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Iv'e just finished reading a book about conspiracy theories and one of them was that a cure for cancer has been invented but has been covered up by the powers that be.

The reason given for the cover up was that the board of influential people who's verdict would give the go ahead for licensing the cure are the same people who own the companies that make all the drugs that go towards treating cancers in the first place. So, basically, they would lose BILLIONS of dollars if there was a cure because a one off cure is no way as lucrative a business as ongoing medication that's available at the moment.

Now, true or not, it got me to thinking: Would a cure for cancer be a good idea?

Before anyone shoots me down in flames, I just want to say that I don't wish to sound flippant about a very serious subject. I've had cancer myself (Hodgkin's Lymphoma) and have lost people to it too so please don't take it that I'm making light or fun of the subject.

The reason for my question is the possible effect of there being no cancer in the world: the worlds population would rocket out of control which would have a knock on effect of other problems that would come from a top heavy (age wise) population such as economic ones.

I guess I could extend the question and ask if you think it would be a good idea to be able to cure most diseases? Should we if we could or would it only be right to make way for the younger generation after we've 'had our time'? Or do we have the right to immortality if the opportunity presented itself?

I think it's quite reasonable for people to assume that, actually.

Even from a logical point of view, the companies in question would loose billions of dollars a year if they cured it.
Going down in history is all well and good, but an crushing loss on the stock markets because of now defunct drugs...

One of two things will have to come to a stop whilst we are earthbound. The advance of medical science, or the propagation of the species.

We simply cannot have an immortal (or incredibly long lived) populace that keeps breeding. Hell, without modern medicine, life expectancy is what, 50ish years on a good innings? We're not far off doubling that in the western world for the majority

I think this ties closely to our explorations of outer space. Once we reach the point where we can travel to other planets in a reasonable timespan and make the habitable, then perhaps we do not need to worry about having an insane growth rate thanks to lack of disease. Before then, we may have to start going the way of China to stop depleting resources extremely fast.

How does one justify the cure for any disease?

I guess it's a balance between the good of one human versus the good of humanity as a whole. How many can you save before it becomes too much?

Kilkrazy wrote:How does one justify the cure for any disease?

It would be nice to think that the justification for a cure would be altruistically driven and perhaps it would be by a genius biotech professor toiling away in his/her lab somewhere but at some point along the way Capitalism would rear it's ugly head and reduce the cure into profit projections and loss adjusting predictions. Not so much 'How many lives can we save?' but 'How much money can we make and is it worth it?' While at the same time slapping a patent on the cure so that no one else can get any fancy ideas like saving lives, even if Mr Capitalism decides not to do anything with the cure other than to gather dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no hippy lefty but all the powers that be seem to REALLY care about is power, power and more power, oh and mountains of cash too for the 'chosen few'.

Altruism for altruism's sake seems to be a painfully rare phenomena in our society today. You can sometimes find it in a single person during a Random Act Of Human Kindness but it seems to fade out when applying it to a large group of people. Even most charaties these days seem to be politically driven (most, not all).

It's all about the GREENBACKS!

If I understand your argument, the gist of it seems to be that you don't think any diseases can justifiably be cured, because a doctor or pharmaceutical company might make money from it?

Would that be right?

I've brought up this point several times. The fewer people we have, the better the rest of us live, honestly.

I believe it's the cause of common humanity and doing the right thing, even if it's not the logical thing.




Also, as for the conspiracy theory about the cure? Most of the articles are dated ~2007, and it's mostly hype. They are currently undergoing testing on an anti-tumor drug. And frankly, the more testing, the better. Anyone ever heard of Thalidomide?

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've brought up this point several times. The fewer people we have, the better the rest of us live, honestly.

which is why id be ok with a zombie apocalypse

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've brought up this point several times. The fewer people we have, the better the rest of us live, honestly.

Stone Age times were just non-stop laughs and high jinks, thanks to the tiny population compared to what it is now. It's very noticeable how much worse life has got every century since then.

lord commissar klimino wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've brought up this point several times. The fewer people we have, the better the rest of us live, honestly.

which is why id be ok with a zombie apocalypse

Now, initially, this sounds logical. The only problem with this is that our society is based upon a multitude of jobs. Sure, we have to deal with a lot of asshats in our daily lives, but would you be willing to never see them again in exchange for losing the guy who picks up and takes away your garbage every Friday? What about the people who maintain our infrastructure? I don't know if any of these people are jerks or good people, but if they were jerks, I'd prefer to have showers and tolerate some people than not have running water.

Relevant.

As it stands, I agree with Micahphone. You may think that we need less people on the Earth, but we can't forget that most people play a role in society. And some of those roles are extremely important.

Population decline is going to become a serious issue in Western nations very soon, and we may have to beging to think about what we're willing to give up.

I've brought up this point several times. The fewer people we have, the better the rest of us live, honestly.

QFT
If all other factors remained the same but population decreased substantially life would be much better (not just for us but the whole planet). Our species would also last much longer. We are already having problems with overpopulation in some areas and having a large retired: workers ratio is already a problem.

