# Some one said to me that biology and medicine have not really change in the past 30 years **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Tags:** science-math\ **Created:** [August 12, 2024, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593 "2024-08-12T05:00:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/61 "2024-08-13T13:37:20Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Not getting cancer, and not dying of cancer, are different things. And to be a little pedantic, a tumor that you suppress before it developed certain aggressive features is not a cancer. But yeah, i know a lot of people who have successfully fought off cancer with medical aid. Some of the advances are straightforward, like being able to examine the margins of an excised tumor for cancerous cells in real time, during the operation, so the surgeon knows exactly how much to remove. Others seem out of science fiction, like immunotherapy that can train the immune system to attack the tumor more effectively. There’s been a huge amount of improvement in the treatment of many cancers in the past 10 years. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/62 "2024-08-13T13:40:48Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Ninja’d! Except your post is way more informative. I felt very ninja’d. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/63 "2024-08-13T16:39:17Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Actually, there are about two hundred identified human cancers (not counting subtypes and extremely rare carcinomas). Some forms of cancer are slow moving and can be excised surgically, with followup chemotherapy or radiotherapy; others are aggressive and prone to metastasize, difficult to diagnose in their early stages, or are fiercely resistant to those traditional treatments. But in nearly every form of ‘common’ cancer, the prognosis for the typical patient has improved, often radically. Even Stage 4 (metastasized) tissue and organ cancers can often be treated with a good rate of success, and diseases such as pancreatic cancer or malignant brain tumors, which were formerly often a death sentence, can be treated and pushed into remission for years or even decades, effectively ‘curing’ them. Some forms of cancer are still resistant to treatment; advanced renal and intestinal cancers often have high mortality rates, both because they are often not caught in an earlier, more treatable stage or because of secondary health impacts that make it difficult for the patient to intake nutrients or filter toxins. > > Many of the modern treatments are far less harmful to the patient, and can be combined to increase the probability of pushing the cancer into remission. Whereas previous treatments were often completely removal of an organ followed by almost lethal amounts of chemical or radiological treatments, advances in less invasive surgery or proton-beam therapy combined with highly targeted chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and even advances in immunotherapy, i.e. persuading the patient’s immune system to target and remove the cancerous cells, have resulted in treatments that, while not pleasant, allow for a much better quality of life during treatment and typically fewer lingering side effects and health concerns. Even when a cancer is not fully treatable, it may be manageable while giving the patient a vastly greater quality of life compared to what was possible circa 1990. > > Of course, some particularly cancers are curiously stubborn to treatment, and some patients just can’t tolerate the most effective treatments, and so cancer is still a very serious disease that takes too many way too soon. There is no real hope for a ‘universal’ cure for cancer any more than there is a single vaccine that will defeat every virus, but there have been radical improvements in the typical outcomes for cancer patients in the last three decades. Is most of this research done and also new treatments coming out like drugs and stuff done at universities or the pharmaceutical companies? Because what you write above looks like this is being done at universities. If so than pharmaceutical companies or private labs don’t seem to do much when it comes to cancer. And most of this is being done at universities. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/64 "2024-08-13T16:56:02Z")
> [@Jackson99](#): > > Other thing that a lot of people are getting now is Alzheimer’s and dementia > [@Jackson99](#): > > I think the problem now is there is major problem has 40% of people will get cancer now. And in 20 years from now that 40% may go to 60% of people may get cancer. Those things, if true, aren’t due to lack of scientific progress. All of those things can have an external cause completely unrelated to scientific or medical advances. For example, increased toxins in the environment causing more cancers shows bad policies and regulations, not lack of progress in medicine. As said by others, increase in the prevalence of some diseases can be caused by decrease in other diseases. For a radical example, childhood vaccine development mean that those kids will grow up to die of something else. > [@Jackson99](#): > > If so than pharmaceutical companies or private labs don’t seem to do much when it comes to cancer. And most of this is being done at universities. A huge amount of medical and pharmaceutical research is done at universities and government labs. This research is then commercialized by pharmaceutical companies to make new drugs and treatments. This can lead into debates about drug patents, drug safety regulations, time to market, and such, but that is all policy and political, not scientific. ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/65 "2024-08-13T17:17:38Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Those things, if true, aren’t due to lack of scientific progress. > > All of those things can have an external cause completely unrelated to scientific or medical advances. For example, increased toxins in the environment causing more cancers shows bad policies and regulations, not lack of progress in medicine. > > As said by others, increase in the prevalence of some diseases can be caused by decrease in other diseases. For a radical example, childhood vaccine development mean that those kids will grow up to die of something else. It does not say if these are young people that are getting cancer or older people. If it is older people it is not really pandemic as people are older and people are not built to live past 90. The worse case it may crash the healthcare system as we already have long ER wait times. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/66 "2024-08-13T17:43:57Z")
