ID:188701
 
We all have heard about the, "fight against cancer" at one point or another in our lives, about how destroying the rain forest is not only bad for the environment, but it could also destroy the possible plant that could cure cancer, and various other diseases plaguing man. But, have you ever wondered, what if - there is NO cure? What if - there never was, or ever will be?
Actualy, virus' are the key. You probably wonder what the hell im talking about, well, virus' can attack cells certain cells while leaving others alone, so, make virus' that just kill cancer. Also, it would have to be easyly distroyed by the immune system, perhaps maybie a chemecal that, when mixed with the blood, will quickly kill the virus, preventing any mutation. A cure for cancer will come, but i doubt a plant will hold it. Nanonites are another possible way.
In response to Scoobert
Cancer is the body messed up. We simply (heh) remove all the stuff from the world that messes up our cells to cause cancer.
I think the cure for cancer was developed a few years back, but is being withheld by pharmaceutical companies because they're raking in the cash from cancer patients.

~Kujila
In response to Kujila
Kujila wrote:
I think the cure for cancer was developed a few years back, but is being withheld by pharmaceutical companies because they're raking in the cash from cancer patients.

~Kujila

Really, well *I* think the cure for cancer was developed a few years back, but is being withhelf by scientists, because they're raking in the cash from pharmaceutical companies.
In response to Kujila
Well, to me - the closest thing to a cure is Chemo Therapy. But, what these people are griping about is that they want a simple pill to take and they're done.
I don't wonder about that... I know it. There never was a cure for cancer, there never will be. "Cancer" isn't a disease. "Cancer" is a catch-all term for a whole lot of ways in which the body's cells can go bad. You can find different things that are factors in causing cancer, but the chief cause of cancer is simply this:

The world isn't perfect.

No matter how clean the environment, how perfect the gene pool, how healthy everyone's diet, etc., etc.... there's going to be someone, somewhere whose body will break down for no good reason. Things break down. You can have three thousand people loading the same program on to the same type of computer and it will work great on every computer except for one, which it will destroy, and no matter how hard you look you will never figure out why.

That's cancer. You can no sooner cure cancer than you can cure entropy.

Now, you can treat a particular case of cancer, and you can devise treatments that work well on similar cases of cancers... but that's an entirely different enchilada.
In response to Scoobert
perhaps maybie a chemecal that, when mixed with the blood, will quickly kill the virus, preventing any mutation.

Uhhh, if we had a way to instantly destroy any mutation, that would essentially be a cure for cancer in itself.

I don't have a perfect grasp on it, but cancer is mostly when a cell replicates incorrectly, and loses whatever portion of its DNA inhibits its growth. Normal cells have instructions "Reproduce until A". Cancerous cells would be missing that "A" instruction, have an incorrect "A" instruction, or simply aren't able to detect the conditions accurately.
In response to Jon88
Eh, or that! :)

I just think that someone is getting the cash somewhere and that's why the cure isn't "out" yet.

~Kujila
In response to Garthor
Well then, do a dna check, see whats wrong exactly for that particular cancer. I understand that cancer varies a lot, but the effect is basicly the same.My idea is in no means cheap, or possible right now, but one day...
In response to Kujila
Kujila wrote:
I just think that someone is getting the cash somewhere and that's why the cure isn't "out" yet.

Yep, because not one of those people involved have parents or siblings or spouses or friends or aunts or uncles or cousins or nephews or nieces or pets they would be sorry to lose to cancer. Not the researchers, the accountants moving around funds, the managers, or the executives.

Oh wait. Greedy people are people too, unless they exist only in a paranoid fantasy where "the man" is always secretly hoarding cash in the back room and cackling at sheer wealth alone like some extreme parody of Monty Burns.

Then there's the simple matter of economics, that a cure for cancer would be a huge seller, and that the cost of developing other drugs is so high (and so risky, since almost none of them pan out) that eventually the company (or a company, if you posit a vast conspiracy between them all) holding it would be forced to sell. The high costs of cancer treatments also cause intense pressure on the industry to lower its drug prices to the point where they don't even cover the cost of research. Cancer also depresses the economy by taking people out of it who could work, and a depressed economy is no climate for a successful business venture.

(Remember, kids, drugs are expensive for a reason. Even if a given pill costs 5 cents each to make, which isn't true of many newer drugs anyway, it also cost hundreds of billions to develop that pill and about 999 others that didn't pan out.)

