Are there diseases that will never be cured?

[lizlizliz]

A co-worker told me she had a conversation with a guy who runs a charity for kids with alopecia and he said to her that there will never be a cure for it. Not, "It's currently incurable," but that there is zero chance of a cure.

I'm aware that it's believed that cancer, etc. will never have a cure because sick people = money, but are there any other diseases that will never actually be cured?

[Jragon]

Cancer is the big one, and not for conspiracy reasons. The simple fact of the matter is that cancer is not an illness, it's a class of illnesses characterized by unbounded cell replication. The actual contributing factor to said replication is incredibly varied, and a treatment that works for one type won't work for another. Since there are many (probably hundreds -- though that's a WAG) different causes for "cancer" there will never be a "cure for cancer" because it's like saying you'll get a unified "cure for death".

This does not, of course, mean that specific cancers can't be cured -- or even that eventually all cancers won't be cured using different methods.

[Mahaloth]

Originally Posted by lizlizliz

I'm aware that it's believed that cancer, etc. will never have a cure because sick people = money, but are there any other diseases that will never actually be cured?

Let's just stop right there. It's believed by whom?

[Lord Mondegreen]

Wikipedia lists over 20 causes of alopecia (including lupus, regardless of what House may think), so maybe that's why the co-worker's contact said it would never be cured - like cancer, it's not a single "thing." I'm not sure why each of those 20+ things can't be cured though.

But as Mahaloth pointed out, is it even generally acknowledged by researchers that anything (including cancer) will never be cured? Certainly Jragon's point about cancer having potentially hundreds of causes makes it a good candidate, but even something with hundreds of causes can be tackled one by one. "Never" is a long time.

[Der Trihs]

"Never" is a very, very, very long time. A billion years from now it's very unlikely that humans will even exist, much less our diseases. And alopecia? Hair loss? I'd expect in my lifetime that to be fixable by if nothing else simply removing the affected skin and replacing it with suitably altered skin (and that's probably more extreme than will be necessary).

[runner pat]

Originally Posted by Mahaloth

Let's just stop right there. It's believed by whom?

Loons.

[lizlizliz]

Originally Posted by Mahaloth

Let's just stop right there. It's believed by whom?

Blogs touting that belief came up when I Googled this question. Some of my more...shall we say "talkative" cousins believe the same.

[Jragon]

Originally Posted by Lord Mondegreen

But as Mahaloth pointed out, is it even generally acknowledged by researchers that anything (including cancer) will never be cured? Certainly Jragon's point about cancer having potentially hundreds of causes makes it a good candidate, but even something with hundreds of causes can be tackled one by one. "Never" is a long time.

My point isn't that it's impossible to find a cure for all cancers, my point is that finding hundreds of cures for hundreds of different cancers is not the same as finding a "cure for cancer" because such a thing will never exist since they're different diseases. I'll admit it's kind of hair-splitting though.

[Smeghead]

OK, leaving aside the cancer thing, which I also find offensively ignorant, let's talk about the actual question. I'm a biology PhD student, by the way, just so you know where I'm coming from here. I can't imagine any way in which we could establish that any disease is definitely incurable. With any disease, we try to learn what the underlying cause(s) is (are). Once that's established, it's usually pretty obvious what some potential cures would be. In the vast majority of cases, most of those cures are far beyond our technical ability, but we can at least speculate and say "if we could just do this, that would solve the problem".

For instance, we know that cystic fibrosis is caused by mutations in the CFTR gene, which codes for a channel protein in the lung epithelial cells. This causes the cilia to be nonfunctional, which in turn causes a buildup of mucus on the lung surfaces. So we can say, "if we could just get a functional CFTR protein expressed in these cells, the patients would be fine". We can't do that, yet, but we can easily say how to cure it.

I can't imagine any disease - I'm certainly not aware of any - where we understand what the cause is, yet are left with "nope. There's no imaginable way to ever fix that. You're screwed."

We don't know what medical technology - or any technology, really - will be able to do in the future. Twenty years ago, lots of techniques that we use routinely today for research were unimaginable. So to say that we will never be able to do something is just silly.