Umm, they really don’t treat cancer all that much in the ER. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/67 "2024-08-13T17:48:07Z")
@Jackson99, don’t you think there’s enough evidence in this thread that biology and medicine really have changed in the last 30 years? Can you at least thank everyone for proving “some one”, whoever you were referencing in the title, completely wrong? Rather than acknowledging all the evidence that medicine has made a ton of progress, you shifted to just talking about cancer. When it was shown that there has been a ton of progress in cancer treatment and prevention, rather than acknowledging that, you’ve now shifted to ER wait times. When I come here asking a question, or starting with a position I’m not that sure about, and all the posters here show me where I was wrong, I thank them for all their patience with me. ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/68 "2024-08-13T17:52:43Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > No, it’s the opposite. Tumors grow uncontrollably, and kill large animals (like humans.) And in general, the odds of getting a tumor increase with greater body size and longer life. (More cells and more cell reproductions.) Elephants ought to all die of cancer, except they almost never get cancer. Probably, their ability to avoid cancer (by damaged cells killing themselves rather than promulgating, really really reliably!) was an important in allowing them to grow so large in the first place. > > There have been a lot of attempts to tweak genes in living people. Hemophilia and sickle cell disease are two serious illnesses caused by a single flawed gene that is well understood. But and large, messing with a gene causes the immune system to recognize the modified cells as foreign and kill them. In fact, the mRNA vaccines are an offshoot of that research. “Hey, we can use that immune response”." Those vaccines don’t need an adjudant because the modified cell spitting out the viral protein already triggers the immune system. Sadly, modified cells that spit out insulin or human clotting factor tend to do the same. > > I have seen some recent attempts to modify the genes of living people (with sickle cell disease) so maybe there have been advances. Or maybe those, like prior attempts, will work for a while and then be taken down by the immune system. But building what elephants have is a really large change, not a tiny tweak. It’s possible someone will do it to a human egg, and that will be successful. I don’t expect to see that kind of generic modification of already-born humans in my lifetime. I think the problem here is they are only modifying one or two genes but for it to be what you saying they would have to be modifying many genes. And the that may cause other health problems in people. ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/69 "2024-08-13T18:00:14Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > don’t you think there’s enough evidence in this thread that biology and medicine really have changed in the last 30 years? Can you at least thank everyone for proving “some one”, whoever you were referencing in the title, completely wrong? > > Rather than acknowledging all the evidence that medicine has made a ton of progress, you shifted to just talking about cancer. When it was shown that there has been a ton of progress in cancer treatment and prevention, rather than acknowledging that, you’ve now shifted to ER wait times. > > When I come here asking a question, or starting with a position I’m not that sure about, and all the posters here show me where I was wrong, I thank them for all their patience with me. I’m sorry this thread is getting a bit off topic now talking mostly about cancer and healthcare system crashing, but I got scared when I read that article that 40% people in the US will get cancer. I think the problem is if you don’t read up on the scientific articles you don’t know if biology or medicine is advancing because it does not make the news. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/70 "2024-08-13T18:03:54Z")
Disclaimer: these views are my own and in no way represent the official position of any organization I might be associated with. > [@Jackson99](#): > > If so than pharmaceutical companies or private labs don’t seem to do much when it comes to cancer. And most of this is being done at universities. The way it generally works is that the universities do the basic research that identifies targets and mechanisms of therapy. Then the pharmaceutical companies step in and use that research to make a drug that they think might work. Then under guidance of the FDA, the company spends big bucks to fund a trial where they recruit patients for various hospitals to try to prove that the drug works. This is a big gamble that could make them gobs of money if it works or could cost them tens of millions of dollars with nothing to show for it if it fails. Unfortunately, this means that they are only going to run trials for those drugs that they think are going to make them gobs of money. So if you have a rare cancer, or if the drug in question only works on a particular subset of a given cancer (say those with a particular mutation) then they often decide its not worth their while. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/71 "2024-08-13T18:04:25Z")
