It's one thing. It's a mutation in the DNA that causes uncontrolled cell division. You unlock the key to that, you unlock everything. Anything else from these fucking science bros is just language games of classification.
EDIT: Apart from the thoughtful replies from TerminalEncounter and HiImThomasPynchon, the snark in the rest of the comments is through the roof. From the same people, btw, that will shout "ACAB right now," "guillotine capitalists right now!," "FALC right now," "gulag them all right now!" As though those are more realistic than what I'm envisioning. No wonder online/western leftists never get anything accomplished. Ironically, you're the behaving exactly like kind of people that would have made snarky comments in the past like "lol aboslish slavery, yeah I wish we could do that!" or "give women the right to vote, yeah if only it were that easy!" It's a weird kind of regressive reactionary thinking (except of course for things they personally want to get done, then it's "we can do it right now"). It's weird, with homelessness, the solution is "simply give them housing" but with this it's "it's more complicated honey..." Fucking pathetic...
It's not just one mutation in the DNA, it's a bunch of different possible ones. You can't just "solve" mutation - nature has had a headstart of billions of years on us and still hadn't sorted it unfortunately. Even if you could make it so that cells NEVER EVER mutate in one of their oncogenes because of some miracle intervention, you still can get point mutations from retroviruses (like the flu) or from random cosmic radiation or just, yknow, THE SUN. There really is no complete perfect prevention.
And then most of the time your T cells are just fine with killing cancerous cells. And most of the time, cancer cells can't figure out how to recruit blood (angiogenesis or whatever it's called). And most of the time, it can't figure out how to metastasize. But for lots of cancers, we DO have great interventions to the point that watchful waiting is the best thing to do lol (because surgery or chemo would be worse). We "cure" cancer all the time. And there are new interventions like checkpoint inhibitors that wreck the shit out of cancer to the point where I've had patients who 10 years ago would've had 6 months to a year but now they're 2+ years on and still going. And there's places like Cuba that have fucking VACCINATIONS against lung cancer.
The best thing we could do to solve cancer would be to have an economy based on social need. So, no more polluting where people breathe and drink. Adequate housing with adequate ventilation so they dont get covid (which can weaken immunity) or the flu (which can trigger oncogenesis very rarely) or TB. Good healthy food that's available. Work that isn't stressful (chronic atress is a risk factor for cancer). And it has to last long enough that the epigenes that get passed on are also inactivated. If we did all that plus keep up systemic therapies for all and/or surgery and RT as indicated and kept developing new interventions - we'd be in a way better place.
Was gonna comment about a weird trend of oversimplifying medicine I've been noticing on here lately before realizing it's the same OP on all the posts I was thinking of 💀
Yeah whats up with that? This is like the third anti-medicine post from them
What an interesting user. Anti-medicine and pro-car infrastructure?
Also, a lot of time in medical science when they research new biologicals they have to reference 50 year old soviet work because they were so far ahead of us. The west went with chemistry (probably because of profit incentives), they went with biologicals. We would be so much better now if we could've worked together considering all the new shit is just biologicals and immunotherapies.
You can’t just “solve” mutation - nature has had a headstart of billions of years on us and still hadn’t sorted it unfortunately.
Stopping mutation through evolution is pretty much impossible even if you could somehow engineer an artificial way to keep all cells from changing because evolution is mutation.
Some are dead ends or dangerous issues sure but plenty provide small benefits that have a .001% more likelyhood to survive that over a large population and long period of time so dropping mutuations entirely would be silly anyway. Adaptation is important.
I mean I could have said all this too but I am cursed with brevity.
I need to work on my concision lol, I swear I have a few like Manchuria candidate style activation phrases that make me type out novels worth of content or speak on them extemporaneously
"Curing all cancer is exactly as difficult as woman's enfranchisement" has some incredible energy no matter what you imagine that level of difficulty is supposed to be
People on here need to go outside Jesus who talks like this about cancer?