[Machine Elf]

Possibillity or impossibility of a cure is difficult to comment on. As noted, "forever" is an awful long time, and so it seems rather bold to say "X disease will never be cured."

While it is laughable to claim that all cancers will never be cured because sick people = money (indeed, many individuals are cured of their cancer every day, from procedures as simple as excision to exotic treatments that target the specific genetic profile of a patient's tumor), it is correct in many cases to say that the profit motive is the thing that drives the search for a cure. Orphan diseases are conditions that are very rare - so rare that any cure is not likely to earn a lot of money for its creator, and so there is relatively little research into cures, despite the fact that some of these diseases are really horrible. Billions of dollars are poured into developing cures for common maladies like breast cancer or heart disease; considerably less money is given over to fighting, for example, progeria or fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Indeed, in the case of progeria the research that has taken place so far appears to have been driven by the desire to understand the aging process in normal elderly people; if a cure for progeria is found, it will probably be a spin-off of this effort rather than the main goal.

[Si Amigo]

Originally Posted by Smeghead

OK, leaving aside the cancer thing, which I also find offensively ignorant,

Curing Ignorance is taking longer than we thought!

[lizlizliz]

Originally Posted by Smeghead

OK, leaving aside the cancer thing, which I also find offensively ignorant, let's talk about the actual question. I'm a biology PhD student, by the way, just so you know where I'm coming from here. I can't imagine any way in which we could establish that any disease is definitely incurable. With any disease, we try to learn what the underlying cause(s) is (are). Once that's established, it's usually pretty obvious what some potential cures would be. In the vast majority of cases, most of those cures are far beyond our technical ability, but we can at least speculate and say "if we could just do this, that would solve the problem".

For instance, we know that cystic fibrosis is caused by mutations in the CFTR gene, which codes for a channel protein in the lung epithelial cells. This causes the cilia to be nonfunctional, which in turn causes a buildup of mucus on the lung surfaces. So we can say, "if we could just get a functional CFTR protein expressed in these cells, the patients would be fine". We can't do that, yet, but we can easily say how to cure it.

I can't imagine any disease - I'm certainly not aware of any - where we understand what the cause is, yet are left with "nope. There's no imaginable way to ever fix that. You're screwed."

We don't know what medical technology - or any technology, really - will be able to do in the future. Twenty years ago, lots of techniques that we use routinely today for research were unimaginable. So to say that we will never be able to do something is just silly.

So it's not like there are diseases out there where the researcher looked under the microscope, said, "Nope," and that was it. That's what I was aiming for. Thank you!

[snowthx]

Our track record for eradicating disease is not that great - only one human disease (smallpox in 1979) and one animal disease (rinderpest in 2010) have been declared wiped out. It's been over 30 years since we cured anything for humans. With the pace of development of medications and technology, perhaps we could be doing better? No one knows what the future of medicine and technology holds, so maybe there will be more cures in our lifetimes. I have to say, I do suspect the profit motive could be a hinderance to cures - for example, drug companies are thought to be more interested in treatments than cures.

This brings me to a question - is eradicating a communicable disease the same as a cure? Is cancer on the same plane as, say, the flu? What, exactly, is a cure? I mean, is eradicating a disease found in nature the same as developing a drug that eradicates a disease in a person who happens to have it? Would mandatory vaccination programs (e.g. smallpox) "cure" mankind of the flu?

[Machine Elf]

Originally Posted by snowthx

This brings me to a question - is eradicating a communicable disease the same as a cure? Is cancer on the same plane as, say, the flu? What, exactly, is a cure? I mean, is eradicating a disease found in nature the same as developing a drug that eradicates a disease in a person who happens to have it? Would mandatory vaccination programs (e.g. smallpox) "cure" mankind of the flu?

No expert here, but I would define a cure as any intervention that terminates the natural course of an already-in-progress instance of a disease. By that definition, a cure cannot be applied unless an organism already exhibits the disease. Eradication, OTOH, involves preventing new instances of a disease before they even start.

