Major diseases haven't been cured yet we continously send things to space?

[Backlashe]

This conspiracy theory is, apart from the dumbest, arguably the most tiresome one. A good and reliable cure for a major type of cancer, would be the proverbial golden egg. Not to mention that very expensive treatments for cancer are often times not used on patients despite them being suitable candidates, in the west, mainly due to their cost.

LOL No it wouldn't be a golden egg. See, if there was a cure, there is no way it would be allowed to be charged for. As a "treatment", they can charge what they want. I applaud your idealism but it is time to live in the real world now, kid.

[Underverse]

You can brute force these things, but it's awfully inefficient.

[Sama-81]

LOL No it wouldn't be a golden egg. See, if there was a cure, there is no way it would be allowed to be charged for. As a "treatment", they can charge what they want. I applaud your idealism but it is time to live in the real world now, kid.

Hahaha, and you call me a kid. Absolutely hilarious, "no way it would be allowed to be charged for"...isn't there some conspiracy-site, people like you can go to? I mean I wasn't exactly expecting other researchers to talk to, but this isn't just uninformed, this is on "ancient aliens"-levels.

[Thoughtful Trolli]

Why cure something when you can get money for it?

...isn't there some conspiracy-site, people like you can go to?

Maybe but they'd look for me there, so I come here instead.

[Underverse]

Why cure something when you can get money for it?

You can get money for a cure too. See: harvoni.

[Mormolyce]

Let's fire all astrophysicists until all diseases are cured.

Also, no more movies, TV shows or video games. Everyone has to be doctors until we're all immortal.

[Ravenblade]

LOL No it wouldn't be a golden egg. See, if there was a cure, there is no way it would be allowed to be charged for. As a "treatment", they can charge what they want. I applaud your idealism but it is time to live in the real world now, kid.

Not all organizations researching for a cure work for a profit. Everyone can get cancer even researchers and profiteers themselves so there is no benefit in suppressing that could cure you. Just like in the real world, people who are pioneering something or being responsible for the breakthrough of it are more likely to put personal fame and achievements ahead of pure financial interests, always been the case even people weren't yelling "muh capitalism" yet. Countries with socialized healthcare and insurance companies would most likely still want to reduce costs rather than increase it rather than "hiding cure is evil and being evil is cool". Companies make a lot of profit from non-patented products already and there are profitable and easy-money cures which companies can live off just fine. Lastly hiding costs would be far more complex than people think, we live in a world with constant competition and releasing a drug involves a very complex process from top to bottom. There would be a natural race to circumvent cartels or set up competitors by making them believe you are actually adhering to the oath of global suppression and then go and benefit from it, and what about clinical trials? How to suppress these, the costs to suppress have always been higher than just not to suppress it since it always involves some heavy and heavy-handed policing.

That said, "the cure" would never exist because just as there are many variations of cold there's also many variations of cancer, cancer is even more complex, so "a cure" is more likely. In fact, if you will, it already does exist - just as there is no 100% way to ensure that the patient stays alive during the process or that there is no recurrence.

[Xisa]

You realize that cancer biologists and astrophysicists aren't the same people, right?

No, it's safe to say this person does not.

[Skroe]

I'm not a medical or engineering person but i've never understood this. We send rovers to Mars and people to the moon and space but we haven't cured major diseases over here such as HIV and Cancer. Once you hear a groundbreaking news on a "cure" almost being found, news goes silent on it afterwards. We can clone goats but can't find a cure to premature birth. Can someone please logically explain this foolery to me?

My father is a physician-scientist. I am a computer science. I work on robotics / descision making engines. He works on HIV and Azlheimers.

The most intractible problems in medicine - those major diseases you speak of - the problem isn't money. The research is flush with cash.

It's that the problems are intrinsically hard. THey are the greatest medical challenges the world has known, perhaps not in number of victims but in terms of complexity. With respect to Alzheimers, the precise mechanisms of of how it works, to allow for early detection or pro-active treatment, aren't even clearly known yet.

A decade long treatment study that had major NIH money behind it collapsed last year because the drug trials failed.

This should not be surprising. The greatest problems in Physics... in computer science... in mathematics... in chemistry... some have lingered for fifty years or more. SOme will easily linger for another fifty years or more. It's not because of lack of money, or lack of sharp minds. It is because the process of research and discovery is a slow, painful one in which every small step must be earned.

Really, asking why we haven't cured HIV, a virus that has shown an utterly remarkable ability to mutate and adapt, is no different from a purely scientific perspective as to why scientists haven't precisely discerned the nature of dark matter. Hard problems are hard.

[FeedsOnDevTears]

I'm not a medical or engineering person but i've never understood this. We send rovers to Mars and people to the moon and space but we haven't cured major diseases over here such as HIV and Cancer. Once you hear a groundbreaking news on a "cure" almost being found, news goes silent on it afterwards. We can clone goats but can't find a cure to premature birth. Can someone please logically explain this foolery to me?

You should have your internet access revoked until no one on Earth goes hungry and everyone has access to clean drinking water.

[Skroe]

^ Worst case scenario we accidentally drop all our nukes on it and turn it into a barren and lifeless wasteland. Oh wait...

Industry on Mars would actually be a big improvement - pumping sequestered greenhouse gases into the atmosphere would strengthen it - reducing the wild temperature swings and violent weather conditions, and creating a more moderate and predictable climate: the conditions needed for life. Sure, it might not be breathable to humans - but too much CO2 and methane are good things for plants.

