Apr 24, 2009
Curing Cancer
A N.Y. Times article this morning discusses the relatively small gains toward curing cancer since 1950, despite the enormous resources in time and money that have been dedicated to the "war" in all that time. It's not a very encouraging article. How many times have you seen a TV story about a "possible cure" or an "exciting new therapy". Must be awful for cancer patients to have carrots dangled in front of them so often, with so few actual results.
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You know what the conspiracy theory crowd says, don't you?
ReplyDeleteThey say, 'there's more money in "treating cancer" than attempting to "cure" it, so the fiscal rewards to do so are exceedingly offset by the potential for income in the other column.'
Does this story add fuel to that fire?
You do the math.
We know how to prevent or reduce many risks for cancers, but not cancer.
But cancer is simply normal cells which have gone awry... haywire, if you will. They simply grow like crazy.
One perspective of cancer is angiogenesis, which is the tumor's ability to grow a network of blood vessels to feed it. When we can cut off that "pre-programmed" aspect of cancer, we'll have made significant strides. And there are now on-going clinical trials for treatment/therapy that specifically addresses that component.
We have sophistocated Gamma Knife therapy and a host of other more common treatments. But they're treatments only.
Do I think we'll ever totally "cure" or with 100% certainty prevent cancers?
Nope.