longer and more research to deal with.
Cancer is very tricky. As you note it is a type of issue, not a single disease (much like the flu is a type of viral infection, not a single virus) and it really is the body turning against itself, it isn't an outside pathogen that can be dealt with.
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Insightful)
Cancer is a generic term for a large group of diseases that can affect any part of the body.
- World Health Organisation
Cancer is a term used for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and are able to invade other tissues.
- National Cancer Institute (@NIH)
Where should he get his definition from?
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From TFA
From NIH
Cancer is a term used for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and are able to invade other tissues
... or in other words, cancer is cell mutations that went out of control.
Normal cells do have an expiry date. It's known as Apoptosis.
The one stark difference of a cancerous cell is that it forgets to die, and it keeps on multiplying like mad.
There are many causes of cancer, some of which can be traced back to genetic. Other cancers, on the other hand, could be triggered by bacteria/virus. And then, there are cancers that are caused by external factors, such as chemicals that came into our b
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The irony of you calling out another AC for baseless pronouncements is inherent in your claim that cancer can never be cured.
You might consider calling up the naked mole rats and informing them that they are impossible. They aren't alone; there are also other species that do not get cancer.
So, I propose that we continue research rather than just embracing fatalism.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Informative)
I see you have brought the machine analogies into play.
Are you conflating "cure" for cancer with "complete prevention" then? To go back to the machine analogy, I believe it is sufficient to define a machine as "not failing" if it can be repaired. I agree with you that machines inevitably fail; however, I don't automatically conflate that with permanent failure.
Dropping the analogies, if your sole claim is that we will never be able to prevent each and every individual cell from accumulating mutations and failing to undergo apoptosis when critical failures have accumulated, then you may be correct (likely because that problem isn't worth solving). If you are claiming that we will never be able to prevent a single, uncontrolled mutant cell from eventually causing death from metastatic disease (or cerebral disruption) then I suggest you are being fatalistic.
My comment about the rabbits was intended to point out the tautology of any type of claim that cancer will kill you if nothing else does. I believe Larry Niven once threw out a plausible stat that "immortality is ~200 years of life", mostly due to the accumulated odds of accidental death. To put it in terms of biological engineering, we may not be able to reduce the risk of metastatic disease to zero, but we may have a practical "cure" that reduces the risk to a practically infinitesimal level.
The machine isn't permanently broken if it can be repaired.
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This distills to semantics, and I'm not certain we share working definitions. As you said in another post:
And even if I'm proven false, 99.9% is not 100%. We can't cure cancer 100% just like we can't manufacture hard drives with a 0% failure rate.
Based on this type of definition, practically no disease has ever been (or ever will be) cured, given that all cures have some nonzero failure rate. I anticipate you have already found, through interactions with others, that this type of definition is uncommon semantics. That is to say, most people will believe that a disease is cured even if the cure fails in some tiny fraction of cases.
Integrate a tin
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it is. Some are viral, some by metabolic imbalances in the cells, others by poisoning, some by transcription errors, and a few are bizarrely fungal. The only thing that "cancer" is, if it's anything at all, is a bunch of very different diseases that are characterized by the cells in the body multiplying faster than they should. Not all are even tumorous; think about leukemia.
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Insightful)
" if it's anything at all, is a bunch of very different diseases that are characterized by the cells in the body multiplying faster than they should"
That's a contradictory statement.
If one guy breaks his leg falling from a ladder, and another breaks his leg in a car accident, does the doctor treat that broken leg differently? Preventative measures for those broken legs may be different, but the result is the same. Likewise, a broken arm and broken leg might be be susceptible to different treatments, but they're both fundamentally broken bones, and it's worthwhile to categorize them as such.
Cancer can absolutely be categorized as one disease. As you say, it's the pathological replication of a cell. Yes, different types of cells may have different behaviors, although they also all have a litany of identical behaviors. Yes, it's a fruitful avenue of research to treat different cancer types with different methods. But that doesn't mean we should stop looking for broader methods than can treat multiple different kinds of cancers based on their numerous shared characteristics.
The meme that "cancer is a whole spectrum of diseases" is just that, a meme. Researchers who recite that meme don't believe it literally. They do have a much more nuanced perspective on cancer. But they use that meme in an attempt to deflate journalists' and lay people's expectations about cancer research. And then people echo that meme in an attempt to sound knowledgable and up-to-date.
