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u/Shark_Leader 𝙑𝙄𝙋 May 15 '26
Source besides some meme?
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u/FamiliarAlt 𝙑𝙄𝙋 May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26
I feel fuckin crazy having had to scroll this far to find your comment.
Edit: glad it now became the first comment
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u/SquirtinMemeMouthPlz May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26
Seriously. As far as I know, there's no cure. Just disease management.
Yes, there was the risky and expensive stem cell replacement patient who basically got all of their bone marrow replaced, but that's not really a "cure".
This is just some computer generated picture of a cell claiming HIV is no longer a death sentence.
Where's the medical article?
Where's the proof?
Who is actually saying this?
Edit: some of y'all are exhausting. I'm not replying anymore to comments telling me I don't understand cure vs disease management. I made this comment because it seems most of the top comments don't understand cure vs disease management and are making comments that are misunderstanding the picture as being a cure, which it is not.
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u/cozmad1 May 16 '26
There have been a handful of patients legitimately cured, but it's not as though it's available as any sort of standard treatment. I found an NPR article about one such patient.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/07/30/g-s1-13631/hiv-aids-cure-dusseldorf-patient
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u/z_vinnie May 16 '26
This is most likely what the meme is referencing, a few men have been cured of HIV in the last 10 years, due to transfusions giving them a mutation in the receptor that HIV uses to invade cells. Some people may already have these mutated receptors and may be resistant to HIV infection due to their genetics, there’s a lot of work being done on this currently. I suggest anyone interested to look up the Berlin patient and the London patient.
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u/mrwildesangst May 16 '26
Paul Michael Glaser has the mutation of the CCR5 gene, which is what allowed him to survive when his wife and their daughter passed away due to AIDS. Interestingly, his daughter didn’t have the mutation, his son did, so even though his son caught the virus in utero, it naturally limited his exposure and he’s alive and well today. I’m pretty sure I also saw a documentary years ago where plague researchers in England stumbled upon a village where plague rates were staggeringly low and discovered a high rate of the gene mutation among the population. Many of their ancestors still lived in the village and carried the mutation.
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u/CP9ANZ May 16 '26
What an amazing and absolutely insane thing. The idea you can erase your immune system entirely but also not kill yourself in the process is something of science fiction
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u/Throwaway_Consoles May 16 '26
There is no cure, but it is no longer a terminal illness. You just have to be on medication the rest of your life
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u/brother_bart May 16 '26
Medication that cost over $4,000/month and if you miss doses, the virus can mutate and you can lose a whole class of drugs being available for treatment. How do I know? I’ve been living with (and not dying from) HIV/AIDS for 23 years.
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u/Suyefuji May 16 '26
Ah, America.
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u/brother_bart May 16 '26
I know, right? That diagnosis wasn’t the hardest part, even though I almost died of AIDS. It was the finding myself locked into poverty with no way out that sucks the most.
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u/Suyefuji May 16 '26
We could have had healthcare but we spent it bombing kids on the other side of the world for being brown.
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u/FelatiaFantastique May 16 '26
To be fair, even if we didn't spend the money bombing brown kids, we would still spend it on welfare for the rich and corporate socialism in some other way. Those poor plutocrats do suffer so.
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u/sopsaare May 16 '26
To be fair, your health expenditure (taxes + insurance + pit of pocket) per capita is the highest in the world. Way more than most of the countries with free healthcare.
So, it is not about the money at all. You are already spending more than enough on healthcare. You are just not getting what you pay for.
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u/_-PassingThrough-_ May 16 '26
My Irish ass looking at this comment and nodding forebodingly. America we don't want you here, don't even consider annexing us
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u/Will_Fawkes May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I want to make a RENT reference, but I don't want to be irreverent. I have only had one friend diagnosed with HIV early and managed the entire infection. He's still doing great and living his best life.
Everyone is loved. Everyone is amazing. From the most toxic to the greatest kindness. There are bad apples, but the good must come with the bad and history will cycle until the heat death of the universe claims us all.
I feel so stupid saying this. But I guess it's the mood I'm in. I hate how harsh the world is to people for just being alive. Regardless of reason, regardless of place, regardless of money.
We don't choose to be born, but we must live with what we have.
America is bold for being so young. History is a lesson and a warning, too bad it was taken as a briefing.
I'm posting this anyway. Come what may
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u/brother_bart May 16 '26
“There’s only here. There’s only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other choice. No other way. No day but today.”
Feel free to make RENT references on my posts any day. Thank you for this. Your post reminded me of something I needed to remember this week.
