It is also worth pointing out that cancer treatment has gotten 1000x better in the last 30 years–all those billions of dollars havn’t been flushed down the tube. if yu were diagnosed with cancer in the mid-70s it was a virtual death sentence. These days, that isn’t true–a person diagnosed with cancer almost always has at least a fighting chance.
I am pursuing an MD/PhD right now. This means that I will spend the rest of my life looking for cures to things like cancer and muscular dystrophy.
There are so many fallacies in the OP that it is hard to even take it apart. How is cancer a big business without patented drugs? Where would these drugs come from if not from pharmaceutical companies and basic science?
You are also talking about a few different things. Drug targets are identified in basic science, which is funded by charities and the government. Drug development is done by pharmaceutical companies. They receive their money from shareholders, being a for-profit enterprise. These drugs are then run through trials at cancer centers, partly paid for by charities and drug companies and the government.
Next, this whole concept of “big business” is relatively misleading. You talk about treating cancer as big business, but where the money really is is in pharmaceuticals – the production of new drugs.
It is a multi-billion dollar investment to go through the chain of basic science to pharmaceutical company to FDA approval to marketing and release. It is a cutthroat environment with a vicious cycle – to make money, you must constantly innovate. In order to innovate, you need investment dollars. When it works, however, it pays off big. A vast medical conspiracy that did not opt for drug development is one which would kill the goose which lays the golden eggs.
The MD/PhD combined program is geared for producing medical scientists. These people are the ones that are out there running the labs to find the drug targets and then conducting the trials and the monitoring. They get paid off of private and National Institutes of Health grants, as well as whatever money they can get from charity (which is just a drop in the bucket). Treatment dollars usually account for very little of this. I take issue that someone would accuse me of doing this just for the money: researchers make less across the board than other MDs, even though they carry another doctorate in addition.
Well said, Edwino. Too many people in the field are driven by altruism, and no amount of hush money could silence them.
I’m still speechless at the OP’s mention of Steve Martin, Jerry Lewis, and a cure for cancer in the same passage. Surely you jest, Wildest Bill?
But there’s nothing “wrong” with squelching a discovery - it’s called a trade secret. And you can pretty much advertise however you want and sell to whomever you please. If someone started trying to get them to pay royalties, it’d be in their best interests to point out that the product had been on the market for a while before the second company “invented” it.
Two words - “medical ethics.” I’ve dated enough doctors and healthcare workers to know that 99% of them are decent, honest, hardworking people who actually care about helping people get well.
Esprix
First, leaving aside the OP, I want to thank Edwino for helping describe the real world of bio-medical/bio-tech.
Second, in re keeping a discovery secret for treament of some hypothetical cabal of wealthy: pray tell how is one supposed to do this?
(a) People, even rich people, can only find out about treaments if we market them. I.e. publicize in some way.
(b) I am personally unaware of secret marketing channels available only to rich people. Directed toward? Yes. Exclusive? No. This will leak.
© Even if there were a secret cabal of the Rich, why should one limit’s one market? What possible sense does that have?
Returning to the original post:
Unsurpringingly it appears the OP begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of how science operates.
As another poster suggested, cancer cures will depend in all likelihood on an increasing understanding of genetics. An increasing understanding of genetics in turn depends on good science education, above all biologicaly focused, including teaching current best-scientific theory in re natural development. Which is to say Evolutionary Theory.
Enough said.
[ClaudeRains]I’m shocked – shocked! – that anyone would insinuate that Bill doesn’t understand how science operates.[/ClaudeRains]
I categorically deny insinuating.
So the Illumined Tri-Lats can continue ruling the world foever, silly.
Shhhhhhhhh. They can find you. Only the cheesemakers know the way.
Mwa-ha-ha . . . little does he know that Dick Nixon, Ted Turner, and I have the black helicopter all warmed up and ready to go.
Aw, shit. Was that my out-loud voice?
I suspect that you could cure infinitely more cancer by treating the causes, rather than the effects. I don’t understand how we can look at rising rates of breast cancer and childhood leukemia and not realize that much cancer has more to do with environmental factors (man-made toxic pollution, etc.) than genetic factors.
I know next to nothing about science, but I suspect they’ll probably develop more and more advanced techniques to treat cancer, even as the number of people getting cancer continues to rise. Why aren’t we working to prevent it from occurring in the first place? I know that the OP is misguided, but I think there is a kernel of truth to be found in there. What makes more money, the medical treatment of cancer? Or the legislative efforts to curb the pollution that helps to cause it?
Here’s a woman who wrote a book about the breast cancer industry and she has some interesting ideas.
Interview with Liane Clorfene-Casten, author of Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits and Prevention
Maybe we could read this interview and get back to actual debate? It’s gotta be more interesting that calling Wildest Bill a conspiracy theorist over and over again. And remember–I know nothing, so be gentle.