There is actually an interesting moral/philosophical discussion about if we have a right to terraform mars or a responsibility to leave it as is.

Mars as it exists today is purely the product of natural phenomenon. The second we start changing the composition of its atmosphere, introducing algea, getting water to flow at the equator, then "natural Mars" will cease to exist.

How is it different than say, developing Yellowstone National Park, except on a Planetary Scale? And you know me... I'm very very pro-Space. But this is an issue that needs to be discussed because there is no take backs. Humanity would greatly benefit from colonizing Mars. But Mars itself will turn into something completely different after a thousand years or so.

[Theodarzna]

There is Red Queen's Race, these organisms are evolving to keep pace with any victory over nature, nature simply invents new nasty things to attack us with and on it goes. Hence anti-biotic resistant drugs, and the proliferation of AIDS.

Short of completely shedding biological form, we can never outrun the diseases for all time and retain our humaness as is. So short of some crazy sci-fi weird concept from that game Soma(SP?) or something we will never be able to have some final victory over diseases.

[Deleted]

You're comparing discovering, exploring and/or understanding other planets/our universe with finding a cure to major diseases. In my honest opinion, finding a cure for major diseases should take time to find since they're so hard to treat, also, finding a cure for a major disease is not as easy as you make it sound, I'm pretty sure people can multitask. There are many group/kind of people in Earth and many people are doing different kind of stuff, some (such as scientists and physicians) try to find a cure for major diseases and other might find it more interesting to work with other planets and etcetera.

[FeedsOnDevTears]

There is actually an interesting moral/philosophical discussion about if we have a right to terraform mars or a responsibility to leave it as is.

Mars as it exists today is purely the product of natural phenomenon. The second we start changing the composition of its atmosphere, introducing algea, getting water to flow at the equator, then "natural Mars" will cease to exist.

How is it different than say, developing Yellowstone National Park, except on a Planetary Scale? And you know me... I'm very very pro-Space. But this is an issue that needs to be discussed because there is no take backs. Humanity would greatly benefit from colonizing Mars. But Mars itself will turn into something completely different after a thousand years or so.

How long before some group of do-gooders decides to launch their own terraforming experiment, and who cares what anyone else says? It wouldn't cost that insanely much now, right? Think how cheap it'll be to do in twenty years, or thirty.

"Russian patriots colonized Mars with native Russian bacterial ecosystem!" Or China, or North Korea or whatever. Heck, maybe the North Koreans would try to make it even more uninhabitable, just to screw the rest of the human race over.

[Ragnarohk]

There will never be a cure for cancer because cancer isn't a disease. Cancer is a "they" not an "it".

Cancer is a fascinating subject. <3

[therealbowser]

This thread has 'BAIT' written all over it. Why are people feeding this guy?

[Yvaelle]

There is actually an interesting moral/philosophical discussion about if we have a right to terraform mars or a responsibility to leave it as is.

My position is that, as the proto Imperium of Man, we have a right - and further - a responsibility to terraform Mars. It is there that we will make contact with the Omnissiah, and our Techpriests will usher in a new age of technology - it is from Mars that Terra shall craft the Golden Throne. It is upon Mars that we shall build our great Titans and colossal battlecruisers. Mars is the first step we must take to colonizing and terraforming all the galaxy - only then will the Emperor's conquest be sated - only then - when the last Xenos is purged from the last world - will our service end.

Mars as it exists today is purely the product of natural phenomenon. The second we start changing the composition of its atmosphere, introducing algea, getting water to flow at the equator, then "natural Mars" will cease to exist.

Mars had 4 billion years to be a boring rock since its atmosphere died. It's time for it to be fun again.

How is it different than say, developing Yellowstone National Park, except on a Planetary Scale? And you know me... I'm very very pro-Space. But this is an issue that needs to be discussed because there is no take backs. Humanity would greatly benefit from colonizing Mars. But Mars itself will turn into something completely different after a thousand years or so.

In a thousand years, when we're generating artificial planet-sized magnetospheres - those bratty children of Mars can look back at our actions and cry about the loss of the Mars that was - but they can also hop in their FTL ships and go check out a similarly barren rock in the next solar system over: we have a few trillion rocks in this galaxy - we need to use some.

Yellowstone isn't a great example - because it implies there is an entire Earth surrounding it full of accessible materials and space that we could be using instead. If Mars was the last Mars-like planet in our galaxy, I could agree to wanting to preserve the inhospitable 'rockness' of it.

Until we reach the farthest star, I claim all these worlds in the name of Mankind Undivided.

[EnclosedOne]

There will never be a cure for cancer because cancer isn't a disease. Cancer is a "they" not an "it".

Cancer is a fascinating subject. <3

Yeah this is the problem with finding a cure for cancer in particular. I've watched a few shows on the subject and there isn't one single type of cancer there are several and they all have different causes (some genetic, some man made, some caused by virus like HPV) and so they all require a different treatment or combination of treatments.

[tangers58]

Yes that is the reason why we still have no effective vaccinations for diseases like polio or smallpox. OH wait...

Now if only modern people weren't so dumb as to believe those vaccines will give their children autism without any evidence.

[FuxieDK]

I'm not a medical or engineering person but i've never understood this. We send rovers to Mars and people to the moon and space but we haven't cured major diseases over here such as HIV and Cancer. Once you hear a groundbreaking news on a "cure" almost being found, news goes silent on it afterwards. We can clone goats but can't find a cure to premature birth. Can someone please logically explain this foolery to me?

As long as some countries insists on overpopulating the world, we need deadly diseases...