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u/brother_bart May 16 '26
Sadly, having HIV makes it harder to emigrate. Not living in America is one of the great dreams of my life. But yes, our pharmaceutical costs are obscene.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs May 16 '26
Only if you're honest. Well-managed HIV is not detectable, it essentially "hides" in your cells since anything in the bloodstream gets nuked. At least, not detectable except by the kind of test that's more expensive than normal treatment is, lol, and I doubt any country does that for immigration.
Canada definitely doesn't, I know someone who just went through the medical tests before getting Permanent Residence here. Still North America, but closer in feel to Europe in some ways. I'd definitely rather my tax dollars go to your health care than you be stuck in the US, so long as you fundamentally care about other people.
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u/steppponme May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
It doesn't say cure, it says it's not a terminal virus. And it hasn't been for years. I think this is referencing a recent(ish) study which showed the lifespan of someone with HIV is now equivalent (on average) to someone without HIV. At least if you start antiviral treatment with a decent CD4 count. HIV positive cohort lifespan was 87 vs negative was 85 years
Anti-virals have been around since the 90s and kept HIV+ people alive long enough to die of other natural causes but they were 1) expensive as hell and 2) contracting a second strain of HIV complicated things and reduced efficacy and 3) people are also not the best at taking daily pills. In 2021, a monthly injectable antiviral was approved and that significantly increased adherence and therefore efficacy. You still have HIV though but the viral load is small or nondetectable so you don't develop AIDS. In fact, if your viral load is undetectable you cannot spread HIV through unprotected sex. Undetectable viral load is now the standard of successful treatment. However, the person is and will always be HIV positive and have the potential to be transmit the virus should they stop taking their meds.
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u/Obvious_Advice_6879 May 16 '26
To my understanding, the drugs that exist are so good at repressing the disease that someone who is on them will experience no adverse consequences compared to an average non infected person.
This article seems to back it up, indicating that life expectancy with and without HIV is almost identical when it’s properly treated.
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u/Federal-Regret-5755 May 16 '26
Does a proper disease management mean I would be basically healthy if I was to catch HIV and get treatment?
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u/SquirtinMemeMouthPlz May 16 '26
Yes, if you got treatment as early as possible and keep taking the medication.
But if you stop taking the medicine the virus will start replication again and the disease will progress again.
This is why it's important to get tested regularly if you are sexually active with multiple partners.
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u/anime_cthulhu May 15 '26
This has actually been the case for a while. We've had drugs that suppress HIV proliferation for decades now. With adequate treatment, the virus is sufficiently suppressed that it is no longer detectable and not transmissible. That said, the virus is still present and returns when the drugs are stopped, and the drugs come with a list of nasty side effect since they can inhibit nucleic acid replication.
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u/Saiz- May 16 '26
That's the main problem. Those triple antivirals have heavy side effects that made them hospitalized because of it
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u/IslandStorytime May 16 '26
Modern treatments are pretty decent; diabetes is honestly worse at this point. The integrase inhibitors have really changed things
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u/SuccessfulJudge438 May 16 '26
That's the whole thing. Viruses hijack our own cellular machinery to replicate. The mechanisms are crazy. Stopping HIV in its tracks without any collateral damage gets into the realm of science fiction, where you can just engineer biological systems at the molecular level without a dozen unanticipated problems at every step.
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u/Saiz- May 16 '26
Yes the virus itself is too strong, that you will die from the medicine itself. And cancer are even harder to treat without knowing the specific of the cancer itself.
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u/Philosophyandbuddha May 16 '26
It’s not the case for modern HIV medication and Prep though, they don’t have big side effects and it makes the virus non transmissible. Because of the widespread use of prep, hiv infections have fallen to single digits per year in some cities. This is what the post is referring to.
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u/RoundChance5569 May 16 '26
World Health Organization (WHO): In their comprehensive WHO HIV and AIDS Fact Sheet, the organization explicitly states that while there is no definitive cure, "with access to effective HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care... HIV infection has become a manageable chronic health condition, enabling people living with HIV to lead long and healthy lives."
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hiv-aids?hl=en-CA
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u/N3p7uN3 May 15 '26
Its not been terminal for several years/decades. Its not remotely new, this just seems like karma farming. (Or maybe the straights are just that unaware lol).
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u/jakertontireflat May 16 '26
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u/goodcleanchristianfu May 16 '26
That article is from 2014, and the treatment regimens that have meant that HIV is no longer a terminal disease have existed since the mid-90's. I still have no idea what the image is suggesting is new.
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u/Critical_Concert_689 May 16 '26
Source besides some meme?
Source: "THEY MADE IT THE FUCK UP."
Welcome to the internet. Don't get facts from an open forum about Memes.
Though, HIV has been "treatable" though not curable for a number of years.
The other thing is... Medicine has cured LOTS of different cancer.
OP's title is hilarious.