Ironically, you’re the behaving exactly like kind of people that would have made snarky comments in the past like “lol aboslish slavery, yeah I wish we could do that!” or “give women the right to vote, yeah if only it were that easy!” It’s a weird kind of regressive reactionary thinking (except of course for things they personally want to get done, then it’s “we can do it right now”). It’s weird, with homelessness, the solution is “simply give them housing” but with this it’s “it’s more complicated honey…” Fucking pathetic…
Ok now you're really going off the deep end. :logout:
This person is probably going through themselves or a loved one having cancer.
I can sympathize with going off the deep end in that sorta situation.
I know there's no one right way to react in that situation but when my mom was getting treated for breast cancer not once did I think "damn these doctors suck, why aren't they stopping the cell mutations!!!"
Hard to imagine why they would care so much otherwise. It’s just a way to die, of which there are thousands.
Its literally called a skeleton key. Its a bone in your body. The key to unlocking the cure for cancer is bones. Why won't scientists admit this?
turns out chiropractors were right all along and the cure for cancer is between your C3 and C4 vertebrae
If I twist your head off then the cancer won't be a problem anymore, right?
Good news: The cancer has been fully eliminated! Bad news: so has your husband
"yea my learning of biology stopped in high school how could you tell"
People have already told you how and why you are wrong. There is no one "cancer" and it's dumb shit to state otherwise. Literally harmful idiocy that plays into reactionary anti intellectual beliefs on medicine
Cool I'll take that into consideration. My mind has been totally changed. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. I can send you some cookies or flowers if you like. How's that sound?
I just had to have this conversation yesterday with my dad because my mom has cancer and they feel like there's "a new story every time they go," no, it's not "a new story," there are literally a million different cancers and it takes time and diagnostic information to distinguish them
But sure go off professor high school, it'll be great when my parents hear some bullshit like that and decide they agree with it and stop trusting their fucking doctors
Viruses are all just one thing too. HIV, COVID-19, chicken pox, herpes, and the common cold are all just virions. You unlock the key to that, you unlock everything.
RE your reply: slavery, women's suffrage, and their modern equivalents like police abolition and FALC, are all matters of social construction, we have the technology for FALC and police abolition, we just... don't do it because ghouls are in charge. We absolutely don't know cancer all the way through and it is absolutely not socially constructed. It turns out it's way more complicated than slapping a couple cameras and a microcontroller on a john deere, or just giving "criminals" counseling. Cancer is technologically very difficult to solve.
RE your reply: slavery, women’s suffrage, and their modern equivalents like police abolition and FALC, are all matters of social construction, we have the technology for FALC and police abolition, we just… don’t do it because ghouls are in charge. We absolutely don’t know cancer all the way through and it is absolutely not socially constructed. It turns out it’s way more complicated than slapping a couple cameras and a microcontroller on a john deere, or just giving “criminals” counseling. Cancer is technologically very difficult to solve.
We know those things are socially constructed now, but past generations didn't think that way. Those things were considered "inherent." What's to say that there isn't a way to cure cancer that we have yet to know about? It always seems impossible until it's actually done.
We know that cancer is not socially constructed and we can be sure with extremely high confidence that future societies will not view it as socially constructed. Slavery and women's suffrage were issues of how people treated each other, police abolition and FALC are also issues of how we treat each other, but a cure to cancer is a fight not against each other but of us against the laws of nature. If we had the technology to cure cancer and it wasn't being distributed, then cancer would be a social issue, but as of now I very much don't think we have the technology to cure cancer.
Cancer is hard. It takes a million different forms and lives in a million different places. It is astronomically harder to detect cancer early than it is to find a needle in a haystack, and even when found it's very hard to remove or kill in all but the simplest cases. It can come from anything from getting too much sun to eating bacon to flying in an airplane. It is made of exactly the same stuff as the rest of you with the exception of a literal handful of molecules. I think we'll beat it some day but we need way more advancement as a species first, for now we'll have to tolerate chemotherapy and occasional breakthroughs like Cuba's lung cancer vaccine.
Cancer is hard.
Yeah I get it. But the fucked up thing is that I can imagine a world where cancer is cured but capitalism still chugs along (i.e. cures for only those that can afford it) and it's communism that seems harder...
It's very possible that capitalism is too unstable to solve the issue( for profit healthcare also doesn't want cures it wants multi time treatments.)
