Is humanity about to beat cancer?
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Nah, this paper is only about the physical ailment, not about bankers & stock brokers.
People downvote but it's true. Most cancer can already be cured if we detect it early, and we have many early detection methods that go un-used because it costs insurance companies more. The scientific/medical arguments against routine screening are weak and pathetic.
Imagine a country where everyone over 40 gets an annual chest x-ray, and CT scans for smokers/former smokers.
Join us in the frozen North. I was three months out from a "scope" to look for colon cancer and my GP had a consult with me on an unrelated matter. He made a frowny face and said "you need another scope". I told him I just had one. He insisted. So I went. Was on an operating table about four weeks later. I would have been dead without that scope. I had no problem doing that first or second scope because they were "free" (I am guessing about $1300 a year goes from my taxes to health care, so not free, just a decent price considering I have colleagues in the US where that won't even cover two months).
I am guessing about $1300 a year goes from my taxes to health care
That is far less than the average American insurance plan and those include co-pays and deductibles. I hate living in the U.S.
My wife and I each pay a little into our work health plans but that's mostly to cover dental and a few other things we really don't use.
Here's an example of that coverage: I pay about $20 a month into my work plan. That covers pretty much all our dental work.
I occasionally have to pay out of pocket for some stuff (CPAP machine, dental implant) but get compensated after submitting paperwork (no deductible).
I worked in the US for a bit in a kitchen and was always worried about getting injured. At the time I couldn't buy muscle relaxant over the counter which I thought was nuts (I get back spasms) until I realized requiring a prescription was one more was to squeeze people for a doctor's visit.
You are aware, that you can get cancer caused by the radiation of these diagnostics?
That's not completely true. Look up the video medlifecrisis did on it for just one example. When cancer isn't cancer or epidemic of fake disease.
Part of the reason I consider those arguments weak, is we could be dedicating research money to solving those problems, but we don't. In his video, he also is very quickly glossing over the counter points. For example, the patient who received a heart stent because they detected early narrowing of an artery would not be given a stent today, and instead it would be monitored, which is a good thing. For the breast cancer bit, two paragraphs show up on the screen showing a study that followed women with DCIS. 5/28 of those women died of breast cancer. So by the numbers in that study, testing positive means you would have an 18% chance of dying from breast cancer if you did nothing. Idk about you, but if my ods were practically 1 in 5 I'd be monitoring the situation. Again in the anecdote the patient chose to operate too early, and a good doctor would be advising against that. Lead time bias is the only argument I think isn't weak, but there also isn't really enough data on it for us to know for sure. That and the fact that deaths to cancer remains steady instead of going down as diagnosis goes up. I still think it would be better to screen people and monitor them if they test positive rather than wait for symptoms, because so often the symptoms come far too late. I also think more research could be done to reduce false positives and understand what makes some cancer not deadly. It's severely under funded research because it doesn't make money and it isn't glamorous, but it could absolutely save lives
I agree there's more money in just treating symptoms and EOL care than actually eradicating cancer, but future treatment/eradication is certainly glamorous. Just think of all the celebrities that keep dying from cancer that could come out and say I was saved by X.
Patric Swayze, Steve Jobs, David Bowie and Peewee Herman just to name a few.
Steve Jobs died because he tried homeopathic treatment the second time, so you can take him off that list lol.
Would he go the crazy route is there was an established treatment with 100% success rate though?
How many people you know that drink diluted shit to treat rabies? You just go get your shots like a good boy and live to get bit another day.
I mean, the treatment he had the first time worked, seems to me like it would make sense to do it again, especially with the advances in the treatment since the first time
Just in time for us to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria
Eh, it's an issue and it may get worse than it is today, but it will never be as big of a deal as cancer.
The nightmare scenario of antibiotics one day becoming useless because all bacteria are resistant to them is just not realistic. First of all, antibiotics aren't new. Many of them weren't invented, they were discovered. Which means they existed in fungi or other bacteria for millions of years and were used to fight unwanted bacteria. Penicillin is named after the Penicillium mold, for example.
Antibiotic resistance is a survival strategy for bacteria that are under a lot of stress from antibiotics. This happens in hospitals, nursing homes or farms where antibiotics are used en masse. In these places, resistant bacteria have a clear advantage over normal ones, so they can quickly replicate without much competition. But as soon as you take away the antibiotics, that advantage disappears and suddenly they have to compete with the normal bacteria again. Plus, maintaining the antibiotic resistance is effort. They have to produce special proteins or change the ones they normally use, which can make them less efficient.
So most likely, antibiotic resistance will continue to be a problem mainly in places where lots of antibiotics are used all the time. As soon as we reduce usage, resistance will go down. There are certain antibiotics that haven't been used in decades due to side effects, such as Colistin, which can now be used to treat multi-drug-resistant bacteria because they haven't been exposed to it for so long. Other antibiotics like quinolones are currently falling out of favor, so they may be the magic bullet of the future.
One more aspect is that antibiotics don't make a lot of money for pharmaceutical companies, because they're usually only taken for days or a few weeks, while other drugs such as heart medication are taken lifelong. That's why there's not a lot of (private) money going into antibiotic research. But if the situation gets bad enough, this may change and it will likely mean that a lot more new antibiotics are developed.
As someone who has worried a lot about this issue in the past, this is very enlightening.
I am more worried about the next pandemic leaking from an unlicensed lab or the dangers of weird pathogens coming out of freshly melted permafrost... but then again either of those could also lead to an antibiotic resistant infection so... I guess yeah I am worried about that too.
I think there is about to be some sketchy permafrost shit about to get defrosted.
Phages seems like a good alternative.
Not all cancers are solid, but this is a promising development!
I surely hope so.
Might be worth waiting for some news outlets you've actually heard of to start carrying the story before you break out the balloons.
This feels like a cynical ploy for funding, like almost every "miracle battery" story carried over the past ten years.
Wer all know where that leads.
Somebody explain what solid tumors are.
A benign or malignant neoplasm arising from tissues that do not include fluid areas. Representative examples include epithelial neoplasms (e.g. lung carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, breast carcinoma, colon carcinoma), and neoplasms arising from the soft tissues and bones (e.g. leiomyosarcoma, liposarcoma, chondrosarcoma, osteosarcoma). Neoplasms originating from the blood or bone marrow (leukemias and myeloproliferative disorders) are not considered solid tumors.
That helps, thank you. I am thinking pancreatic cancer would be in this category. That's horrible stuff.
It is indeed and yeah I lost a grandparent to that. If we could beat that one it would be amazing.
I also lost a grandparent to it and the suffering was horrible to watch. Fuck cancer.