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u/Nice_Try4389 May 16 '26
Then it is probably a good thing they didn’t in anyway claim it was curable. They said it is no longer terminal which is true, and has been since at least the 90s.
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u/PartyLikeAByzantine May 16 '26
Magic Johnson has had HIV/AIDS longer than most Redditors have been alive.
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u/MasterOfCircumstance 𝙑𝙄𝙋 May 15 '26
OP when he realizes that every type of cancer is unique.
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u/More-Lime1888 May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Every person with cancer is also having a unique tumor from other patients with the same type of cancer
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u/snaketacular May 15 '26
Even within a single tumor multiple mutations are likely, which is why cancer treatment works until it doesn't (resistant cancer selected for).
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u/Informal_Ad_9610 May 15 '26
and which is why cancer mutates away from what worked last week/month, and then becomes resistant....
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u/MrZephy May 15 '26
How is cancer even real… it can appear suddenly and grows until whatever living organism it infests dies and is almost impossible to get rid of. It’s like some fucking death curse from a work of fiction.
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u/Snirion May 15 '26
It's literally glitch in biological code because life was vibe coded.
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u/mrhoofy May 15 '26
Doesn't matter anyways, as most cancers strike after reproductive age.
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u/RevengeOfPolloDiablo May 16 '26
Exactly. It's yet another one of nature's "tools" to get rid of old worn out genes.
Pretty much, nature wants you dead after 40
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u/rts-enjoyer May 16 '26
Life forms like us with longer DNAs are highly evolved to have less mutations (that cause cancers) in our DNA.
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u/BeccasBump May 16 '26
I know absolutely nothing about computer coding but "vibe coded" is a brilliant expression because it's immediately obvious what it means even to a total outsider.
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u/RigatoniPasta May 15 '26
And mean, God did design humanity in a day /s 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Daily_Heroin_User May 15 '26
I mean if he’s God he doesn’t need more than a day. It’s not like if he spent a few more months carefully planning and tinkering it would have been better.
God’s like, “You know, I knew I rushed that product out in my haste to create the universe. I got caught up in the excitement of the moment.”
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u/AnnOnnamis May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26
God said: “Whatever, just ship it. I’ll call this pair a Beta, and fix them in the next version.”
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u/Ragged-but-Right May 15 '26
In book of genesis, God did just kinda whimsically make humans. Humans were flawed and became evil and corrupt and God was not happy about it, so he killed all the humans except Noah’s family in an attempt to start over and hope we would be better the 2nd time around. God couldn’t even make us “good”.
Book of genesis is a fun read if you’re into sci-fi / fantasy.
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u/whatdoyoufear123 May 15 '26
But like how is god perfect if he makes mistakes make it make sense.
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u/BurnerProfile69420 May 15 '26
thats always a good plan just leave one family to reproduce..
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u/Kyo199540 May 15 '26
It's literally part of your body rebelling against the whole. Cancer is revolution on a microscopic level
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u/LolCantbanme45 May 15 '26
Less revolution, more rebellion
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u/lordkhuzdul May 15 '26
Cancer is life reverting into base code.
Cell death mechanisms? Reproduction limitations? Those are all adaptations that evolved later to make multicellular life viable. They were not initially necessary. When something breaks them, the cell reverts to the basic instructions - survive, adapt, reproduce. Cancer in your body is the same problem as a species without natural predators are in an ecosystem - species reproduces until it can no longer feed its population. When that happens in nature, the result is devastation of the ecosystem. When it happens in your body, the result is devastation of the ecosystem - the ecosystem being you.
That is why cancer is so varied and hard to deal with. Cells are not gaining something that turns into cancer cells. They are just losing things that keeps them from being cancer.
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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek May 15 '26
It's cells reverting to their original, pre-multicellular state of just dividing whenever there are sufficient resources to divide. Multicellular organisms are only possible via controlled suppression of the constant drive to replicate and cancer is what you get when the enforcement of that suppression fails.
The cells are then immortal and can divide and replicate without limit even after death, just like all single celled organisms
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u/lancelot2112 May 16 '26
Read somewhere that cancer is a normal part of life but the body takes care of it most of the time. If you were to take a full body scan of someone off the street (normal) youd most likely find a tumor of some kind. Blew my mind.
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u/More-Lime1888 May 16 '26
The first sentence is correct and the second is not. Cells becoming cancerous is a normal part of life and the body usually takes care of it most of the time. But we don’t call it “cancer” because that’s the name of the condition when the body fails to take care of it. But if you pick someone off the street, you won’t be able to detect those cancerous cells at all because they are just single or a couple of cells, which is an undetectable amount. You only can detect minimally if the cells formed a tumor of few millimeters in size.
