Why cant they find a cure for cancer?.

[Hooked]

I have been wondering after all these years and with so much money being thrown at cancer research why they can't find a cure for it?. I have had many people in my family die from cancer over the years and the treatments are still the same. Chemotherapy seems to do nothing but make them sick and they still end up dying a year or 2 later. So is cancer research just a scam?.

[lockblock]

They have one but it's more profitable to treat people for the rest of their lives.

[Belloc]

Because cancer is caused by a multitude of diseases. You may be able to treat one type, but that treatment will have little-to-no effectiveness on others.

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They have one but it's more profitable to treat people for the rest of their lives.

hahahaha, oh man, you're funny!

[EnclosedOne]

I'm sure that they've already found the cure but they'll never release it because there isn't money is making people healthy. They do their best to keep people barely healthy so they have to continue to pay for meds they probably don't even really need. It comes down to greed and the fact that the government is too much of a pussy to put their foot down and create a healthcare system similar to canada where everyone can get the care they need.

[Garnier Fructis]

They have one but it's more profitable to treat people for the rest of their lives.

I'm sure that they've already found the cure but they'll never release it because there isn't money is making people healthy.

Anyways, the answer is that there are many different kinds of cancer and most approaches are not one size fits all.

[Iyarashii]

Because cancer is caused by a multitude of diseases. You may be able to treat one type, but that treatment will have little-to-no effectiveness on others.

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hahahaha, oh man, you're funny!

If I recall they actually have, I remember reading awhile ago like a year and a half that they found a cure or prevent for HIV or cancer I can't remember which and that they were trying to pass it by the FDA, it could have already and they are just keeping it for money but I highly doubt that. And I wish I had a source for it but I really did see it ahaha.

Also cancer is hard to treat because it's caused by a malformed cell, which creates a growth and there is a multitude of reasons what causes the malformed cell making it hard to find a treatment for it. Which is why chemotherapy is used, it uses radiation to try and kill the malformed cell and growth.


JK it was for HIV and I found the source http://guardianlv.com/2013/07/hiv-cure-found/ don't know if it's credible or not though so take it with a grain of salt.

[Belloc]

I'm sure that they've already found the cure but they'll never release it because there isn't money is making people healthy. They do their best to keep people barely healthy so they have to continue to pay for meds they probably don't even really need. It comes down to greed and the fact that the government is too much of a pussy to put their foot down and create a healthcare system similar to canada where everyone can get the care they need.

Seriously? You realize that there are plenty of other advanced countries that wouldn't permit that behavior, right? It'd be impossible to suppress such a cure.

[Sorshen]

Cancer describes a multitude of afflictions. There isn't a pill that will just cure 'em all.

[Hooked]

Well what the hell do cancer researchers do all day for the last 50 years or so?. I mean damn.

[Jargan]

Cancer is a little more broad than most people realize. Hundreds of subtypes of cancer, potentially thousands of causes, ranging from environmental to a single point mutation in any of thousands of proteins. Not to mention that our understanding of most of these types in limited to basic mechanism and most treatments are barely able to differentiate targeting cancer cells instead of healthy cells. This is one of the reasons why cancer treatments (chemotherapy) consist of multiple drugs attacking cancer cells in a variety of directions hoping to kill enough of them to slow further growth.

A blanket cure is pretty unlikely, but treatments for individual types have made progress and hopefully will continue to do so through further understanding of genetics, specific mutations, and mechanisms that can be targeted in future treatments.

[obdigore]

Do you know how most cancer is caused? I'm not trying to run a basic biology class here, but lets go really fast and hard. The human body is made up of cells. Cells reproduce themselves constantly. The copies are never quite as good as the original, often close, but never perfect. If/when the copy looses its regulator on how fast/when to reproduce itself, you get cancer.

The thing is, there is tons of different types of cells in the human body, along with a ton of different things they do. There isn't a cure-all, and there wont be. Cancer will be 'cured' about the same time we 'cure' aging, since it is essentially due to the same process.

[RaynstormmtenHo]

Cancer is genetic mutation. It's not caused by virus', or bacteria, but instead caused by the cells themselves mutating. Some forms are caused by the cells not knowing it's meant to die. There's also no specific cause for it, just many different factors that can increase the chance of a mutation.

You can fight bacteria with antibiotics, and our bodies do a great job against many viruses, but mutation is something we've not yet evolved around because it's not a trait that's common amongst the pool (or at least, tumors drain resources from the 'host', and the mutation of a gene is unlikely to be passed on genetically).