And what about those black soundless helicopters looking in your windows at night? hmmm? 
And I suspect otherwise.
First, I think we continuously run into a problem because the singular aggregate noun cancer actually describes a plural phenomena. There are many cancers.
Second, it is useful to note that cancers, essentially a common noun for a phenomena of uncontrolled cellular replication, also arrive from many causes. Moreover, we also know that cancers arise as the body ages – after reproductive age passes there’s simply no evolutionary gain for not having cancer.
Or from people living longer in some cases (see above), or trade offs between cancer risk and other risks in re positives of self-same possible carcinogens.
Further, in it highly likely many carcinogens are so in restricted contexts or in complex interaction with environmental factors.
Of course, as populations age, live longer, cancers will increase.
We are, the developed world already devotes substantial resources to life prolonging measures and pays higher prices for products with without or with reduced carcinogens. However, risks are not all controllable and some are lifestyle choices – e.g. charred meat, smoking.
Frankly, most cancers are a rich, old folks worry and a real luxury to boot.
You’re arriving at a ** false ** conclusion that pollution is the cause. Some cancers surely, all cancers, no.
I didn’t find it terribly impressive, at least the interview. I see a lot of sketchy links, assumptions, leaps of logic and the like. She may be correct, but I don’t personally find the case advanced in this interview, although to be fair such interviews are not a terribly goog forum.
WB, if you want a cure for cancer, there are two very, very important things you can do:
1.) Give money to cancer charities, such as the American Cancer Society.
2.) Become involved in your local school and make very sure that evolution is taught instead of creationist pseudoscience- because cancer won’t be cured without good biologists, and evolution is the foundation of all biology. As it stands right now, US bio students are falling behind, because much of their time in college is being taken up with remedial evolution courses. They should have learned all that stuff in high school, but the creationists keep forcing schools to water down their science courses.
WB, you complain about how liberals are “hellbent” on putting evolution in schools when “nobody really needs that stuff,” and you refuse to learn anything about it yourself, but then you complain that our achievements in biology don’t match our achievements in the space program. Before Sputnik, American schools didn’t teach science well at all, and science was denigrated as “egghead stuff” (and science fictional tales of moon missions were called “Buck Rogers nonsense.”) After Sputnik, there was a massive push to emphasise science at all levels of education, from kindergarden through college. As a result, we got to the moon first.
If the Soviets had tried to give us cancer instead of building rockets, I guarantee you that today, we would have cures for nearly all forms of cancer- and there would be as few anti-evolutionists as there are flat earthers and geocentrists.
-Ben
No disagreement here. Was just looking for a short summary of her thoughts–haven’t had the chance to actually read the book. Did read Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber, which I would recommend and which does lend some support to this argument.
Thanks **Collounsbury ** for the education. I guess I misrepresented myself because I pretty much understand all of what you’re saying. I guess I’m really talking about the cancer that we have the most control over.
I think in a perfect world, we would be working hard to find a cure **while at the same time ** eliminating pollutions and toxic substances in our environment. I’m just saying that maybe we could push more of our efforts into prevention and see how that could change cancer rates for the better. Usually when you hear the word “prevention” in association with cancer, you’re hearing about eating the right fiber for your colon. I’d love to hear about limiting the use of pesticides once in a while.
I know young people who have had cancer and even after surviving the whole ordeal, they don’t once question: why did I get cancer in my 20s? Is this unusual? I think if we concentrate too much on genetics, we get stuck in the mindframe of seeing cancer as something that occurs with absolutely no rhyme or reason. That’s too close to ignorance for my liking.
We can help individual patients (which is what the mythical “cure” is all about), but the environment is taking cumulative and close-to-permanent hits. The environment affects us all. And the pollution being done now is not going to show up in the cancer rates for 20 years, so who knows how bad it’s going to get before it gets better?
Certainly not against research into cancer treatment. Just wondering why it seems to dominate the “fighting cancer” movement (my perception as a non-scientific outsider). I would rather avoid cancer than survive it.
Okay, you know I am a prickly soul… (How is it I have not had a pit thread devoted to me?)
Well, in re the second, we can not. Pollutants: so long as we have an industrial society we will have pollutants as a side effect of industrial production. Price to pay. And given the lifestyle industrialized countries have versus a hunter gatherer, there are clear gains in present terms. So, the issue turns on risk versus benefit. To the extent the benefit exceeds the risk, we go with it. In re toxins, well that’s rather dependant on context. Some things are carcinogens only in reaction with other compounds. Further, there are a fine number of naturally, that is not man-generated, carcinogens. Which may be useful.