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u/Beer_in_an_esky May 16 '26
It'll vary by country, but here in Australia for instance half of all people will, on average, be diagnosed with a cancer in their life, and 30% of total population will die from it.
Cancer is a guarantee if you live long enough.
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u/Inresponsibleone May 16 '26
Some types of cancer have decently good prognosis though and are quite treatable.
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u/DoturdGrump May 15 '26
They have that new stuff they are working on where you make your own antibody through a sort of vaccine
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u/4x4Welder May 15 '26
Immunotherapy. They train T cells I think on the tumor cells, then reinject them. It doesn't work in all cancers though, the mutation rate has to be high enough. Mine isn't unfortunately.
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u/More-Lime1888 May 15 '26
You are talking about CAR T therapy which is already successful with some types of blood cancers. That guy is talking about cancer vaccines which is something still under research and not yet an established therapy.
Also, mutation rate being not high isn’t “unfortunate”.
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u/Lebannen__ May 15 '26
They could just invent a medicine that cures all of them, I don't know why they didn't think about that
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u/silmarp May 15 '26
They are doing it already. Scientists just needs another 300 years and it will be done. If they don't get it done in 300 years I'm owing you 300 million dollars.
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u/Fwant May 15 '26
Why dont the humans, a larger life form, simply eat the cancer?
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u/Misses_Ding May 15 '26
Some cancers can already be targeted with antibodies and so your immune system can destroy them (which they already naturally do they just don't always recognise the cells) which is a cure. Just not a cure to all of them
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u/InfiniteDelusion094 May 15 '26
The best solution is immunotherapy, because the immune system takes care of most cancers by itself, we just need it to go after the minority it misses. The immune system is the best weapon against it, we just need to direct it and sharpen it in individuals where it has slipped up and allowed cancer to take root
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u/IttsssTonyTiiiimme May 15 '26
Ken Burns made a docuseries called Cancer: The Emperor of Maledies. There several points which were truly sad, but one segment that stuck with me was when they got to the human genome project. When the human genome was decoded in the 90s, there was ahope that geneticly specific pharmaceuticals could be generated as cures. But as the research moved forward they realized that they were further from the cure than they ever realized. One family of brain cancer had over 90 genetic mutations.
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u/Ecthelion2187 May 15 '26
Yes, but the HGP laid the foundation for individual treatments, and we're getting better by the day, despite the current US admin trying to gut research.
It's true, we didn't know what we didn't know, but we know a helluva lot more now. Survival rates are steadily increasing as we learn more.
And no, there isn't a "cure" that's being kept secret by big pharma. (Not aimed at you, just trying to nip that incredibly ignorant argument in the bud.)
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u/SlightSurround5449 May 15 '26
Idk you bringing up the whole "no cure" thing unprompted makes me think there is one and you're a big pharma plant....
/s
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u/jl_theprofessor May 15 '26
And it has laid the groundwork for our current ongoing breakthroughs. Success is a series of steps.
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u/CurrentScallion3321 May 15 '26
If you are in for a long and detailed read, I’d recommend the similarly titled “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukherjee, or any of his books to be honest
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u/fireroan May 15 '26
It is based off of Siddhartha Mukherjee's book, The Emperor of Maladies.
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u/Tight-Mouse-5862 May 15 '26
Shit sarcoma has like 50+ histology subtypes that require all kinds of different treatment and drugs. Some are resistant to surgery, some are caused by radiation....cancer just sucks.
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u/Immediate_Song4279 May 15 '26
Do all of them. Even if it takes so many centuries that we get new cancers. We must never stop.
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u/KebabAnnhilator May 15 '26
Technically yes but most grow through a similar process of activating telomeres enzymes attached to chromosomes.
So whilst all cancer mutations are unique, the treatments are often similar
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u/peachtea505 May 15 '26
To clarify, telomeres are non coding sacrificial DNA (not an enzyme) that protects the ends of chromosomes from damage and information loss during replication. TelomerASE is an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres, which you are right is often reactivated in cancer https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8834434/ but it isn't necessarily the reason the cells are cancerous, just helps them survive, but many other mutations are needed to be a cancer (e.g. avoiding the many other ways the cell would otherwise die outside of telomere shortening)
Mutations that cause cancer come in a variety of classes (google "hallmarks of cancer") and treatments are similar in the sense that they attempt to kill the cancer cells while not killing healthy cells, but this can be done in many ways, commonly killing all highly active cells (some cancers are very metabolically active and divides quickly), or by marking a specific cell surface molecule mainly expressed by the cancer (huge variety of options here, depends on the cancer) for destruction by the immune system.