Study any topic deeply enough and almost any label will come up short. That doesn't mean the label is wrong. Labels are meant to simplify and aggregate. They sacrifice accuracy for the necessary convenience of relating complex topics in rational discourse.
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it all comes down to: are your trying to stop it from happening in the first place (in which case it's a broad spectrum of causes), or to cure it after the fact (in which case they all have the same mechanism). Which way you see it likely depends on which part of the problem you're concerned with.
Genes just need a digital checksum - get on it!
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Genes just need a digital checksum - get on it!
That would indeed be an effective means to stop cancers and some other diseases, but comes with a rather noteworthy side effect. It also brings human evolution to a halt.
In the medium term (many generations) the percentages for the various existing checksummed genes will shift, but no new genes will enter the gene pool. And in the long term it becomes a statistical certainty that one particular variant of each gene will eventually reach 100% in the population. At that point the entire human population would
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Insightful)
An argument about the world is interesting. An argument about a word is not.
This is an argument about a word. What is "a disease" versus "a spectrum of diseases"?
Cancers have some common features, and some very important differences. This is the "world", and you agree on it. Stop arguing about the word.
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:4, Insightful)
If one guy breaks his leg falling from a ladder, and another breaks his leg in a car accident, does the doctor treat that broken leg differently? Preventative measures for those broken legs may be different, but the result is the same.
Not really. If you land on your leg from a ladder and get a compound fracture, that's probably your bone being compressed. If you get your leg crushed in a car accident, that's probably going to break a different way. The bone will likely need to be set differently. With crushing, I think there's a greater chance of internal bleeding, can't remember where I heard that. The specific insult will lead to a different type of injury that necessarily affects the treatment, even if they both are very similar overall (like they both require casts).
Yes, it's a fruitful avenue of research to treat different cancer types with different methods. But that doesn't mean we should stop looking for broader methods than can treat multiple different kinds of cancers based on their numerous shared characteristics.
Uh, I'm pretty sure no cancer researcher in the world is giving up on curing ALL cancers if they can. I mean, you automaticaly win the nobel prize for sure, get assured to be put on a stamp, and free drinks for the rest of your life if you "cure cancer." If you cure "just" one subtype of cancer, you probably get tenure or plenty of grant money, but you probably won't get automatically laid by saying "I'm the guy who cured multiple myeloma!" in a bar.
They're focusing on specific types because that seems far more likely than any one treatment curing all types of cancer. For instance multiple myeloma cells appear to be more on the verge of auto-cannibalizing themselves [nih.gov], moreso than other cancers. Researchers got them to undergo unrestrained autophagy and die, that probably won't be the case for other cancers. If it even works in patients for multiple myeloma.
The meme that "cancer is a whole spectrum of diseases" is just that, a meme. Researchers who recite that meme don't believe it literally.
I, for one, do actually believe it. And I think it's more than a meme. I think researchers who pursue a grand cure might be modern day alchemists: trying very hard to achieve a goal which is far beyond the current technology. Modern chemistry came about from alchemists. Likewise, researchers who are attemtping to cure ALL cancers can definitely make important contributions even if they don't cure all cancers, so I'm not knocking them. But I do think we'll probably cure individual cancer subtypes before theres a big overall cure.
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Cancer can absolutely be categorized as one disease
No, it can't.
Ask an oncologist or read a book about it.
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:4, Insightful)
If one guy breaks his leg falling from a ladder, and another breaks his leg in a car accident, does the doctor treat that broken leg differently?
Actually a doctor most likely will treat those injuries differently. An impact with torn metal will probably be more serious than an impact with soil. For instance, it is more likely to result in a compound fracture. In general, different accidents cause different injuries.
Cancer can absolutely be categorized as one disease.
OMG.
You are going to need to know a heck of a lot more about a disease than "it is cancer" before you can even start considering treatment. In what type of tissue did the cancer originate? What organ is the cancer in now? What oncogenes / suppressor genes were affected by the mutation? Is it one of:
In other words, what is the disease really?
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Cancer can absolutely be categorized as one disease. As you say, it's the pathological replication of a cell.