Example: we are working to eradicate polio by administering the vaccine to as many people as possible, which helps prevent new instances of the disease. However, there is no known cure for polio once a person is infected with it.

[bup]

As long as entropy exists, cancer will exist. Most scientists believe there's no way to stop entropy.

[Revtim]

Assuming our civilization continues to exist, and advance technologically, nothing will be incurable. I see no reason why we wouldn't someday be able to create a new fully-human biological flawless body every year and have our brains transplanted into into it. Sure, that won't be for a long long long long time, but it's not never.

Of course, then there's the question about brain diseases. Is there anything a population of nanobots flowing through the brain blood supply couldn't clean up, theoretically? That goes for body diseases too.

[Revtim]

Originally Posted by bup

As long as entropy exists, cancer will exist. Most scientists believe there's no way to stop entropy.

You can stop and even reverse entropy in one place, as long as it increases elsewhere. We wouldn't have computers if that were not so.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Revtim

Assuming our civilization continues to exist, and advance technologically, nothing will be incurable. I see no reason why we wouldn't someday be able to create a new fully-human biological flawless body every year and have our brains transplanted into into it. Sure, that won't be for a long long long long time, but it's not never.

Of course, then there's the question about brain diseases. Is there anything a population of nanobots flowing through the brain blood supply couldn't clean up, theoretically? That goes for body diseases too.

Or go farther and just copy the data in your brain to an android body. Or have nanobots replace your organic brain on-site with synthetic components.

[Sunshine and Smiles]

Prions ("Mad Cow", for one) might be worth a mention here. They behave differently than the bacteria/viruses/fungi we all know and love, and all cases so far are untreatable and terminal.

[WhyNot]

Originally Posted by bup

As long as entropy exists, cancer will exist. Most scientists believe there's no way to stop entropy.

I'm not sure what entropy has to do with cancer. If anything, isn't cancer (uncontrolled cell growth) sort of the opposite of entropy? The problem is cells that don't stop growing and dividing...

[Szlater]

Originally Posted by WhyNot

I'm not sure what entropy has to do with cancer. If anything, isn't cancer (uncontrolled cell growth) sort of the opposite of entropy? The problem is cells that don't stop growing and dividing...

The genetic changes that trigger cancer within cells could be described as an increase in the cell's entropy, I believe.

[WhyNot]

Originally Posted by Szlater

The genetic changes that trigger cancer within cells could be described as an increase in the cell's entropy, I believe.

Huh. I fully admit I do not entirely grok the concept of entropy, so maybe it's me. I thought entropy about losing energy, homogenization, return to "baseline", eventually death...all the things cancers tend not to do (although of course they eventually draw away so much energy from their host that the host dies.)


But back to the OP: unless we're given a very generous definition of "cure", I think it's fair to say that some - not all, but some - cases of infertility may never be curable. We can and do know a whole lot about how to encourage the steps of meiosis, ovulation/sperm production, fertilization, implantation and all the rest...but we still can't create life. I don't believe we'll ever be able to in all cases. Assemble all the DNA you like, bathe it in all the nutrients and hormones...it's still going to fail sometimes. I think, if we ever do learn how to fix that, we'll be gods. Syngergy is where medicine gives way to philosophy.

[etv78]

I wouldn't call infertility a "disease". Also, what's "entrophy"?

[pravnik]

Originally Posted by etv78

Also, what's "entrophy"?

A sex partner who's really, really hot and makes all your friends really jealous, but who acts really chaotic, unhinged and crazy, as in the phrases "entrophy girlfriend" or "entrophy wife."

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by WhyNot

Huh. I fully admit I do not entirely grok the concept of entropy, so maybe it's me. I thought entropy about losing energy, homogenization, return to "baseline", eventually death...all the things cancers tend not to do (although of course they eventually draw away so much energy from their host

The thing is that a cancer isn't a parasite growing on a host. It manifests as an uncintrollable growth but what it really is is the symptom of a series of malfunctions.