A cure for cancer would be a good idea if people could be persuaded to slow down with the having kids. People could live much longer and have more time to do what they enjoy. I don't see why we should allow ourselves to die if it's not neccessary. We have done so many unnatural things already, why stop now? No one has the right to their time in earth if they haven't been born yet. Something can only have rights if it already exists.

I don't believe a cure has been covered up. Instead of covering up you could just make it very expensive. You could easily price it out of the reach of normal people so they continue using you drugs but still sell it to millionaires. I know I would give all the money I had for a drug if the other option is death.

Cancer is not one disease but hundreds. There could be a cure for A cancer out there, but not ALL cancers.

It would depend on the nature of the cure.

All cancers are the result of a cell suffering several mutations which cause it to go into growth mode and disable the self-repair and self-destruct functions.

I can envisage a "cancer vaccine" which works by improving the cells' natural ability to transcribe and repair its DNA.

Perhaps this would be a separate cell organelle similar to a mitochondrion, so each cell could have several copies independent of the nucleus where the main genetic action goes on.

Once established throughout the body, the new organelle would descend in the female line like regular mitochondria.

I don't know how you would get the organelle into the cells to start with though.

I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure there are ways of targeting cancer cells. The problem is getting rid of them in a way that doesn't kill the person in the process.

Altering the cells themselves could work. If you stop the DNA from deteriorating then cancer becomes much less likely.

Ok heres a bit of help for the super companies/big brother thats obviously reading this thread. Sell the cure for cancer like any other treatment, now the world loves you because Pfizer figured it out, THEN make up a bogus sidekick drug that is little more then vitamins, tell people they are needed twice a day because the cure for cancer depletes some random serious thing in the body, and so you have to take them for the rest of your natural life.

Presto, super profits for curing cancer, and continuous profits for selling the side kick drug. Tada! I take checks and debit cards

Da Boss wrote:Cancer is not one disease but hundreds. There could be a cure for A cancer out there, but not ALL cancers.

Actually cancer cells are all the same until they find a host organ and replicate during metastasis, that's how breast cancer can lead to liver cancer, pancreatic cancer and lung cancer all in the same person.

4M2A wrote:I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure there are ways of targeting cancer cells. The problem is getting rid of them in a way that doesn't kill the person in the process.

Altering the cells themselves could work. If you stop the DNA from deteriorating then cancer becomes much less likely.

Metastasis is the killer of cancer, having a tumor in and of itself really isn't fatal and usually isn't that noticeable until it becomes malignant or metastasizes.

During metastasis, blank cancer cells break off the main tumor and travel through the lymphatic and blood vessels to nearby organs, or whichever organs they can hitch a ride to easily through available vessels, and make a new tumor. Before you know it a tumor eventually takes over an organ or part of an organ necessary for life and you die.

If they can figure out how to stop the replication process of malignant cancer cells permanently then cancer will be officially cured, just cut that bugger out and be done with it, until then we just have drugs that skewer the DNA just enough to slow, or temporarily stop growth.

I personally wouldn't be horribly surprised if the cure has been invented and is being hidden, but who knows...

Kilkrazy wrote:How does one justify the cure for any disease?

People are willing to pay for a cure, this makes it justifiable. If it were a cure for a disease people weren't willing to pay for (like largepenisitis), then no one would develop a cure.

Ah capitalism.

The premise for the conspiracy theory sounds flawed.
If the drug is a one off cure, does that mean that once current patients have been cured there will be no more cancer?

That argument is nonsense. It is not like they will be eradicating smallpox. There will still be cancer in need of curing.

Grabzak Dirtyfighter wrote:

Da Boss wrote:Cancer is not one disease but hundreds. There could be a cure for A cancer out there, but not ALL cancers.

Actually cancer cells are all the same until they find a host organ and replicate during metastasis, that's how breast cancer can lead to liver cancer, pancreatic cancer and lung cancer all in the same person.

"Cancer" is a catchall term for mutated cells that reproduce out of the normal controls, thus starving tissues of resources, and there are a myriad of forms such a mutation can take. So there can't be said to be a cure for cancer, though one could conceive of cures for specific pathways the defective cells can work through.

The semantics are further complicated by the issue of what exactly counts as a "cure": if one means a sort of miraculous panacea, as antibiotics were for a time against bacteria, then I doubt we'll see something meeting the criteria until nanotech comes of age, so a couple of decades on the outside; if one simply means a method of treatment, we already have those in the form of very carefully poisoning the patient just enough that the defective cells die, while they don't, and in the best cases less horrific methods, like cutting them out. I believe with some pathways there are drugs that simply counteract the means by which the defective cells outcompete the properly functioning ones in development; I recall reading an Ars Technica article a while back about a chemical that blocked the action of a certain defective enzyme involved in processing glucose, leaving cells with the normal variant functioning normally, while preventing those producing this defective enzyme from being able to process it, thus starving them.

Mr Mystery wrote:One of two things will have to come to a stop whilst we are earthbound. The advance of medical science, or the propagation of the species.