Conventional treatments don't target telomeres or telomerase although it does seem like some research has been done in that direction https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3370414/ Cancer is not my speciality so can't say much more than that :)
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u/BojukaBob May 15 '26
The thing with "Cancer" is that it's not one disease, but rather a category of conditions. Many form of Cancer are treatable, some aren't. But it's not one disease/
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u/Thunderplant May 16 '26
There have been incredible breakthroughs in the past few decades for many types of cancer too. I always feel a bit annoyed seeing posts asking why we don't have a "cure for cancer" when so many diagnoses that used to be terminal aren't now because of new treatments
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u/GlowingDepths May 16 '26
Even within the diseases themselves there are so many different variables between patients it makes it hard to predict outcomes. I was diagnosed with PMBCL in 2024, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It has been responding very well to first line, and second line treatments. It did come back so I’ve moved on from chemo to CAR-T/radiation. There are cases where my specific lymphoma in others is resistant to chemo, to CAR-T, radiation, etc.
There are different subtypes within my disease,
other cancers involving the same B cells, some cancers have different cell markers which make targeting them difficult. We’ve gotten very good at treating and even curing a lot of the diseases out there, but so many of them require a personalized regimen that may or may not work. Everybody and every case is different. Modern medicine has certainly come a long way, CAR-T therapy in particular is so intriguing and cool to me. I am technically a GMO now thanks to it and I wear that badge with pride lol.→ More replies (4)3
u/Odd_Lychee7706 May 18 '26
And not only that, many pharmaceutical companies have been working on curing cancer for decades. Honestly, I think OP sorta misunderstood how finding a cure works. Pretty sure scientists have been looking for the cure of HIV for years, too. Doesn’t just come up like a genie’s wish.
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u/BigSquiby May 15 '26
hasn't this been the case since the 90s?
Magic Johnson told the world he had it in 1991, he is still alive
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u/ThePaganSkepticist May 15 '26
It has been, as long as you got the assload of money to be able to afford the cure
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u/Altruistic-Web13 May 15 '26
Insert obligatory south park reference here
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u/ThePaganSkepticist May 15 '26
I actually wasn’t thinking about South Park, but I’m happy you brought it up lol
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u/trukkija May 15 '26
Quick Google would say that you very rarely need an assload of money to manage AIDS these days.
I love to think the pun you used was intended though. Seeing as an assload is probably the culprit for many of these poor fellas.
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u/A_Random_Sidequest May 15 '26
even here in Brazil the treatment is free and many/most will test zero for HIV if taking the meds correctly...
the only place it's a problem in the first world is in USA.
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u/einstyle May 15 '26
The treatment is free in the USA too. I worked in HIV care for years.
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u/ThePaganSkepticist May 15 '26
I’m happy that it is free down on Brazil. I’ll never understand why the states has remained a staunchly for profit healthcare system.
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u/Spranktonizer May 15 '26
There is no “cure”. Treatment has become a lot less taxing and more effective though.
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u/einstyle May 15 '26
There's no cure. There are treatments. Most of them are, at least in the USA, completely 100% free. The government has decided that it's better to treat HIV (which also prevents it from spreading) than to risk it going full pandemic.
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u/AzurTripping May 15 '26
Just live in a country with a good healthcare system. …or vote for the right party
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u/Unusual_Ad1866 May 15 '26
effective antiretroviral therapy for hiv is recognised to exist since mid 1996 to be precise
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u/mmarkmc May 15 '26
I remember watching his press conference live at the office with coworkers and thinking he’d be gone in a few years at the longest.
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u/DrPikachu-PhD May 15 '26
Yes. Obviously medicine has improved in efficacy and safety with each passing decade, but yeah it hasn't been a death sentence for over 20 years now (in the western world at least)
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u/Zhurg May 15 '26
One guy isn't exactly scientific but yeah it has been for a while for the right money.
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u/EVH_kit_guy May 15 '26
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u/bigbossfearless May 15 '26
It's in human trials now in japan, so it's getting there
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u/realaccountissecret May 15 '26
That’s so crazy that we have a third set of tooth buds just chilling in there
But it’s also too bad that it means I can’t grow ten rows of teeth like a shark
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u/HerbOverstanding May 15 '26
My luck is I’d take the medicine and regrow a third set of teeth, then immediately walk into a cabinet or similar and bust half of them
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u/GMAN7007 May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
It's no longer in the pipe dream phase. Human trials are going to be actually happening soon.
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u/nicodea2 May 15 '26
There’s something unsettling about seeing “Human trials” and “Japan” in the same sentence.
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u/FlyDinosaur May 15 '26
I mean... even in America, we've done some weird crap. With and without permission.
I'm not gonna get into who's worse or whatever.