Viral infection can absolutely be categorized as one disease. As you say, it's the pathological replication of viruses.
Sorry, HIV isn't that much like the common cold, and skin cancer isn't that much like leukemia. Clarifying that to laypeople is probably a good idea.
The meme that "cancer is a whole spectrum of diseases" is just that, a meme.
Just like "human beings are primates" and "Pluto isn't a planet".
Study any topic deeply enough and almost any label will come up short. That doesn't mean the label is wrong.
It also doesn't mean the different labeling schemes aren't better than others for certain uses.
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Cancer can absolutely be categorized as one disease. As you say, it's the pathological replication of a cell. Yes, different types of cells may have different behaviors, although they also all have a litany of identical behaviors. Yes, it's a fruitful avenue of research to treat different cancer types with different methods.
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but I work with people who study cancer and they do think of it as multiple diseases. Clearly these people are not "echoing memes" and "trying to sound up to date". They are up to date and they specialise in a particular cancer because global approaches have all failed so far. Research and treatment strategies for a particular cancer are so specialised that they don't generalise well to other cancers. That's why, for instance, some cancers respond well to particular c
Actually you can still use a broken leg (Score:3)
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I think disease has a bad connotation for what we are trying to portray.
A abnormal condition characterized by the cells in the body multiplying faster than they should or in places where they should not be, etc. Would be better understood.
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Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Funny)
You want room 12A, next door.
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The simple reason is that the people who fund the research feel there is more profit in treating cancer than there ever would be in curing it.
Nonsense. The underlying causes of the uncontrolled cellular growth simply vary dramatically depending on the individual type of cancer. It is extremely complicated to even detect many cancers, yet alone come up with targeted treatments which don't adversely effect another part of a persons body. This is before you even start to factor in the cost of research, development and testing... ;)
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, it isn't nonsense; it is one of many factors. Yes, cheap cures get removed from the market (mebendazole, anyone?), new cures get challenged before the FDA by johnny-come-latelies until the developers go out of business (angiostatins?), cancers that should remain untreated and monitored instead get invasive surgery (prostate cancer)... yes, chmpanies like to ure the sick and hurting as ATMs.
That said, it is also correct to say that there is no single cure for cancer.
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The simple reason is that the people who fund the research feel there is more profit in treating cancer than there ever would be in curing it.
Nonsense. The underlying causes of the uncontrolled cellular growth simply vary dramatically depending on the individual type of cancer. It is extremely complicated to even detect many cancers, yet alone come up with targeted treatments which don't adversely effect another part of a persons body. This is before you even start to factor in the cost of research, development and testing... ;)
So things like Reolysin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reolysin [wikipedia.org] which are effective against cancers dependent on an active RAS pathway, which means most solid-body tumor cancers, require a targeted treatment, and have adverse effects in other parts of people's bodies? I guess that explains why all the kids are dying from drinking mud puddle water or pond water when they go frog catching...
I agree with the GP: treatments are a hell of a lot more lucrative than cures, and the focus of Big Pharma has always bee
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Actually it is all down to evolution, it's a bitch. If we can survive long enough to reproduce and in our case pass on knowledge, then evolution has done it's job, that we then die of heart disease, cancer or various other ailments brought on by age and probability, is all down to the nature of evolving just barely good enough for a species to continue to reproduce.
Stem cell research and genetics research is all about fixing those inherent defects we are born with. Curing cancer simply requires more know
Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Funny)
The simple reason is that the people who fund the research feel there is more profit in treating cancer than there ever would be in curing it.
That must be true since we know that there are no actual hard problems in medicine, science, math, or engineering. It's because of the oil companies that we don't have warp drive, antigravity, 500 mpg cars, and personal nuclear piles. The airlines, banks, and credit card companies are holding back time travel (no more late bills or missed flights). We have it on the authority of President Obama himself that surgeons do unnecessary surgery out of greed [wsj.com]. Fermat's last theorem could have been solved hundreds of years ago except for the abacus and adding machine lobby. Shoe manufacturers are holding back personal jet packs since shoes would rarely wear out if you fly everywhere. And teacher's unions prevent people from learning foreign languages while they sleep, with one weird trick.