You might think of a human genome as a very complex computer program. Now what if over time there were random changes to tiny parts of the source code. One small change might not have an effect that's noticeable. Maybe two small changes would result in a weird glitch that manifests as the font on one part of the program appearing too large. After many such changes, the program just stops working.

That's cancer. It's the fact that over time there will be errors in copying code (DNA) resulting in spots where the symptom is uncontrolled growth.

[Szlater]

Originally Posted by WhyNot

Assemble all the DNA you like, bathe it in all the nutrients and hormones...it's still going to fail sometimes. I think, if we ever do learn how to fix that, we'll be gods. Syngergy is where medicine gives way to philosophy.

Tell that to Craig Venter. He's pretty close to doing exactly that, albeit with bacteria. He has already synthesised a bacterial genome and implanted it in a cell.

[Jackmannii]

I think all diseases can potentially be cured, even the wear-and-tear/degenerative ones through genetic manipulation and ingenious part replacement. I fear however that immortality will likely not be achievable in my lifetime.

Originally Posted by lizlizliz

I'm aware that it's believed that cancer, etc. will never have a cure because sick people = money, but are there any other diseases that will never actually be cured?

Originally Posted by Mahaloth

Let's just stop right there. It's believed by whom?

It's part of the Great Altie Credo: They don't want to cure cancer because The Cancer Business is so lucrative.

Naturally, They never get cancer, nor do Their friends and loved ones - or else They go to Secret Clinics to get cured using all the safe, 100% natural effective cures They deny to the rest of us.

[Szlater]

Originally Posted by Jackmannii

I think all diseases can potentially be cured, even the wear-and-tear/degenerative ones through genetic manipulation and ingenious part replacement. I fear however that immortality will likely not be achievable in my lifetime.

Even if all diseases could be completely cured, some diseases cause damage that would be extremely difficult or impossible to repair (brain damage is the one that comes to mind). I don't think I would want to live an extended time if it meant a very low quality of life.

As for immortality. If we had access to clones, could we simply switch organs out and extend our lives considerably that way? I realise that the brain and nervous system would present a problem, so degeneration of those won't be repairable through cloning, unless we find a way to do total body replacements.

[aceplace57]

Well, Jerry Lewis has raised untold billions to research Muscular Dystrophy. I don't see much chance of a cure anytime in the next century. Fifty years of research hasn't made a dent in it yet. They found the DNA marker and thats about it.

Cancer?? Maybe someday they can prevent it. But once those cancer cells invade the body then your screwed. The damage is done. If they can't cut it out then I can't see some pill magically making it disappear.

[Szlater]

Originally Posted by aceplace57

Well, Jerry Lewis has raised untold millions and millions researching Muscular Dystrophy. I don't see much chance of a cure anytime in the next century. Fifty years of research hasn't made a dent in it yet.

Cancer?? Maybe someday they can prevent it. But once those cancer cells invade the body then your screwed. The damage is done. If they can't cut it out then I can't see some pill magically making it disappear.

I'm fairly certain the the quality and length of life for persons with MD has improved over the past fifty years.

Medical research isn't all about cures, a lot of it is just improving QoL.

[Chronos]

And at some point, if you can get the quality and length of life of a patient up to the same as the general population, what's the practical difference between that and a true cure, anyway?

[aceplace57]

I've contributed to MDA for years because they offer many services to the kids. Crutches, wheelchairs etc.

I appreciate their research efforts but would be surprised if any cure is found. There could be secondary benefits to the research. What they learn might help with other diseases.

I was adressing the OP's question about incurable disease. There are some diseases that will take centuries of research. Medicine is still a new field. We were using leeches and bleeding people two hundred years ago. Five hundred years from now they'll look back at our medicine and shake their heads.

[Revtim]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Or go farther and just copy the data in your brain to an android body.

That would make a healthy copy of me, but I'd still be dying or dead.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Revtim

That would make a healthy copy of me, but I'd still be dying or dead.

If you define 'life' as 'continuity of consciousness', I've died ... oh, about three times now, and that's if you conclude consciousness continues through sleep.