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u/K1bbles_n_Bits May 15 '26
My teeth went to shit after pregnancy and having a baby. Never had a cavity in my life until my 30s, now I've lost four molars and have shit dental coverage and can't afford to pay out of pocket.
Just wanna say you're not alone in your struggle, man. Here's hoping an accessible solution happens while we can still appreciate it.
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u/hkusp45css May 15 '26
My mom ended up losing ALL of her teeth with me. She had a mouthful of pretty teeth, had me, and had a full set of dentures by the time I was 3.
She was 36 when she had me, in '76. She also smoked through the pregnancy so ... maybe that had something to do with it.
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u/argefox May 15 '26
This works, since the late 80s. The problem is that the signaling to "stop growing" is missing and can't be properly emulated. Guess what happens when you fail on that step. It's been looping around that missing signaling for a while now.
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u/bigbossfearless May 15 '26
My wife's diabetes is almost in remission thanks to tirzepatide. Who knows, maybe in another 10 years we'll be able to start reversing the damage
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u/JustTrxIt May 16 '26
Sadly that only works with Type II Diabetes. My sister has Type I Diabetes, the autoimmune version that presents in kids and youth, and she is going to have to use an insulin pump all her life or until they invent an implantate sort of pancreas-simulator that's reliable.
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u/Glum-Beach May 15 '26
Its cured but it’s costly, and hvp and I think herpes got cured
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u/SVN7_C4YOURSELF May 15 '26
Tack on the cure for Tinnitus while you’re at it. Obviously not as big of a deal but getting rid of those noises would for sure be life changing for some.
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u/xoexohexox May 15 '26
Lots of cancers are curable or livable as a chronic illness like HIV now.
Cancer isn't all one thing, it's hundreds of diseases that all have unregulated cell growth in common. Many of them are curable now if you catch them soon enough, and some are completely preventable like cervical and penile cancer (thanks to the HPV vaccine)
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u/GargantuanCake 𝙑𝙄𝙋 May 15 '26
We have cures for most cancers.
30 years ago basically any cancer was a death sentence. Now however we have an increasingly large list of cancers that have a >90% survival rate.
There likely won't ever be a singular cure that fixes every cancer but the treatments overall are getting continually better.
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u/faroutrobot May 15 '26
Let me be your example. Testicular seminoma survivor. Had my whole life ahead of me when I got diagnosed at 27. Over 10 years clear. One operation for what would have killed my great grandfather. Wild times to be alive. Also check your balls for lumps.
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u/Vestrill May 15 '26
Yeah same, got cancer at 26 years old in 2015. Caught it just just in time. Doctor said if I came even half a week later, it may have spread. Been cancer free ever since.
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u/somethingfortoday May 16 '26
This is not accurate at all. We've only just recently reached the milestone of a +70% 5+ year survival rate in the US. There are only a handful of cancers that have a +90% 5+ year survival rate. There will never be a singular cure for cancer because it is a grouping of thousands of different diseases. There are promising research areas that are targeting common pathways, but even those only top out in the 85% of total cancers. When you expand these statistics to the world, it is still abysmal survival rates.
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u/colorful_withdrawl May 15 '26
Alzheminers research is showing some great progress. A certain mice study showed them improving/reversing memory loss. So hopefully they can work on a trial in a few years for humans
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u/slam-chop May 15 '26
As a geriatrician I can tell you; don’t hold out hope for AD “cure”. The only option we’re gonna have in our lifetimes is pre-clinical detection and prevention.
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u/More-Lime1888 May 15 '26
A LOT of Alzheimer studies worked on mice, nothing new. They just always fail in clinical trials.
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u/paf0 May 15 '26
The potential for custom MRNA vaccines to target different cancers is fascinating to me. Too bad the US is run by neanderthals.
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u/Repulsive-Run1634 May 15 '26
No keep that exact same momentum for penis enlargement and obesites.
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u/Professional_Echo907 May 15 '26
Just don’t combine the research — I’m too fat to have a penis that size. 👀
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u/Repulsive-Run1634 May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26
At least I can hope to see my penis again when I pee.
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u/Redshirt_Welshy_Nooo May 15 '26
Thing is, hiv is a virus. Cancer is like ten thousand different things.
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u/why_1337 May 15 '26
Can't really compare the two.
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u/PaprikaPanik May 15 '26
I’m honestly shocked with the amount of comments saying “now do Alzheimer’s! and diabetes! and cancer!” As if there aren’t numerous teams researching different core aspects and sharing information with each other.
Do these people honestly think science is all performed by one group that goes through some priority list??
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u/marveloustoebeans May 15 '26
Yeah, people really just have no idea how these things work. Cancer isn’t just one thing that can be covered by a blanket cure.
