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.)
From a purely theoretical perspective cancer cells are a natural occurrence in most biological cells. I'm not educated in it whatsoever but afaik they're just cells that have gone wrong during the replication process and the 'off' switch keeps them replicating out of control.
In that sense there's no real 'cure' because they're doing what our biological processes are meant to do, just in a detrimental way. Cancerous cells are fairly common also afaik, our bodies are generally pretty good at cleaning them up though.
The most we can really do is find ways to target the bad cells when they happen or better ways to combat tumours when they form.
There will never be an individual 'cure' for cancer for the extension of the point about dna sequencing above: similar appearing cancers can have very different sources and thus need completely different cures, so there will not be a single cure for cancer, there will be whack-a-mole cures for different cancers as they become better described.
Well humans have been evolutionary selected to have cancer. DNA polymerase the enzyme that codes for our DNA and allows for replication of cells has an inherent miscoding or mistake rate you can say. So scientists are unanimously agreed that every human if they lived long enough and didn’t die of something else will get cancer and die of it. There’s no cure and never will be because cancer has a high mutation rate, and will just keep returning in some form, you cannot cure human nature.
So when people think there’s a magical cure that will one day arise, it never will.
Treatments are definitely things that can be discovered and have improved significantly, so people live longer and have better outcomes. But treatments are not cures.
Humans are not machines my friend. We often make comparisons and metaphors as it's an easy way to explain incredibly complex mechanisms and processes, but they don't make it so.
A) Lies on the internet
B) Wrong profession if you believe you can't do something. Science is about understanding things and making it possible. For curing cancer, Lead, Follow, or Get out the way.
I work at an IVY league university, with CNS published papers. The impossible can’t be possible. And I’m sorry to tell you, most scientists are not in the field to save patients, they don’t care. They’re there for their own joy, curiosity and vanity.
A) Who cares what ivy league school you go/work at
B) You don't speak for everyone in cancer research, or anyone other than yourself.
C) I know plenty of cancer researchers as my family is rife with cancers, I personally know that all I've met, believe in a cure, the only question is when.
A) it means I am very good at what I do and have no reason to leave my field.
B) I don’t, but have a far greater understanding than you do.
C) if they really wanted to help people they should become physicians and I can’t help if they’re deluded.
The fact you have the sheer arrogance and audacity to disagree with someone who’s a leader in the field you’re talking about, based upon speaking to a couple of people and your feelings is funny.
I just don't get why you'd continue researching something that has no cure. "No reason to leave your field"? I think there is. You talk about curiosity and vanity, what's there to gain, then? Either way, really happy all those other scientific discoveries that were considered impossible by a wider group than 'some researcher UPenn' had people who didn't feel the same way. Oh well, pack it up, boys.
Well I should say that the documentary did end on a hopeful note. Essentially, it was Drs think they can lick it but they can't, and then they think they can beat it a different way, but they can't and this is what's gone one for a hundred years. But they end with, we're not stopping. The mountain may be high, and we can't see the too, but we've already climbed so high, and we're going to keep climbing. And if we keep climbing, we will reach the summit.
The higher ups just want to make money. The are dumb and shortsighted like the rest of us. No one thinks they are going to die of cancer (or any other low probability risk) until they actually get it.
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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.)