Yes, I'm for stem cell research

tlcarolinagirl

Stem cells save lives. EVERYDAY.

Yup....true dat...living proof!

Lovely_77

This is a topic near and dear for me. As my mom had battled cervical breast and angiosarcoma cancer. And due to that my doctors are on high alert for myself. My mother has worked for ontology for 20 years and its what I am thinking of specialising in myself. Premed right now... so have awhile to think which field is best. I just have anxiety with the whole cancer thing so not sure I could handle it emotionally. Hats off to all that do including my champion of cancer mother.


Haha ontology nice auto correct... oncology

Fullsterkur_woman

It's not all that unsurprising that they have done so much and yet haven't found a cure for cancer. We can't cure viruses, and they're not even technically alive. Cancer cells are living cells, driven by the biological imperative to reproduce themselves, and everything that is toxic to them is toxic to the host.

We also haven't discovered a way to travel faster than light yet either. The fact that we've made so much technological progress doesn't impact the odds of having achieved any particular technological advance.

Fullsterkur_woman

My mother has worked for ontology for 20 years and its what I am thinking of specialising in myself. Premed right now... so have awhile to think which field is best

Best wishes to your mother in her career in existence and reality. :drinker:

Mr_Knight

I don't believe cancer will be healed just because its such a money maker.

That doesn't make sense - if there's a lot of money in treating it, there's a crap load of money in "curing" it.

If there's a way to do it, it will be done...

kwest_4_fitness

My co-worker recently had a stem cell transplant to treat his non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The cancer was being caused by an immuno-deficiency that he's had since he was a child. Essentially, they replaced his entire immune system. I favored stem cell research before that and I support it more strongly now.

BrainyBurro

It's not all that unsurprising that they have done so much and yet haven't found a cure for cancer. We can't cure viruses, and they're not even technically alive. Cancer cells are living cells, driven by the biological imperative to reproduce themselves, and everything that is toxic to them is toxic to the host.

We also haven't discovered a way to travel faster than light yet either. The fact that we've made so much technological progress doesn't impact the odds of having achieved any particular technological advance.

while i don't think cancer can ever be cured.

i do think that we can achieve early stage diagnoses for all sorts of cancers and targeted treatments that only affect the cancer cells, thus not carrying with them the awful side effects of current treatments like chemotherapy. when we can diagnose cancers so early that these treatments are 99.9% safe & effective, then for all intents and purposes, cancer will become little more than a nuisance "disease" for most people, like the flu.

Lovely_77

My mother has worked for ontology for 20 years and its what I am thinking of specialising in myself. Premed right now... so have awhile to think which field is best

Best wishes to your mother in her career in existence and reality. :drinker:

Hahaha too funny, I saw your post and was like huh, reality? So, I went back and looked at my post sure enough phone auto corrected oncology to ontology. Good one... phone- 1 me- 0

BrainyBurro

I don't believe cancer will be healed just because its such a money maker.

If they do cure cancer, there will be another disease that will sprout into an epidemic that we won't be able to cure.

exactly


cancer = money


its sad but true

you've watched too many X-Files episodes...

salembambi

I don't believe cancer will be healed just because its such a money maker.

If they do cure cancer, there will be another disease that will sprout into an epidemic that we won't be able to cure.

pretty sure they already have a cure but its not for the public..because of exactly that..monney money monnnaay money


also yay for stem cells

tlcarolinagirl

it's crazy, but i take one pill a day and a monthly supply costs my insurance company $8,388...for one month!

Akimajuktuq

Yup the masses are always going to think that disease can only be treated with a drug or medical treatment (stem cells or whatever), and that getting diseased is inevitable. WRONG. The info to prevent (and even treat) cancer already exists. It's not a secret. Cancer, and other diseases, can be PREVENTED and very easily. But go ahead and wait for that miracle drug/treatment and think you bear no responsibility for your own health. Cuz cut, burn, poison is so wonderful and effective. (There's tons of cancer in my family and I lost my father to cancer at a young age so don't think I'm just a cold, heartless jerk; I might actually have some experience with this topic and certainly have a right to my opinion.)

As already mentioned, there won't be a "cure" announced anytime soon because cancer is great for profits. Same goes for all the other big diseases.

mmcdonald700

This is a topic near and dear for me. As my mom had battled cervical breast and angiosarcoma cancer. And due to that my doctors are on high alert for myself. My mother has worked for ontology for 20 years and its what I am thinking of specialising in myself. Premed right now... so have awhile to think which field is best. I just have anxiety with the whole cancer thing so not sure I could handle it emotionally. Hats off to all that do including my champion of cancer mother.