I have no idea where people get these ideas. Maybe food additives have something to do with it. Isn't hydrogenated-crank oil added to some foods? Or maybe it's just a problem due to chronic lack of sleep [universityherald.com]?
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hydrogenated-crank oil
Awesome.
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I have no idea where people get these ideas.
Humans are irrational, superstitious, paranoid, panicky herd animals.
And those are just the ones without any psychological abnormality.
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Re:Cancer isn't one disease (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what we were presented with is a conspiracy theory for which no evidence was given. If you want people to believe such an extraordinary claim, which would require a massive world-wide conspiracy lasting decades among all manner of countries, governments, and people of varying socio-political-religious orientations, you need to present some actual evidence instead of simply making a bare allegation. In short you are whining because a crank allegation with no supporting evidence was dismissed as such.
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The simple reason is that the people who fund the research feel there is more profit in treating cancer than there ever would be in curing it.
People will believe anything as long as they can blame The Man. There's likely more profit in the ability to extend the life of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett than in any other single product - especially since it wouldn't just be for them.
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Best AC post I've read on a Sunday, this year.
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When we see Bill Gates walking around in a brand new 20 year old body, then we can start assuming they DO have a cure and are keeping it from the public.
Bill Gates *does* have a brand new 20 year old body. He's just hired someone to occupy his old one and make occasional public appearances so that- as you suggest- no-one finds out.
Incidentally, I've managed to acquire a photograph of Gates in his new body... as a 20-year old *female*! [chpn.net]
The #1 cause (Score:2)
is old age. So as other diseases are solved we have cancer moving up the list.
Mere flesh? (Score:5, Funny)
But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.'"
Pffft, I plan on being 100% robot by then. I'd like to see cancer bite my shiny metal ass.
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I'd like to see cancer bite my shiny metal ass.
Just wait until your nanotech self-repair mechanisms get a bit hinkey and mix up "break down" with "build up".
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Unlike cells, nanites can be controlled by an intelligent operator.
You'd be surprised at how much progress we have made in synthetic biology. For several decades already, recombinant DNA techniques have been revolutionizing the way we do research and development in the life sciences. Cutting edge efforts as exemplified by things like iGEM [wikipedia.org] aims to make hacking biology just like hacking hardware. Give it time. There won't be a difference to speak of.
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Rust
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" I'd like to see cancer bite my shiny metal ass."
Welcome to wear, corrosion, stress cracking, and your Windows 2080 operating system.
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You will just have a different kind of transcription error rot your mind.
Bollocks (Score:2, Insightful)
This hypothesis (that cancer is inevitable, just masked by other diseases that get you first) is wrong.
There are populations where recorded cancer rates are essentially 0. Some pacific islanders, African populations before westernization of their diets (I.E. eating grain) etc. This simple fact undermines the above hypothesis.
There is also evidence that people get cancer all the time and the body deals with it.
The medical research on cancer is primarily focused on identifying the mutations and chemical pathw
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African populations before westernization of their diets (I.E. eating grain) etc.
The civilization of their diets, you mean. Modern civilization is built on the agriculture of cereal plants. This is true of both Eastern and Western civilization (and, in fact, probably started in northern Africa).
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I didn't say it was. I said there was nothing Western about grain-based diets -- it's civilization in general.
Re:Bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
This simple fact undermines the above hypothesis.
Not if they all used to die of sleeping sickness before the age of 30.
Without knowing what did kill them and at what age, the existence of these populations might equally well support the hypothesis, might it not?
What was the life expectancy of these Pacific island or pre-Western diet African populations? Did they have anything approaching "Western" medicine for coping with all their other ailments?
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so a productive approach may be to find what it is that is causing people's bodies to fail to continue to detect and correct cancers in the body. Unfortunately, that has more to do with diet than drugs and so there isn't a strong profit motive to take that vector seriously.
There is plenty of research trying to determine why a person doesn't see the cancer, and plenty of research to train the immune system on how to fight the cancer.
See: http://www.mayo.edu/research/discoverys-edge/training-immune-system-fight-cancer [mayo.edu]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029442.800-cancer-meets-its-nemesis-in-reprogrammed-blood-cells.html [newscientist.com]
Diet has an effect on cancer but it's not how you state it. Drugs are all very powerful ally in the fight against cancer.