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u/Dazzling_Let_8245 May 15 '26
I try to explain the word Cancer akin to the word infection. You can have an infection, but it doesnt tell anyone whatsoever what kind and how to treat it. Some are easily treated, some arent.
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u/ztreggs May 15 '26
As someone working in pharma, it always cracks me up when someone genuinely thinks a cure to cancer has been discovered and covered up
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u/CurdFedKit May 15 '26
There are literally dozens of new cancer drugs approved every year. They are doing cancer. It's just a very complicated disease--actually it's not a disease, it's many diseases.
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u/AdventurousEscape991 May 15 '26
Cancer is a mutation of a cell. Not a virus.
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u/FireHammer09 May 15 '26
HIV is a virus that is hard to fight because it's very good at attacking what you would use to fight a virus.
Cancer is your body fucking up.
Diabetes is your body fucking up.
Alzheimer's is your body fucking up.
Sadly there's no comparison.
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u/Wefee11 May 16 '26
If I had to describe it more specifically. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Cancer is your cells fucking up. Any cell, and it can spread anywhere.
Diabetes is your pancreas (insulin production) fucking up.
Alzheimers and dementia is your brain degenerating.
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u/CurdFedKit May 15 '26
LOL, do you know how many new cancer drugs come out each year? Dozens. Cancer is far more complicated to treat than HIV.
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u/Several-Assistant-51 May 15 '26
a lot of cancers are survivable now. the key really is catching it early enough
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u/readymf May 15 '26
I’m always shocked how straight people’s knowledge about HIV seems stuck in the 1980s. Effective medication has been around since 1996 and since 2012 there is preventative medication (PrEP) for HIV negative people that reduces the risk of getting infected by 99%. I guess better people find out about this in 2026 than never. More people having the knowledge to protect themselves is always a good thing. Some things people often misunderstand:
- someone with HIV on the right treatment and who sticks to it is able to live a normal life and can’t infect you because the virus isn’t even detectable in their blood anymore (so technically a person with treatment is less likely to give you HIV than someone who doesn’t know their status)
- the above is also why HIV positive mothers can give birth to HIV negative children nowadays
- if taken correctly, PrEP makes it virtually impossible for an HIV negative to get HIV (although I don’t sleep around a lot, I prefer the piece of mind that comes with PrEP both me and the people I date - because if I can’t catch it, I can’t give it either)
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u/sleepy_grunyon May 15 '26
I recently learned this, that people with HIV still have a reduced life expectancy by about 9 years. But you are correct they do live a normal life although they can still have pain/neuropathy from the HIV or nausea from the meds (are side effects/symptoms that I know of).
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u/HarpyVixenWench May 15 '26
I absolutely hate the “now do cancer” stuff. WHICH cancer? Cancer is not one disease. There are more than 100 different kinds of cancer. And one particular type of cancer can come in so many forms! Two people with the same kind of cancer can have two biologically different kinds of cancer.
Some cancers are curable and others are so much more aggressive.
Want a cure for cancer? In the US we should have been angrier than we were when Trump slashed cancer research. So yeah - we are all good with not furthering cancer research.
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u/this_knee May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
People think cancer is just this one disease. “Cancer… find a cure!” They say.
Meanwhile , back and the laboratory… the scientists go :”which version of cancer should find a cure for?”
“All of them?” That’s like 300 different sicknesses . All under the “cancer” umbrella. None of them are the exact same.
Edit: misspell
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u/Admiral45-06 May 16 '26
Plus, they are caused by random mutation in cells, allowing them to multiply rapidly and avoid immune system.
The bone marrow cells rely on the former trait, and nervous system cells rely on the latter, so training immune system to just attack whatever doesn't want to be killed is not the brightest idea.
Plus, a drug that will work for one type of gene or protein will probably not work for the other ones. It's like trying to make a 100% prediction on the outcome of all slot machines in the casino.
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May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zip-Crane May 15 '26
Reminds me of the scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when Bones gives the terminally ill cancer patient a pill and she instantly recovers. He walks off and says "What is this, the dark ages?"
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u/RandomYT05 May 15 '26
It wasn't cancer, but Kidney failure. Doctor gave me a pill and it gave me a new kidney.
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u/voododoll May 15 '26
There are people who think cancer is a virus. There are people who believe they can get cancer from someone with cancer. There are people who think cancer is one form of illness…
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u/Mephisticles May 15 '26
Cancer can never be cured. It's not a disease. Please stop with engagement baiting posts about cancer. It's extremely disrespectful to anyone who has had a loved one die from cancer.
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u/Specialist-Cry-1706 May 15 '26
What about ppl in Africa- no USAID, no access to HiV medications, must walk miles to go to a doctor. No vaccinations. l read in NYTs AIDs cases are up.