That doesn’t change how you should interact with people you’re asking for help. Lots of posters in this thread painstakingly laid out the ways that medicine has advanced, and then specifically how cancer treatment and prevention has advanced. Rather than acknowledge their points (I see! Thanks for clearing that up! It’s good to see how things really have advanced. How about cancer specifically…, etc.), you just change the subject and pretend this thread was about something else. It’s pretty frustrating to read. I don’t know, it just seems like it would be polite to acknowledge how helpful and patient everyone has been. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/72 "2024-08-13T18:23:58Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Of course, some particularly cancers are curiously stubborn to treatment, and some patients just can’t tolerate the most effective treatments, Also some treatments may work to kill off 99.99% of the cancer cells, but by chance 0.01% of the cells got a mutation that happened to make them resistant to the treatment. So you get an initial response that makes it look like the cancer might be cured, but then a few months down the road those remaining cells start repopulating, and you get the cancer back but it is now totally unresponsive to the initial treatment. Cancer in a text book case of Darwinian evolution on a cell level scale in real time. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/73 "2024-08-13T18:35:33Z")
Yeah, you find that out. Can we inject bleach to cure COVID? Hmmm🤔 ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/74 "2024-08-13T19:37:48Z")
Reading this thread is like reading the latest 9/11 CT thread. You want to know how medicine and lifestyle has affected us all? Go watch some old TV shows from the 50s and 60. Notice how _old_ the old people look? Then look up their birth dates in imdb and do the math. Those _old_ people were in their 40s! Maybe 50s. I saw a contestant on What’s My Line that looked like an 85 year old grandma, and she was 63! Getting people to quit smoking has had such an affect, and it gets lost in the “70 is the new 50” talk. People see that but they never get why - because people aren’t killing themselves slowly with 3 packs a day. Aside from lung capacity and lack of cancer, their hair and skin look better, their teeth look better. They just look younger! When I was a kid, adults getting a chest x-ray was a routine part of a yearly physical. It hasn’t been for decades. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/75 "2024-08-13T20:07:20Z")
> [@Jackson99](#): > > That is 20% improvement well this is improvement but it took 30 years for 20% improvement that not big number and at that pace it take other 40 years to get to 100 if it keeps going up like that at that pace. > > I’m not sure the public is going to be okay that it take other 40 years to get to 100. There’s much that is wrong with this. First of all. medical progress, like all scientific progress, is not linear. You can’t extrapolate when a problem will be solved based on how long it’s taken to get to this point. Second, doctors have been trying to figure out how to cure cancer for a lot longer than 30 years. It was a disease known even in ancient times. Of course progress was very slow most of that time, but there was nothing that happened 30 years ago to make that the start date. ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/76 "2024-08-13T20:21:05Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > “Eradicate cancer” is nonsense, pure and simple. You may as well blather on about “eradicate death” or “eradicate aging”. > > If that’s your measure of merit, it’s hopeless even talking about the topic with you. Are you time traveler do you know some thing about the future that none of us know? ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/77 "2024-08-13T20:23:57Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > There’s much that is wrong with this. First of all. medical progress, like all scientific progress, is not linear. You can’t extrapolate when a problem will be solved based on how long it’s taken to get to this point. > > Second, doctors have been trying to figure out how to cure cancer for a lot longer than 30 years. It was a disease known even in ancient times. Of course progress was very slow most of that time, but there was nothing that happened 30 years ago to make that the start date. Is there some thing in that chart that says it is slowing down now? I was saying base on that chart in 1975 it was like 50% and today it is like 75% for all cancers. That is 25% more to go? ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/78 "2024-08-13T21:19:57Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > > [@Jackson99](#): > > > > I know when comes to cancer it been kinda of stagnated. > > What you think you know is wrong, My wife had a brutal cancer battle 13 years ago that she fortunately won. Apparently, however, had she had the same thing 10 or 20 years earlier she would have lost that battle. So I would agree that that’s wrong as well. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/79 "2024-08-13T22:28:16Z")
The Washington Post had a recent article on a therapy for a childhood disease MLD (gift link below - hope it works). Children typically develop muscular problems, with death often by the age of five. There have been infusion therapies, but this new treatment is a one-time injection of the patient’s genes that were sent to a lab to be modified. The jaw-dropping price of $4.25 million dollars raises several questions, such as availability and fairness. But … it’s a one-time infusion, and they calculated $4 million dollars as the worth of a full life. There will be many more such therapies. [https://wapo.st/3WNqgjw](https://wapo.st/3WNqgjw) ---
**Author:** ![Jackson99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@Jackson99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackson99)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2024, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593/80 "2024-08-14T04:04:54Z")
I always thought immunotherapy was experimental and is something like 10 years out before it becomes more mainstream? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-one-said-to-me-that-biology-and-medicine-have-not-really-change-in-the-past-30-years/1005593.md?page=5)