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Is Anyone REALLY Looking for a Cure to Cancer and Other Horrible Diseases?

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JohnnieHolmesNole

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Mar 29, 2002
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Just a random thought: is anyone really looking for cures for cancer, Alzhimer's and other horrific diseases? I sometimes wonder, given the enormous profits that are made "treating" these dreadful afflictions. It just seems like if we can put men on the moon, someone -- after decades of trying, and billions of dollars of research effort -- would find solutions. We come up with new and different treatments, but still no cure. Hmmm.

Part of my cynicism relates to my awareness that we have the technology to build vehicles that use little or no gasoline, yet that technology is gobbled up by the oil companies and permanently shelved. How do we know the same thing is not happening in medicine? In fact, is there any objective reason to think that ISN'T happening in medicine? Just wondering....
 
I have had similar internal thoughts in the past.
But at least for cancer there have been many breakthroughs and the chemo/radiation treatments have been improved to where many of the side effects have been limited or completely removed.
The new big money maker is adhd medications.
 
probably not, I mean there can't be anyone in a position of authority at a drug company who has ever had a family member die of cancer
 
Lex Luthor cured cancer and makes more money off of treatment, so he hides the fact he did.
 
Your awareness is wrong. The oil companies have not shelved technology to make cars less efficient.

And the answer is yes. There are many people working diligently to cure cancer and other diseases. Both the well known "big pharma" as well as many small outfits that you've never heard of are doing so. I have worked with many of them and one of the biggest inhibitor is government regulation. You would be amazed at the amount of secure documentation that goes along with getting a drug tested and approved.

One question I ask though is why do we feel the need to be immortal? Death is a necessary and natural part of life. If we cure all diseases and can all live to 200 years old are we gonna stop procreating so profusely? With technology advancing to the point that labor is hardly needed, what's everyone gonna do?
 
wbnolefan said:
probably not, I mean there can't be anyone in a position of authority at a drug company who has ever had a family member die of cancer
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Maybe they haven't - not since they found (and hid) the cure! Maybe the drug company execs were able to give their afflicted family members the cure on the down-low and save them, then put it back on the shelf for the average Joes, who'd have to continue to pay for the treatment.

At least one of them was a Lakers fan though, since they hooked up Magic and cured his AIDS.

And, just for fun...

 
Just think, there is no cure for the common cold, and even if you get a flu shot it doesn't mean you won't get the flu. Don't let anyone fool you, we are barely out of the dark ages. It's amazing how little we know about the universe. Most of what we think we know today will be proven wrong in the future.
 
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I don't there there are 'cures' per se but I do think there are more effective holistic treatments to a lot of ills that are not embraced by the medical establishment because there is no money to be made in them...
 
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More money in chronic illness than cures for the disease. With that said "Vice" did a great episode of how they are using other diseases to fight cancer.
 
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cmanole said:
I don't there there are 'cures' per se but I do think there are more effective holistic treatments to a lot of ills that are not embraced by the medical establishment because there is no money to be made in them...
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Uhh no. If they worked, they wouldn't be "alternative", they'd be "the way".
 
There have actually been a large number of advancements in the treatment of Alzheimers recently. They've been able to halt the advancement of it in mice for the first time. There is hope that we may have abilities to do so in humans before too much longer, relatively speaking of course.
 
I have often thought the same thing as I have watched a family member battle cancer the last few years. Given the amount of profit that is made from chemotherapy drugs, I do wonder how much incentive there really is for a major drug manufacturer to sink large sums of R&D into developing a drug that cures a disease instead of drugs that manage it.
 
I'm sure many are trying,but when I see the amount of cancer research that is pilfered off your donation for nonsense or anything but R/D, it troubles me. Beware who you donate to.

I'm sure govt regs suck as mentioned
 
Curing does not necessarily mean eradication of the disease from the population, right?

The cynic might think that pharm/biotech doesn't want to eradicate communicable diseases (at least chronic illnesses), they would rather treat them. HIV is not "curable" but it is generally treatable, and there is HUGE money in that. Those with the disease stay alive a long time now but need treatment forever. If treated, HIV is really "just" a chronic disease now, not the unquestionable killer it once was.