Look, it's a simple matter of stopping the specific cells we don't want dividing from dividing, while letting all the trillions of other cells we do want dividing to continue doing that. So if we could get, like, a jab that can do specifically that and only that, then we've solved it.
The only people that benefit from this lumping together are hucksters who can claim they have the cure for cancer, literally never heard anyone else care this much about this distinction; what's the point that you're trying to make? That it's an excuse used to minimise sentiments to the effect of "I want a cure for cancer"? Is it working? Have you ever met anyone that went "Wellll, a cure for cancer would be great, but it's so hard to find, so in the end, I can't care that much about it" or "I would donate for cancer research, but it's a hard problem to solve, so I don't think I will"? Everyone wants a cure for cancer. What people don't want is woo woo snake oil that requires, get this, that cancer be in fact all the same disease in order for you to buy their shit.
That it’s an excuse used to minimise sentiments to the effect of “I want a cure for cancer”?
Yeah, and even if that's not the intent, it certainly comes off that way. It's almost like a neoliberal brainworm response to a universal healthcare proposal: "Actually sweetie, it's more complicated than that, we can't just give everyone healthcare."
If that is the intent that someone uses it for then i will concede that i'm with you on this one; one should want to demand the impossible, especially if one has already fallen for comparatively more SF stuff like eternal life and the like. I guess I'm just sheltered in this regard because i never heard it uttered with this effect. More to say "it's more complicated than the nice lady that's selling you essential oils makes it out to be.
Biden said he'd cure cancer but implementing M4A or forgiving student loans would simply be TOO HARD 🙄 smdgh, can't even keep bridges built in the US
Coffee isn't a million little flavors and ventis, and mocha-cheenos, and all of that bull-shit served decaf half-skim BULL-SHIT! It's Just Coffee-flavored Coffee goddamnit! JuSt MaKe Me A lArGe CoFfEe!
Every item in starbucks is some combo of coffee, water, milk, and sugar.
Different types of cells with different causes. It's easy to say "it's just a cell splitting too much" but that's like saying "it's just a door opening too far that's why it hits the wall" and ignoring the different types of doors and how they open.
As for your ridiculous edit, there's a major difference between natural constraints and social ones. To change a law is literally just people deciding "let's change the law". For example, you can make marijuana effectively legal overnight if we just all agreed on fast tracking the legislation for it. The problem isn't trying to figure out the science, it's literally just a choice.
As for your ridiculous edit, there’s a major difference between natural constraints and social ones.
Sure there's a difference, but that doesn't make one easier or harder than the other. Back in Marx's day it may have been impossible to think that something like a vaccine could eliminate polio, smallpox, etc., but they thought socialism was possible. Nowadays many think socialism is impossible but curing diseases is possible.
To change a law is literally just people deciding “let’s change the law”. For example, you can make marijuana effectively legal overnight if we just all agreed on fast tracking the legislation for it.
I mean yeah sure, but tell that to the thousands of comrades that have given their lives trying to apply scientific socialism to their specific material conditions. If it were able to be done "overnight" then shouldn't we have done it by now? Like I said in another comment, sometimes things seem impossible, until they aren't.
Back in Marx’s day it may have been impossible to think that something like a vaccine could eliminate polio, smallpox
I mean ... the first smallpox vaccine was developed in 1796.
Edit: But more seriously, medicine has a lot of these large descriptor categories that aren't terribly descriptive. Dementia being another big one that is slowly getting chipped away at as we research it. The general symptoms have many causes and not super great general treatments. As we start to understand the category better, specific causes get separated out and get their own names like Alzheimer's. And as we learn more we'll discover more different causes and treatments until the disease of 'Dementia' gets eradicated (hopefully).
The same thing is happening with Cancer but it's literally a category error to think that they will all have the same treatment just because they are all labelled 'Cancers'.
I mean there are many viruses who which we have been unable to make a vaccine, unlike polio and smallpox.
Like HIV or RSV
The material conditions that result in the development of cancer is different tho!
Autoimmune haemolytic anaemia and malaria are both diseases that result in mass death of red blood cells, undergoing Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies ain't gonna do shit if your anaemic symptoms don't come from a p. falcipium infection.