If you think that a magic cure-all to any kind of cancer (let alone all kinds!) exists and is being withheld, you haven't given the issue enough serious thought to even bother discussing it. This speculation makes no sense on any level, and there's no evidence whatsoever to support the idea. If even a word of such a conspiracy leaked out and could be remotely verified, it'd be front page news all over the globe. Doff the tinfoil hat, my friend, and gaze upon the wonder that is the real world, where big problems usually don't have simple solutions and when something is unknown it doesn't mean that someone knows and isn't telling you.

For further reading on drug development issues in general, I strongly recommend http://www.corante.com/pipeline/ -- a Weblog about development from someone who actually works in medicinal chemistry. You'd be alarmed how hard it is to make a drug that even works a little bit; the odds are much better on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Like it or not, we have to pay for those tickets and hope someone scratches off the big winner, because each payoff is to the benefit of us all. Nobody just sticks the winning ticket in their drawer for a rainy day.

Lummox JR
Goku72 wrote:
We all have heard about the, "fight against cancer" at one point or another in our lives, about how destroying the rain forest is not only bad for the environment, but it could also destroy the possible plant that could cure cancer, and various other diseases plaguing man.

The miracle plant myth is pure baloney. Nature doesn't have pots of wonderful unknown chemicals brewing out there in the leaves to cure all that ails us. This is a 20th century myth from back in the day when new compounds (mostly fairly simple ones) were being discovered all the time. But that's the low-hanging fruit, and it's all been picked. If there's another simple chemical out there, chemists have already discovered it in the lab and considered it as a drug candidate.

Drug development has advanced well past that point, to where nature still has things to teach us, but it's deeper down. Right now a lot more is to be gained from studying animals than plants, particularly in how drugs react in their systems and why.

Lummox JR
In response to Garthor
Garthor wrote:
Uhhh, if we had a way to instantly destroy any mutation, that would essentially be a cure for cancer in itself.

And heterozygosity! Just think, in 500 years we could all be playing banjos.

The trick anyway is discovering which the mutation actually is. Maybe there's some complex technique not invented yet that could put DNA to a vote, and rip out the crud. One thing's for sure: The body doesn't really have much of one.

I don't have a perfect grasp on it, but cancer is mostly when a cell replicates incorrectly, and loses whatever portion of its DNA inhibits its growth. Normal cells have instructions "Reproduce until A". Cancerous cells would be missing that "A" instruction, have an incorrect "A" instruction, or simply aren't able to detect the conditions accurately.

In fact cells have many suicide conditions, but cancer tends to thwart several of those mechanisms. After that, it's kind of operating on its own so it instructs the body to form blood vessels right to its doorstep, and usually develops defenses (natural selection) to basic immune responses that would otherwise neutralize it.

The most promising thing I've read to date is that a form of adnovirus has an unusual "hook" structure that actually simulates a DNA repair trigger, which results in cancer cells suiciding without stronger healthy cells dying off. Problem is, it's hard to replicate the virus coat in any kind of meaningful quantity or find a way to deliver it to the cells themselves.

Lummox JR
In response to Jon88
Jon88 wrote:
Cancer is the body messed up. We simply (heh) remove all the stuff from the world that messes up our cells to cause cancer.

heh, u can't, did u know scientist have found chicken skin to cause cancer, or burnt food, just about everything causes cancer:p I'm still conviced the answer lies somewhere in Pi
In response to Jerico2day
Jerico2day wrote:
... I'm still conviced the answer lies somewhere in Pi

You're right. In fact, EVERYTHING that can be represented numerically in some form or another lies somewhere in Pi. Since Pi is totally random, any and every possible combination of digits exists in it.
In response to Jon88
Actually, I do believe Pi is equivalent to 3.14 (rounded off of course).
In response to Jon88
Jon88 wrote:
Jerico2day wrote:
... I'm still conviced the answer lies somewhere in Pi

You're right. In fact, EVERYTHING that can be represented numerically in some form or another lies somewhere in Pi. Since Pi is totally random, any and every possible combination of digits exists in it.

my thoughts exactly
In response to Goku72
Goku72 wrote:
Actually, I do believe Pi is equivalent to 3.14 (rounded off of course).

ohhh my, pi is an infinate, yet non repeating number, the digits go on forever in a seemingly completely random order, and no one number appears more than another... so, the answer to the meaning of life is hidden in pi:p
In response to Goku72
Goku72 wrote:
Actually, I do believe Pi is equivalent to 3.14 (rounded off of course).

That's an increadibly inaccurate approximation.
In response to Lummox JR
I'm fairly sure it was a classic (but not very funny) joke.
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