There have been many advances in terms of cancer treatment, but its curing is different here; cancer can't be eradicated from the population, but treatment/curing can prevent death. Developing a cure for cancer would seem to be a positive for a drug company, since the "cure" won't impact the incidence of the disease (again, because it's not a communicable disease...well, I guess oral sex exposure to certain infectious pathogens is associated with an increased risk of oral cancer).
 
kooterridesagain said:
I'm sure many are trying,but when I see the amount of cancer research that is pilfered off your donation for nonsense or anything but R/D, it troubles me. Beware who you donate to.

I'm sure govt regs suck as mentioned
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Being aware of who you donate to is good advice for any charity.
 
Eh, even within this premise, there's plenty enough personal aggrandizement and personal wealth at stake to make it happen.
 
JohnnieHolmesNole said:
Just a random thought: is anyone really looking for cures for cancer, Alzhimer's and other horrific diseases? I sometimes wonder, given the enormous profits that are made "treating" these dreadful afflictions. It just seems like if we can put men on the moon, someone -- after decades of trying, and billions of dollars of research effort -- would find solutions. We come up with new and different treatments, but still no cure. Hmmm.

Part of my cynicism relates to my awareness that we have the technology to build vehicles that use little or no gasoline, yet that technology is gobbled up by the oil companies and permanently shelved. How do we know the same thing is not happening in medicine? In fact, is there any objective reason to think that ISN'T happening in medicine? Just wondering....
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I believe this was claimed several years ago by proponents of dichloroacetate (DCA) as a cure. The claim was: Pharmaceutical companies are not investing in this research because DCA method cannot be patented, without a patent they can't make money.
 
It's called keeping population control...lots of things are money controlled.
Does anyone really think cigarettes would be readily available/legal if money had no part in it?
 
KitingHigh said:
One question I ask though is why do we feel the need to be immortal? Death is a necessary and natural part of life. If we cure all diseases and can all live to 200 years old are we gonna stop procreating so profusely? With technology advancing to the point that labor is hardly needed, what's everyone gonna do?
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Have had this exact discussion several times. I'm not sure the Earth could sustain humans living to be 150+ years old. I know we as a country would not be able to sustain our current standard of living.

Honestly, I think Mother Nature has a way of evening these things out. If we cured cancer, we would just start dying of some new disease or mutation. I'm not saying people continue to try to fight to improve detection and treatment, just saying I often think we (as a species) sometimes overestimate our power and control in this world.
 
If all someone cared about was money, it would still be in their best interest to find a cure. They'd be world famous, become very rich(if they wanted it), etc.
 
TexasGooner said:
If all someone cared about was money, it would still be in their best interest to find a cure. They'd be world famous, become very rich(if they wanted it), etc.
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Generally this.

Plus, there are tens of thousands of scientists out there who are dedicated to their profession. It's not like they found a cure and are being given hush money.

If one company found the cure to cancer, that company would instsntly become the most valuable company in the world....which would be good news for execs who hold stock
 
Bav803 said:
Generally this.

Plus, there are tens of thousands of scientists out there who are dedicated to their profession. It's not like they found a cure and are being given hush money.

If one company found the cure to cancer, that company would instsntly become the most valuable company in the world....which would be good news for execs who hold stock
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There are a number of companies that most have never heard of that are working diligently at finding a cure as well as easing pain and controlling it. I have worked with a few of them and they don't neccesarily have a lot of funding. They do it for both humanist reasons as well as the fact that if they succeed they will make a lot of money. Millenium pharmaceuticals comes to mind. Great people dedicated to oncology. I worked for them back in the day when they didn't have much and see that they have since been aquired by Takeda, which though a large company is also filled with some great people. I actually was in the middle of a huge project with them(Takeda) when my wife had complications with her pregnancy requiring me to take leave and they were most understanding and accommodating despite that I couldn't really be replaced due to the very specialized nature of my work at the time.