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And other animals where cancer rarely, if ever occurs.
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This hypothesis (that cancer is inevitable, just masked by other diseases that get you first) is wrong.
There are populations where recorded cancer rates are essentially 0.
So what do they die of instead?
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Read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' By Gary Taubes. That book runs through all the historical health data and modern research findings and shows that a Western diet promotes cancer.
and...you can 'catch' cancer (Score:2)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease [wikipedia.org]
Cancer is contagious right there.
Also, note that Gardasil, the vaccine which prevents HPV, is being legislated ostensibly to prevent cervical cancer.
So yes, there are contagious causes of cancer, but there are other non-contagious causes as well. And the trouble is that once it occurs, it is difficult to selectively remove those particular cells when they look mostly like any other cell.
Well.. (Score:2)
Understanding why testicular cancer, for example, can be diagnosed in kids as young as 15 might be an interesting venture, me thinks.
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short-sighted (Score:2)
As long as crazy researchers... (Score:2)
... and volunteers exist I'm sure the problem will be eventually solved, look at the latest (and ingenious) solution for leukemia [ems1.com].
Why morons are so prevalent in scientific circles. (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, cancer is an evolutionary compromise of multi-cellular life? Yeah, right. It's a product of mutation, but it runs counter to reproductive fitness, and it's not like our bodies don't have immune systems which reject other foreign (differently mutated) cells, so, Checkmate, moron.
If cancer is so damn inherent in the very fabric of complex life then we probably wouldn't find any species on the planet that doesn't get cancer... Like Naked Mole Rats. [sciencemag.org] Some studies I've seen suggest cancer has less to do wit
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"Reproductive fitness" ends at about age 25 as far as evolution is concerned. Natural selection doesn't care one bit about what happens to you after you procreate (the male preying mantis is a perfect example of this)
Cancer usually doesn't affect people until well after the age at which they would have reproduced, and as a result wouldn't be filtered-out by natural selection.
A better example of this is sickle cell anemia, a hereditary mutation that eventually kills the person who has it. However, this mutat
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"Reproductive fitness" ends at about age 25 as far as evolution is concerned. Natural selection doesn't care one bit about what happens to you after you procreate (the male preying mantis is a perfect example of this)
That is complete nonsense.
Males can father children up to age of 70, if not longer. Females till 40 / 45. The more children you have the higher is the chance your genes get distributed and stay "alive".
There is no magical "natural selection" stopping just because you are over age of 25.
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"Reproductive fitness" ends at about age 25 as far as evolution is concerned. Natural selection doesn't care one bit about what happens to you after you procreate (the male preying mantis is a perfect example of this)
Hey, dipshit. The mutation of cells replicating in the body has fuck all to do with the reproductive cell mutations that evolution is concerned with. What a nitwit.
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"Reproductive fitness" ends at about age 25 as far as evolution is concerned.
Please explain how natural selection cares not about those born as my little brother to a 35 year old mother and a 45 year old father. So, are you saying that longevity and quantity of offspring have nothing to do with breeding. Are you seriously presenting that once you hit 25 or so evolution doesn't care about how long you can viably produce children for? And for the record, you idiot, evolution doesn't care about fucking one bit. Evolution cares about the quantity an SURVIVABILITY of OFFSPRING -- I
Re:Why morons are so prevalent in scientific circl (Score:5, Interesting)
"runs counter to reproductive fitness"
Wrong. There is a huge reproductive fitness bonus for getting old useless people out of the way as quickly as possible, and more specifically a huge natural selection bonus for death after some maximum amount of years. Death is one of the major pillars of natural selection, and cancer, in many species plays a big part to ensure that we do not too many people living to 80-100+ or comparable.
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but if you fixed every other problem you would start to get cancer at some point in their lifespan
I'm not sure you're following along. If your immune system can kill off cells that have mutated -- a sort of integrity check -- then you can't get cancer. A mutation can occur, sure, but if the mutant cells that would form a cancer by replicating unchecked are killed by your body before they can do so, then yes, you can actually never get cancer. If the DNA replication itself had a bit more CRC checking going on -- possibly even by the surrounding cells themselves, then the cancer can't form. You want t
Who wants to live forever? (Score:3)
I guess Heather did, but why did she never disclose what the Kergan did?