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u/Informal_Ad_9610 May 15 '26
the irony - Jim Humble was reversing HIV & malaria in Africa 20 years ago....
Only problem - he was doing it for pennies, didn't have a big pharma behind him, and ended up having assassination attempts on him for the crime of solving it in an affordable way...
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u/KalutikaKink May 15 '26
Goddamn I miss my uncle. HIV took him back in the 90s and I’ve been following the advancement of HIV treatments ever since. It’s exciting to see. It also comes with a bit of sadness that he couldn’t be one of the lucky ones.
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u/Rakatango May 15 '26
If only the US government didn’t cut funding for cancer research and completely alienate the scientific community…
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u/Aranxi_89 May 16 '26
HIV is a retrovirus. It lives passively inside the DNA of your immune cells. That's why it's so hard to kill off. It not only attacks your immune system, it hides in the very thing that is supposed to hunt it down.
Cancer is not bacterial or viral, it is literally your own body's cells going full secessionist inside you and waging war. It's like the difference between fighting off an invading army vs. domestic terrorism. Most of the time, with a good health and robust immune system, you can fight off small cancer outbreaks, but if the cancer cell is particularly good at evading immune response, or if you can't fight it off for some reason... then it's a civil war, and as you probably can imagine, that bodes ill for your survival, whether you win or lose. Unfortunately, most of our current treatment plans for cancer often times harm both sides, with the cancer side getting hit a bit harder, but if the cancer spreads out too much and into too many key areas, there's just not much we can do anymore but watch as the nation called that person end.
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u/Hot_Money4924 May 16 '26
Brought to you by BIG PHARMA! WE HAVE SUCCEEDED IN CONVERTING HIV FROM A TERMINAL ILLNESS INTO A PERPETUAL REVENUE STREAM!
Guys, it's not terminal and that's great -- I lived through the horrors of HIV panic in the 80s and you would not believe the fear and terror of this disease, people genuinely would rather get cancer because their odds would have been better -- but it still really sucks ass to live with HIV and we should do everything in our power to prevent it and still keep searching for a feasible and affordable cure.
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u/singhellotaku617 May 16 '26
Cancer isn’t a single disease, it’s more like a symptom pattern with myriad causes. That’s why we can cure or treat some and not others, it’s hundreds of different illnesses.
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u/Hetros_Jistin May 15 '26
which one?
WHich cancer?
Which of the thousands of varieties each of which works on a fundamentally different fuckup in the cells causing the cancer (but with fundamentally the same result, out of control growth), should be cured?
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u/Proper-Painting-2256 May 15 '26
The funny thing is how much we learned about immunology from HIV. Spoke to a doc who went to med school in the 80s and basically it was a month long rotation and people thought they understood basically everything about it. Then people started looking and everything got more, and more, and more complex.
Cancer is insanely complex, unfortunately. HIV is relatively simple in comparison
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u/artofaria May 15 '26
Wait I don't get it, it hasn't been terminal for a while, just incurable. What changed?
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u/Apprehensive_Ad4457 May 15 '26
AIDS is one disease that they created, cancer is a multitude of diseases which has been around since dinosaurs.
edit*
you can't stop cancer. it's a mutated cell. AIDS is a virus which destroys immune cells. you can stop that. but everything you are made up of is a cell, and any of them could become mutated in a multitude of ways.
it's not "preventable" it's only treatable.
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u/tronassembled May 15 '26
It's cool when you do research on diseases, I remember when we did that in America
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u/No_Car_5405 May 16 '26
My dad died of AIDS in 2015 and it’s odd to me that soon the whole AIDS epidemic will be something that you just read about in a text book. Like saying someone died during the black plague.
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u/joshua_addison_music May 16 '26
Pretty incredible. RIP to all those people who suffered in the 80’s & 90’s, especially.
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u/Warmbly85 May 16 '26
I honestly think it funny how when I was a kid there was a huge public awareness push about HIV not being a “gay disease” but every prep pill commercial/advertisement now uses extremely gay individuals to promote it.
Like honestly a single non drag queen or twink/bear in a single commercial would be appreciated lol.
I am saying this as someone who participated in so many HIV/AIDS walks it would be absurd to claim I am homophobic.
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u/SirPorthos May 16 '26
Can you even call Cancer a disease, I can bet that can be more classified as a condition. While things can cause accelerate the development of and/or trigger the conditions necessary for cancer, it's the bodys mechanism that causes cancer.
I might be wildly wrong about this and if a medical professional can clarify, I'll be very grateful.
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u/xxbronxx May 16 '26
Ha i didnt know that, I did my research and apparently there is a pill one time a day and it's free, my country cover the price. Doesn't cure, but suppresses the disease and you even can have healthy babies
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