Haha ontology nice auto correct... oncology

I find it very interesting that you consider yourself pre-med and are considering specializing in oncology considering all of your comments on this thread about cancer are quite naive. I don't know how far along you are in your degree, and I know that half the people in health sciences at my university are "pre-medicine" (which isn't an actual program or anything it's just like I'm doing a health science degree and I am applying for medicine) so I guess I can't really give that a lot of weight but... you might want to do a little more research. Cancer is extremely complex - it isn't just uncontrolled cell proliferation and consititutive growth factor receptor signalling, it also involves anti-apoptosis (absence of cell programmed death), and very importantly abnormal cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions in order to transition from benign to metastatic. The issue with targeting cancer cells specifically is that they have a lot of markers common to the host cells, it's hard for the body (immune system) to recognize the cancer as non-self because.. well, they are self, technically. And even if it's recognized as non-self they are hard to kill because they don't respond to external apoptosis signalling. Additionally, within a population of cancer cells there are many unique mutations and so it isn't as simple as targeting a single marker because it is a mixed population. So... as you said earlier, yeah, there is a cure... to kill the patient with the highly toxic cancer drugs. I doubt that there is a cure as simple as inject T-cells back into someone, and I know that there is a lot of research being done on the immunology angle of targeting cancer but I don't think anyone is withholding a cure to cancer. There is no panacea for cancer. There will be better treatments that put more people into remission and make treatment less unpleasant for patients. Cancer is so complex you can't make a target specific enough for cancer cells and actually kill the whole population specifically due to the accelerated proliferation and high mutation rate of cancer cells that leads to a heterogenous population of cells. However, I would like to read the paper on the T-cell strategy you were talking about if you have a source for that study.

tl;dr Cancer is really complex and there will never be a cure-all for it.

Fullsterkur_woman

What?! Just because there's malaria treatments available doesn't mean I'm going to forget about malaria prevention or go roll around in an insect-infested fen!

Chieflrg

I don't believe cancer will be healed just because its such a money maker.

If they do cure cancer, there will be another disease that will sprout into an epidemic that we won't be able to cure.

I 100% agree with your 2nd statement.

As for the first, healing cancer new things are developed every day.

Just in the past few years, there is now a blood test that can detect on cancer cell amongst 1 billion healthy ones. The hope is that this will eventually be the "gold standard" that is affordable as a better way to screen for the disease than the mammograms and colonoscopies used now.

It will also be used to research which drugs are effective at killing cancer.

Perhaps I have more hope than most, as the chemo that flowed through my veins is fairly new on the market as far chemo's go. A few years back I would of died within a year. I was given 40% chance to make it two years. This last Christmas I had my four year anniversary of the last drop of chemo entering my body.

Cure maybe not, healing is always possible.

Much love.

Mr_Knight

I don't believe cancer will be healed just because its such a money maker.

If they do cure cancer, there will be another disease that will sprout into an epidemic that we won't be able to cure.

pretty sure they already have a cure but its not for the public..because of exactly that..monney money monnnaay money

You are in effect saying that someone is holding back what would be the most profitable invention in human history because they'd rather make less money.

That's just plain ridiculous.

tlcarolinagirl

Yup the masses are always going to think that disease can only be treated with a drug or medical treatment (stem cells or whatever), and that getting diseased is inevitable. WRONG. The info to prevent (and even treat) cancer already exists. It's not a secret. Cancer, and other diseases, can be PREVENTED and very easily. But go ahead and wait for that miracle drug/treatment and think you bear no responsibility for your own health. Cuz cut, burn, poison is so wonderful and effective. (There's tons of cancer in my family and I lost my father to cancer at a young age so don't think I'm just a cold, heartless jerk; I might actually have some experience with this topic and certainly have a right to my opinion.)

As already mentioned, there won't be a "cure" announced anytime soon because cancer is great for profits. Same goes for all the other big diseases.

