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.
I wouldn’t call infertility a “disease”. 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.”
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.
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.
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. 
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. 
:eek::mad::smack:
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
never mind
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.
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.
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”.