Actually, some cancers ARE caused by viruses... HPV (or human papillomavirus) can cause cervical or throat cancer.

To answer the OP - the reason that cancer is so difficult to treat is because it's hard for the medicine to tell the difference between a normal, healthy cell and a cancerous cell. So when you take chemo or radiation, the medicine can harm healthy cells.

There are new cancer therapies - called "targeted therapies" - that use genetic markers to identify cancerous cells, but even then they don't work 100%.

[teddytous]

Cause its part of our bodies gone a fuck. Most the things that people have trouble curing are these "parts of us gone a fuck". Deceases, virus, that stuffs down to a science for the most part, but getting our own bodies to get back in line once they've gone a fuck genetically, hormonally, chemically, these we don't do so well.

[Hooked]

Ok I understand there is no supercure yet, but why is chemotherapy used on all cancer patients?. It doesnt do shit but make people sick.

[THE Bigzoman]

Im under the conclusion that cancer is simply a natural death. Seeing as though no outside force initially causes it within the human body.

[HeroZero]

Actually, some cancers ARE caused by viruses... HPV (or human papillomavirus) can cause cervical or throat cancer.

To answer the OP - the reason that cancer is so difficult to treat is because it's hard for the medicine to tell the difference between a normal, healthy cell and a cancerous cell. So when you take chemo or radiation, the medicine can harm healthy cells.

There are new cancer therapies - called "targeted therapies" - that use genetic markers to identify cancerous cells, but even then they don't work 100%.

The difference here is they do not directly cause the cancer, is is a secondary effect of changes or damage to those ares that cause the cancer. It would be like saying going outside gives you cancer because the sun gives you skin cancer, not entirely correct.

[teddytous]

Ok I understand there is no supercure yet, but why is chemotherapy used on all cancer patients?. It doesnt do shit but make people sick.

Cause that's the idea - Chemotherapy is like - hey lets take this nasty shit that kills fuckin everything - target it to that area and hope it fucks up the cancer. Then we fix the other 93 things it fucks up.

Im under the conclusion that cancer is simply a natural death. Seeing as though no outside force initially causes it within the human body.

If I am understanding you correctly, this is WILDLY inaccurate - are you saying that no outside influence causes cancer? Cause that's hogwash - we know of literately 1000s of carcinogenic materials at this point... not to mention cancer causes by radiation, virus, decease, hereditary factors, and more.

[Jargan]

Cancer is a little more broad than most people realize. Hundreds of subtypes of cancer, potentially thousands of causes, ranging from environmental to a single point mutation in any of thousands of proteins. Not to mention that our understanding of most of these types in limited to basic mechanism and most treatments are barely able to differentiate targeting cancer cells instead of healthy cells. This is one of the reasons why cancer treatments (chemotherapy) consist of multiple drugs attacking cancer cells in a variety of directions hoping to kill enough of them to slow further growth.

Like I said, cancer cells are essentially our own cells that have something wrong with them on a genetic level. This change isn't usually enough to differentiate them enough so that chemo can specifically target them and leave the healthy cells alone. Being somewhat in the field, I know that cancer research groups are heavily funded and the work is being done. This isn't an easy problem.

[SLOWLLY]

http://www.revista-ariel.org/index.p...d=54&Itemid=83

Give it a good read, you'll enjoy.

[Deleted]

I could rant on about this for ages since i study Biology at university, but basically Cancer is a very broad term that encompasses a huge range of diseases that are very different to each other.

Take Breast Cancer for example, many will think there is 1 type of Breast Cancer but actually, there are many subtypes and indeed, each cancer is actually unique from every other (and a cancer itself can be heterogenous). Most cases of Breast Cancer respond well to Chemotherapy or other standard treatments, but there are apparent subtypes that are resistant or not repsonsive to those standard treatments. And in that, Chemotherapy, and other methods of treatment, themselves lend to mortality or long-term toxic effects on people.

A universal cure for cancer would have to aim at oncogenesis, something that all cancers have in common, but to be quite frank we're no where of being able to do this. Human cells are very complex things, if you could map out every pathway and all the cellular circuitry, only then could you dream of finding a cure. There are many valid targets for developing treatments that all cancers share, e.g. angiogenesis, but the problem is that cancers are fully capable of being resistant to certain drugs/conditions by which you might try to treat with.

But actually, if you think back to the 1950s, diseases like child leukaemia had almost a 100% mortality rate. These days they have about ~40%. We're in a good position.