And I guess maybe Freddie Mercury did, but he was doing it wrong.
Hugh Pickens Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hugh Pickens Blog (Score:4, Funny)
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Environment vs Genetics (Score:2)
It seems there is some research pointing to the contrary [cbsnews.com].
The
Can anyone here please pr
Cancer Is Cured By High Immunity (Score:3, Insightful)
A strong immune system keeps cancer at bay - this is a duh.
But our lifestyles are increasingly focused on pathogen and stressor avoidance instead of encountering and overcoming them. Most people look at me as if I'm crazy when I say I like going out in the cold because it's good for me, and as many think I'm a kook when I ask them if they have ever drank water from a stream. Activities in the outside world boost our immunity, and we perform them less and less, and de-germ our environments more and more. I, for one, think there is a correlation.
Somatic vs. metabolic theory of cancer (Score:2)
Is the cure elusive because they're digging in the wrong place?
This article seems wedded to the somatic (gene) theory of cancer.
What if it's a metabolic disease (Warburg, Seyfried)?
Seyfried has a 2012 textbook, but here's a concise summary:
http://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440%2813%2900653-6/fulltext
If so, the top treatment, calorie-restricted ketogenic diet, is something that sufferers can try at home. I suspect many are, and I would expect anecdotes to become data in a few years.
Of course, many peop
Might reduce the error rate (Score:2)
The error rate in DNA replication probably is the result of some amount of evolutionary pressure that trades off cancer against the ability of a species to adapt to new conditions. The "optimum" may not be what we want it to be. It is conceivable that we could modify the DNA replication process to reduce the error rate and thereby reduce the cancer rate.
I'm NOT saying its easy, or even possible, but cancer may not be absolutely inevitable.
No Profit In Cures (Score:2, Insightful)
In case you haven't noticed, medical science (which is primarily undertaken in the US by pharmaceutical companies and universities receiving large corporate endowments), is primarily concerned with treatments, not cures.
A cured patient is no longer a paying customer. A patient under treatment (and his/her insurer) can be milked indefinitely.
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Well, if that were the case we would have drugs that arrested the progress of cancer, but didn't cure it.
But we don't.
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Cancer is a symptom not a cause (Score:2)
One option... (Score:2)
...is to improve on the built-in error correction.
This is actually very, very hard. Some, but not all, "jumping genes" and relocated genes need to be able to move freely. But not to just anywhere - some places are good, some places will trigger genetic disease. And it's not possible to be 100% sure if those places are fixed or vary according to some other state of some other mechanism.
So cancers caused by gene relocation aren't preventable at this time.
Mutations within a gene are easier. There are no (curre
Wrong approach (Score:2)
He's thinking about it all backwards. The person is not the left hand or the right hand. Not the feet, not the legs. You aren't your earlobe or your eye. Replace all the cells, everything, with new, better programmed, cells. Transfer the person into the new body. Bingo - cancer is cured.
Finally, an expanation (Score:2)
They in turn pass it to their own progeny: copies of copies of copies. Along the way, errors inevitably occur. Some are caused by carcinogens but most are random misprints. Mutations are the engine of evolution.
Finally, an explanation for all those dupes here on Slashdot! It's somehow the price we pay for evolution.
One day that won't be true (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a feeling that one day in the distant future people will read our current understanding of cancer as laid out in the summary and shake their heads that our understanding was ever so limited the same way we do when reading how bleeding patients out was the cure for just about everything in ancient times.
Also, agreed with a Cold Fjord post and if I have learned anything from the /. is that is an unforgivable use of mod points (or something like that)
Maybe the solution is right there (Score:2)
The article says that errors in the DNA copying mechanism are eventually degrading the DNA to the point where cells become cancerous. So what if the solution is to improve the copying mechanism? After all, there are people who live well into their 100s and there are populations that have very little cancer. So why not examine the copy mechanism of those people to figure out why theirs works better?
But on the other hand, there are already way too many people around as it is and far too many Ship B people.
Researchers, hurry the hell up, please (Score:2)
Re:True fact: (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's more lucrative to treat a disease than it is to cure it."