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by Derleth

If you define 'life' as 'continuity of consciousness', I've died ... oh, about three times now, and that's if you conclude consciousness continues through sleep.

Yes, that is indeed a problem. I do not know if continuity of consciousness continues through sleep or deep anaesthesia. If it does not, then there is indeed no difference between awaking from deep anaesthesia and being cloned into another body. But I would not consider either to be the same being.

[Machine Elf]

Originally Posted by bup

As long as entropy exists, cancer will exist. Most scientists believe there's no way to stop entropy.

Hewing to the distinctions I defined upthread, I will agree that we may not ever eradicate cancer, i.e. cancer will continue to appear in new patients - but there's no reason to believe we won't develop a cure for any specific kind or instance of cancer.

[Revtim]

never mind

[Hari Seldon]

This is well into IMHO territory, so here is my prediction: We will eventually develop nanomachines that are really super immune cells and can find and cure anything. Or at least anything we can program them for. Go root out the last HIV virus or the last malignant metastatic cancer cell. Even alopecia which is apparently caused by an over-exhuberant immune system (and will not be cured by a skin transplant). Actually, there seem to be many auto-immune diseases. As several have said, never is a long time. But anything we understand the molecular basis for cannot be said to be permanently uncurable.

[Michael63129]

Everybody is talking about curing cancer by eradicating it so nobody ever gets cancer again, but what about cures that get rid of cancer after it has developed that don't involve surgery, toxic chemicals or radiation? In other words, something that only targets cancer cells (like antibiotics that only target bacteria-specific structures like cell walls); for example, because their DNA isn't the same as normal cells (obviously, it would have to be able to work on anybody, ignoring the differences in normal human DNA, like nanobots programmed to ignore normal cells).

ETA: I just noticed Hari Seldon's comment which says pretty much the same thing - don't attempt to eradicate the disease, just make it easy and safe to cure.

[Buck Godot]

Originally Posted by aceplace57

Cancer?? Maybe someday they can prevent it. But once those cancer cells invade the body then your screwed. The damage is done. If they can't cut it out then I can't see some pill magically making it disappear.

Actually, certain types of cancer can be cured. Early stage Breast cancer and Hodkins lymphoma for example both have cure rates in the 90% range. Others are much more difficult.

As far as there being a magic pill that will make it disappear, with new understandings of the molecular basis of cancer, we are looking into ways to target specific genetic pathways that led to the unrestrained proliferation and immortality of cancer cells, without affecting normal cells.

These of course will have to developed on a disease by disease basis, and even then the treatment might work for certain subtypes of a specific cancer and not others.

I wouldn't rule out cures for any disease short of "death plus major tissue degeration".

[Tapioca Dextrin]

Getting away from the cancer thing, Ebola would be candidate for incurable. It's too rare to warrant research money and too deadly for any sane person to work with.

[snowthx]

Guinea Worm (warning - cringe-worthy reading) is nearly eradicated. Granted, it is a parasite, and the eradication is not due to medication, but due to behavior changes.

Perhaps there are other low(er) hanging fruit that can be addressed in a similarly effective way.

[Canadjun]

Originally Posted by Tapioca Dextrin

Getting away from the cancer thing, Ebola would be candidate for incurable. It's too rare to warrant research money and too deadly for any sane person to work with.

Not saying there is a cure, but it appears research has been done on it. I don't know if there is any newer info - I'm too lazy to look.

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

No known diseases are going to be able to put up a fight against some hypothetical future nano-bot technology. The fact that we haven't been able to cure some diseases so far means no more than the fact that we weren't able to fly by gluing feathers to our arms and running really fast. Sometimes things are impossible until you get the right technology, then they're pretty cheap and easy.

It's quite possible that we'll never manage to make functional nano-bots, or that we'll destroy ourselves in the process, or that there will be other diseases that they can't fight that we don't even discover until we cure the known ones, so it's not certain that we'll be able to cure existing diseases. But we certainly can't rule it out yet.