Sure, it is sometimes about the money, but pharma isn't evil. They really do want to do good.
 
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KitingHigh said:
There are a number of companies that most have never heard of that are working diligently at finding a cure as well as easing pain and controlling it. I have worked with a few of them and they don't neccesarily have a lot of funding. They do it for both humanist reasons as well as the fact that if they succeed they will make a lot of money. Millenium pharmaceuticals comes to mind. Great people dedicated to oncology. I worked for them back in the day when they didn't have much and see that they have since been aquired by Takeda, which though a large company is also filled with some great people. I actually was in the middle of a huge project with them(Takeda) when my wife had complications with her pregnancy requiring me to take leave and they were most understanding and accommodating despite that I couldn't really be replaced due to the very specialized nature of my work at the time.

Sure, it is sometimes about the money, but pharma isn't evil. They really do want to do good.
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Kiting, what do you do, if you don't mind me asking? I'm in "pharmaceutical economics" and work with pharma clients daily.
 
JohnnieHolmesNole said:
.........It just seems like if we can put men on the moon, someone -- after decades of trying, and billions of dollars of research effort -- would find solutions. We come up with new and different treatments, but still no cure. Hmmm.
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Interplanetary space missions are child's play compared to the complexity of biological systems.

To get to the moon and to send probes to the limits of the solar system, all we needed is relatively 1-diminsional calculations of gravity, mass, fuel, acceleration, ballistic curves. Granted, it involves quite complex calculus. And we had to have new computing technology, metallurgy, materials science.......but the fundamental math and science that underpinned the missions was already known since the 1950s. Trying to understand and manipulate biological systems is an epically more complex task than 1960s style rocket science. By the time you're curing alzheimers and cancer, you're about ready to unlock the secret to stopping or at least vastly slowing down the aging process itself.
 
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KitingHigh said:
One question I ask though is why do we feel the need to be immortal? Death is a necessary and natural part of life. If we cure all diseases and can all live to 200 years old are we gonna stop procreating so profusely? With technology advancing to the point that labor is hardly needed, what's everyone gonna do?
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Don't need to at all, yet many will always chase the dream. We'll be able to lengthen the span of healthy life significantly if we so choose, and we probably will. We might eventually legislate limits on new birth as a tradeoff. Several years back the UN forecast was for the planet's population to stabilize at 9--11 billion people by mid-century. As technology improves I imagine we can easily house 12 billion here in perfect comfort. And we'll eventually terraform Mars. I haven't kept up, but I recall several years back the panel on one of those NPR "science Friday" shows mentioned that even with technologies that existed then, if we started the process, we could terraform Mars in a few hundred years. Probably involves some partial use of the greenhouse effect -- setting up technology to release CO2 from the dry ice in the colder regions......and I think there's quite a bit of suspected water ice there too. We might have colonies in the Asteroid belt region as well.

Of course, if you want to look way down the road, :) mankind will be doing that anyway. Long before the sun gets anywhere near the red giant phase, it gets brighter and hotter all through this current stable phase. We'll be burned off of here one way or another in the next few hundred million years......the temperature will reach hotter than the evaporation point of the oceans and they'll go away. And by the time Mars is getting too hot, probably as many as can will have started leaving the system altogether in multi-generation interstellar arks, and begin the very slow journey of moving around to look closer at other star systems.
 
EconSean said:
Kiting, what do you do, if you don't mind me asking? I'm in "pharmaceutical economics" and work with pharma clients daily.
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I retired a couple of years ago from consulting. In pharma I dealt mostly with clinical research trial data and compliance with CFR title 21 part 11.
 
TexasGooner said:
If all someone cared about was money, it would still be in their best interest to find a cure. They'd be world famous, become very rich(if they wanted it), etc.
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Not so much...
If there was a "cure drug" then all the other drugs and treatments that are routinely taken would become null. Yes the "fame" of creating a cure drug would be forever lasting but unless the "cure drug" would be a lifetime drug, the financial benefits wouldn't be there.
 
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