While true at face value, the implication here is that a "cancer cabal" profits as a whole when cures are withheld and it collectively decides to release only incrementally improved treatments. But there is no such cabal, quite the opposite, there is intense competition among researchers and pharma companies and no collective decision, only individuals more than willing to "break the ranks".
Heck, curing a single type of cancer say prostate or leukemia will guarantee you a Nobel prize and a life time of doing whatever you want whenever you want both from a professional and personal point of view - regardless if the cure is monetizable (patentable) or not. And you expect us to believe researchers are actively hiding cures for the sake of the pharma industry ? Please, not even the Mafia can command such allegiance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> Appendicitis
I'm not so convinced that that's a disease, although I imagine it's quite painful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's more lucrative _to some_. To the patients, it' can be very expensive, and to society as a whole, it's very expensive indeed. The chance at a Nobel Prize could easily overwhelm the pharmaceutical shortsightedness if someone finds the cure but is worried about retaining funding if they publish.
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Re:Money (Score:4, Informative)
So how do the conspiracy theories explain the dramatic improvement in survival rates in those cancers where research-guided improvements in treatment have been very successful?:
https://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=5b25e64c5b470110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD [stjude.org]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15726810 [bbc.co.uk]
Clearly there's a great deal to be done, and finding 'cures' is a very complex and difficult task. But we finally have the tools to do this in a systematic and rational way, and targeted therapies are already emerging.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has had cancer, I have learned a lot. Most importantly, all the various cancer charities are complete frauds. Despite taking in untold Billions of dollars, the number of people dying from cancer has increased, not decreased over the last 20 years. And nobody has ever had their cancer cured because someone wore a pink ribbon or yellow wristband or walked 10 kilometers.
If you had bothered to actually read even the slashdot article (you don't even need the links), you would understand why the number of people dying of cancer increases. Everyone who has died so far has died of something. Many of the causes people were dying of, we have minimalized or fully eliminated in the last 150 years, Nearly no one dies of the bubonic plague anymore for instance, and most of the other infections are in retreat. With every cause we eliminate, all the remaining causes get a bigger share. And in the end, there are two main causes remaining: coronary diseases and cancer. Everyone of us, given that he dies not of anything else before, will in the end die of either coronary diseases or cancer, which means that they will increase their share, if we further eliminate the other causes for an premature death.
What is actually increasing is the average age humans die because of coronary diseases or cancer. That means, we are able to push the time further away, when cancer or coronary diseases will get us.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And in the end, there are two main causes remaining: coronary diseases and cancer.
Kindda like Wal-Mart and Amazon. Anyway, it's nice that a cure for KMart has already been approved, and a cure for Best Buy is currently in medical trials.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has had cancer, I have learned a lot. Most importantly, all the various cancer charities are complete frauds. Despite taking in untold Billions of dollars, the number of people dying from cancer has increased, not decreased over the last 20 years.
That is a statistical fallacy, if we're getting better at treating cancer but even better at treating non-cancer diseases and injuries the relative share of cancer deaths may go up. Most of the people diagnosed with cancer are quite old and while we're getting better at emulating the body's "functions" with artificial hearts, artificial lungs, dialysis machines and so on we're not making the same kind of progress on cancer. I've had several ill and frail relatives but modern medicine kept them alive until the cancer got them, I consider it more of a success than a failure of the medical system. Eventually everybody dies from something.
Re:Money (Score:4, Insightful)
In some sense, increasing cancer mortality likely results from people in industrialized nations being killed less often by other stuff (cars, emphysema, smallpox, contaminated water). And walking 10 km [cancer.gov] (on a regular basis) probably has significantly decreased cancer mortality, probably by changes in hormone balance and metabolism. Cancer research may not always be flashy, but they do seem to dig up useful stuff over time.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but at the same time they would be putting most of their friends and peers out of a job.
But I never said that I believed that this less money overall for a cure was stagnating the development for one, just that obviously as a whole the industry would suffer if one was ever created.
But at the same time, you could argue that a cure would even be less advantageous to a small research team/pharmaceutical than one more slightly more effective, super expensive, longitudinal treatment regimen. Just being the
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but at the same time they would be putting most of their friends and peers out of a job.
And saving themselves and their families from a painful death. Which do you think researchers think is more important?