Dang, where were you 5 years ago? I would have loved to have known how I could have PREVENTED my chromosomes 9 and 22 from translocating. And I can tell you this, I stop taking my medicine, I will die. The cancer will take over my bone marrow, kill all my white blood cells, and I will oh-fishally kick the bucket. If you know a way for me to get rid of this leukemia naturally, please tell me because I am dying to have another baby and can't while I am on this medicine.

mmcdonald700

Also, for anyone suggesting a conspiracy theory about cancer treatments being withheld because it makes pharmaceutical companies money that simply isn't true. Is big pharm industry corrupt? To an extent, yes. But cancer drugs make them the most money and so no one would develop a cancer drug and NOT immediately patent it and put it into clinical trials. What would be the point of paying people money in R&D to invent new drugs (or re-invent old drugs more like) just to withhold your product? Doesn't even make sense. Also, what I said in my initial post.

trojan_bb

I don't believe cancer will be healed just because its such a money maker.

If they do cure cancer, there will be another disease that will sprout into an epidemic that we won't be able to cure.

Not how enterprise works.

It makes money for the existing players. There are medical companies and pharmas which do not currently profit from cancer. These new and outside players have a HUGE financial incentive to beat cancer. Only hospitals, some equipment vendors, and some pharmas have a vested interest in the status quo. The rest of the world does not.

pretty sure they already have a cure but its not for the public..because of exactly that..monney money monnnaay money


also yay for stem cells

The list of patents is public information. So this company of yours with a cure being held back just decided not to patent their new cure to keep it secret? Right.

Even if you could believe that, why not patent? Said company would make far far more just from the patent alone.


The cancer conspiracy crowd is always good a for a laugh, It takes a pretty fundamental lack of economic and drug law knowledge to even consider it. And a massively warped view of human nature.

Hell, financial incentives aside, the drug inventor would have his name in every textbook for a thousand years.

Lovely_77

This is a topic near and dear for me. As my mom had battled cervical breast and angiosarcoma cancer. And due to that my doctors are on high alert for myself. My mother has worked for ontology for 20 years and its what I am thinking of specialising in myself. Premed right now... so have awhile to think which field is best. I just have anxiety with the whole cancer thing so not sure I could handle it emotionally. Hats off to all that do including my champion of cancer mother.


Haha ontology nice auto correct... oncology

I find it very interesting that you consider yourself pre-med and are considering specializing in oncology considering all of your comments on this thread about cancer are quite naive. I don't know how far along you are in your degree, and I know that half the people in health sciences at my university are "pre-medicine" (which isn't an actual program or anything it's just like I'm doing a health science degree and I am applying for medicine) so I guess I can't really give that a lot of weight but... you might want to do a little more research. Cancer is extremely complex - it isn't just uncontrolled cell proliferation and consititutive growth factor receptor signalling, it also involves anti-apoptosis (absence of cell programmed death), and very importantly abnormal cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions in order to transition from benign to metastatic. The issue with targeting cancer cells specifically is that they have a lot of markers common to the host cells, it's hard for the body (immune system) to recognize the cancer as non-self because.. well, they are self, technically. And even if it's recognized as non-self they are hard to kill because they don't respond to external apoptosis signalling. Additionally, within a population of cancer cells there are many unique mutations and so it isn't as simple as targeting a single marker because it is a mixed population. So... as you said earlier, yeah, there is a cure... to kill the patient with the highly toxic cancer drugs. I doubt that there is a cure as simple as inject T-cells back into someone, and I know that there is a lot of research being done on the immunology angle of targeting cancer but I don't think anyone is withholding a cure to cancer. There is no panacea for cancer. There will be better treatments that put more people into remission and make treatment less unpleasant for patients. Cancer is so complex you can't make a target specific enough for cancer cells and actually kill the whole population specifically due to the accelerated proliferation and high mutation rate of cancer cells that leads to a heterogenous population of cells. However, I would like to read the paper on the T-cell strategy you were talking about if you have a source for that study.

tl;dr Cancer is really complex and there will never be a cure-all for it.

I don't think that having an opinion based from what I have experienced with my mother snd three differrnt kinds of cancer makes me ignorant, but an idea based off of experience. I think you also missed the post where I stated that cancer will always rule the medical field even with a cure. I also never said that they were withholding a cure so I am very confused where that idea came from. I will definitely post a link to the T cell article I was discussing since you're showing an interest in it. They are not only looking into this for a cancer cure, which many patients have under went for treatment but as well to cure the flu, since the proteins of the flu virus never change even with mutation, they are assuming these T cells will always recognize it on a protein level. Pre-med is not a degree, or a course as it's still considered undergraduate and just simply means taking medical courses. I have an associates in applied science and just taking purely the last few medical courses I need to apply for PA school. I understand and know that cancer is not the same for everyone and how advanced it can be from one person to the next, which again brings up my point in saying cancer will always rule the medical field. Give me a moment to track down that article or a few and to post it.