We simply cannot have an immortal (or incredibly long lived) populace that keeps breeding. Hell, without modern medicine, life expectancy is what, 50ish years on a good innings? We're not far off doubling that in the western world for the majority

To respond to this sentiment in general: the healthier a population the lower its reproduction rate, as meeting the criteria to simply reproduce at ridiculous rates is easy, as both food and space are abundant enough that one is unlikely to fatally starve or be left homeless even if one is an impoverished peasant or laborer living in unsanitary conditions; one is, however, far more likely to have a greater number of children if there is a good chance that they will die from disease, to increase the likelihood of one or more surviving, and when one knows one's effective working life is short, and so needs many children to support oneself in "old" age.


Also, without medicine/sanitation and the other comforts of civilization, life expectancy was something like thirty on the outside; even in early bastions of civilization and sanitation reaching one's fifties or sixties was akin to someone living into one's nineties today.

Grabzak Dirtyfighter wrote:

Da Boss wrote:Cancer is not one disease but hundreds. There could be a cure for A cancer out there, but not ALL cancers.

Actually cancer cells are all the same until they find a host organ and replicate during metastasis, that's how breast cancer can lead to liver cancer, pancreatic cancer and lung cancer all in the same person.

I'm well up on metastasis, but cancer cells are most definitely not all the same, cancer can be very personalised. You can have cancers that happen randomly through gradual mistakes or damage to DNA which build up in the cell population over time until enough of the right mutations happen to allow the population to start reproducing. You can have cancers which are triggered by something in the person's genetic code. You can have tumours caused by viruses that can sometimes also spread to other areas. It's a messy, messy area with a lot of greys and very few absolute, like almost all biology. I'm not sure what you mean by "find a host organ" either, all cancer cells start out in an organ and you're correct in identifying the metastasis as the point where cancer becomes REALLY dangerous, it can be dangerous before that. (A brain tumour for example can kill you without metastisis.) Similarly, certain cancers tend to metastasize to certain other organs. I do agree that a way to stop metastasis could be seen a as a cure for several types of cancers, but there are still others that will undergo metastasis from a different route or mechanism, that will not be stopped.

4M2A wrote:I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure there are ways of targeting cancer cells. The problem is getting rid of them in a way that doesn't kill the person in the process.

Altering the cells themselves could work. If you stop the DNA from deteriorating then cancer becomes much less likely.

Metastasis is the killer of cancer, having a tumor in and of itself really isn't fatal and usually isn't that noticeable until it becomes malignant or metastasizes.

During metastasis, blank cancer cells break off the main tumor and travel through the lymphatic and blood vessels to nearby organs, or whichever organs they can hitch a ride to easily through available vessels, and make a new tumor. Before you know it a tumor eventually takes over an organ or part of an organ necessary for life and you die.

If they can figure out how to stop the replication process of malignant cancer cells permanently then cancer will be officially cured, just cut that bugger out and be done with it, until then we just have drugs that skewer the DNA just enough to slow, or temporarily stop growth.

I personally wouldn't be horribly surprised if the cure has been invented and is being hidden, but who knows...

My point is that the replication process of malignant cells is diverse, it's not being caused by one gene or process but by a combination of factors that varies from person to person. So they can find drugs that work against certain cancers, in certain people, in certain situations, but no hard fast cure because "cancer" isn't a single disease, no more than "virus" is.

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:How does one justify the cure for any disease?

People are willing to pay for a cure, this makes it justifiable. If it were a cure for a disease people weren't willing to pay for (like largepenisitis), then no one would develop a cure.

Ah capitalism.

Except that then, certain countries (like France) would DEMAND that the U.S. (who would invariably be the country who has the corporation that found said cure) ship this cure over to countries that could not pay for it (such as the majority of the continent of Africa), and thereby either drive up the cost of such a cure for those who could pay to the point where it's almost unbearable in nature, OR have a severe and negative impact on the economy and the company in question (if they can't make money selling a cure, how do they maintain their stock share prices?)


I mean, I dont have any fancy college degree in this sort of thing, but it makes sense from a High School economics class approach.

Biccat: Wow, I find that sentiment so friggin' offensive. I'm gonna have to walk away for a bit before responding, if I do at all.

On the Pharma thing, nearly as many of the big pharma companies are in Europe.

Da Boss wrote:Biccat: Wow, I find that sentiment so friggin' offensive. I'm gonna have to walk away for a bit before responding, if I do at all.

I'm sorry. Are you too suffering from largepenisitis and waiting for a cure? Unfortunately, I don't think that enough investment has been directed towards our particular ah...problem.

I think there is a big misunderstanding: Overpopluation does not come from advanced health(-systems) or better life conditions but from proverty and uneducation, which are more present if the people are likly to get ill or die young.


So yes, every cure for a deases helps building a better world.

Biccat: Okay, kudos mate, you made me go from RAEG to LOL! (Literally) in two posts. That takes some doing

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've brought up this point several times. The fewer people we have, the better the rest of us live, honestly.

I love hearing this from people. 99.9% of them would would be dead in a week without someone making sure their water ran and someone else stocking the shelves at the supermarket.

Not having a go at you, specifically, Cannerus. It's just something I've noticed; a lot of people take some pretty vital things for granted.

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Logically, I can see the argument for putting a cap on the human life span.

It's going to be a tough sell, though.