I think there is problem here with the underlying idea of humans as non-natural and
Sure, however let’s look into this issue of prevention. Limiting pesticides. Great goal. How? There are costs involved, such as lost production. What substitutes? How about gen-engineered products (why hello! my bread and butter.)? Or use of b.t.? Whoops other objections arise.
Depends on the cancer I suppose. Aggregates are the sole answer here.
Ahem, no. Genetics gives an understanding of mechanisms, and certainly helps us understand the rhyme and sometimes the reason. But I see your point, one can err too much towards internal causes w/o looking at environment.
Environment? The environment will do just fine. It is a question of the little human centered optimal environment that’s the problem.
Hmm, it is hard to know how to precisely respond to this. Pollution in industrialized countries is sharply lower than thirty years ago. I support clean production as much as possible. At the same time we have to recognize that there are trade-offs. You don’t get an industrialized society without some pollution, and price (perhaps some cancers) may be outweighed by gains (compare lifespans of non-industrial versus industrialized countries).
Ergo, a rational cost-benefit analysis is required btw benefit of production versus cost (pollution).
To add to the wonderful job (as always) that Collounsbury is doing :
First thing: the number one risk factor for cancer is age. Repeat this to yourself. As the population gets older, there is more cancer. Risk for almost every cancer including all the major ones (lung, breast, colon, skin, prostate) is strongly correlated with age.
To prove that an environmental factor is a definitive cause of cancer in a human is very, very difficult. We use many circumstantial clues and very few objective ones to determine this. These include whether a certain population who is exposed more to the potential carcinogen gets cancer, whether the potential carcinogen causes cancer in lab animals (at very high doses), the reactivity of the chemical, and so forth.
It is very difficult, especially for pervasive pollutants which may have a very low, yet cumulatively high carcinogenicity. This is why, by and large, the medical community is not concerned with things like genetically modified foods, environmental pollution (besides certain known carcinogens like benzenes and maybe dioxin), and pesticides. Some carcinogens may “prime” for cancer but not cause cancer alone. Others may “promote” cancer in “primed” cells, and also not be carcinogenic by themselves. Some mutations can promote growth. Others can inhibit death.
There are very clear risks to cancer. If you want to lower your risk, then eat a high fiber diet (strongly correlated with reducing colon cancer), stop using tobacco products (tar is associated with esophageal, bladder, mouth, and of course lung cancer), and stay out of the sun. If you have a family history of cancer, keep vigilant. This includes self exams of breasts/testicles, keep an eye out for moles, bloody or pencil thin stools, and have pelvic exams regularly. Other more specific risks include HPV infection (cervical adenoCA) or HBV or HCV (hepatocellular CA) infection. These risks are thousands of times what any environmental risk probably poses.
I probably missed something. Feel free to yell at me.
hapaXL wrote:
FIrst, we really don’t know which of the litany of new chemicals we concoct every day are carcinogenic, and which aren’t. But of the man-made chemicals we have tested thoroughly enough to get a good health-related picture of, most are not carcinogens!
Second, there have been many “scares” over the years about the potential health risks of various man-made substances such as alar, saccharin, aluminum, etc., which have simply not been borne out by further evidence. These scares usually happen as a result of highly speculative studies involving disease clusters, which statistically are bound to occur whether the substance being studied is harmful or not. The American Council on Science and Health publishes a little pamphlet about the greatest unfounded health scares of our time, which can be viewed in .pdf format at http://www.acsh.org/publications/reports/facts3.pdf.
Third, man-made chemicals tend to be singled out unfairly as “harmful until proven otherwise,” while naturally-occurring substances – many of which are toxic and carcinogenic – tend to be viewed as “harmless until proven otherwise.” (This bias is often inferred from the fact that more people are dying of cancer now, in the post-industrial age, than were dying of cancer a century or two ago – which ignores the fact that people in earlier centuries died younger on average from diseases that have since been brought under control.) The same American Council on Science and Health I mentioned in the previous paragraph has a reasonably-informative editorial about this, at http://www.acsh.org/press/editorials/holiday111700.html.
Could somebody with more time and more scientific knowledge check out this link? Just a glance at the table of contents brought up DDT, Three Mile Island and asbestos in schools. Are these valid “unfounded health scares?”
I’m guessing this American Council on Science and Health has a conservative/corporate apologist agenda. Here’s a quote from their website:
“On one issue after another in recent years, ACSH has stood as a bulwark against the contemporary Luddites who see the beginning of civilization’s end in every technological advance that reaches the market place.”
- Edwin Feulner, President The Heritage Foundation
Yes, that Heritage Foundation…:rolleyes:
Actually, chemicals/pesticides are allowed to be used until you can prove conclusively that they are carcinogenic in humans, which we’ve all agreed is very difficult to do. The process says those substances are innocent until proven guilty.