Will they ever find a cure for cancer?

[Phoenix84]

I get a lot of stuff in the mail requesting I donate money to help find a cure for cancer.  I don't have any facts or figures, but the amount of money donated and spent on trying to find a cure must be staggering, and yet we don't have a cure yet. 

So is there any point in donating money to medical research, where the past 20+ years haven't yielded any results? 

From what I understand of the disease, it's caused when cells don't divide properly.  So the cause must be some inherant flaw in our DNA, or other basic cellular properties.  How can you "cure" something like that?

Maybe someone who knows more about biology than I do can comment?

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Every case of caner is unique since it's you're own cells going haywire.  Just because I have pancreatic cancer does not mean my case is going to be exactly like your pancreatic cancer.   There is no "cure for cancer" because every cancer has its own unique properties based on the kind of cancer and the person who has it.

For breast cancer alone there are FIVE major genetic pathways and then there are dozens, if not hundreds of random occurences that don't fit in the first five categories.  They've only just started understanding the major five.

Cure for cancer is a great marketing tool.  It's a lot easier to say than "Donate to research to investigate 5 different pathways for breast cancer and develop treatments that may or may not make it past intial testing and into the market".

Which one do you think lay people will understand and be more likely to donate to?

It can take decades before something makes it to human testing and even longer than that before it's approved for market.  Many drugs never make it out of the lab and for good reasons.

Research is not linear in that I go from Step 1 to 2 to 3 and boom I am done.   There is often a Step 1.5 or I have to go back a step or I have to start completely over or new questions pop up that have to be answered.   This isn't like a math equation where I plug in numbers and get my results and that's the end of it.

Cancer involves the entire body and there is no such thing as "one gene one function".  Anything involving shutting doing a genetic pathway would need to be tailored to specfically target the pathway in the cancer and no where else.

That's extremely hard to do even in animal models.  Approval to attempt that in human subjects would be a long long long way off.

[cronewitch]

No probably not a cure but treatment is far better than before and some prevention like not smoking works. Research can help find things to avoid like smoked meats so less people get cancer. I know lots of people who survived breast cancer. You could call it a cure because the treatment worked, drugs, surgery and radiation but they lived.

[Angel!]

Yes, but every type of cancer is different and there are probably tons of causes as well.  But, they have developed that shot that prevents 75% of cervical cancer.  Just knowing they have developed something like that makes me think eventually we will start identifying more root causes and preventions.

Plus, as cronewitch mentioned, treatment has come a very long way.  My Dad is getting some kind of fancy radiation now that involves placing gold markers to target the cancer.  I think that method has just been developed within the last decade.  And they will keep finding better ways to both detect and treat cancer.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Cancer is not a single disease, but many different ones that all have a similar symptom, unrestrained growth of abnormal cells.

As it is multiple diseases, each has its own demographic, etiology, cause, treatment, prognosis, etc.  Also throwing a huge genetic component, much of which has just barely been identified.

It is not unlike comparing a case of strep throat to TB to diphtheria.

[Phoenix84]

So if it's not possible to find a "cure" for cancer, isn't that a bit misleading?

Furthermore, why do we need to donate money at all?  I can't think of anytime a pharmacutical company came knocking on my door to ask for money for whatever drug or treatment they ask for.  To my knowledge, heart disease kills far more people than cancer, and yet you don't see as much, if any, fundraising for it.  Why is it okay to collect for some medical conditions and not others?  Furthermore, if we're collecting all of this money for breast cancer, is it fair that people don't donate nearly as much to other types of cancer, like prostate?

I always thought if they found a cure for one type of cancer, they could find a cure for all types.  But I guess that isn't the case.

[swamp]

There have been huge developments in the field of cancer treatment and diagnosis in the past 20 years. DH is an oncology pharmacist and he spends lots of time reading up on the developments

[swamp]

Sept 24, 2013 15:55:39 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

[pr]I always thought if they found a cure for one type of cancer, they could find a cure for all types.  But I guess that isn't the case.

[/p][/quote]


Seriously!?

Come on. I'm not a STEM person and I thought that was generally known.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

So if it's not possible to find a "cure" for cancer, isn't that a bit misleading

Sure but as I pointed out how many lay people are going to understand what I said or Mich or Angel said?  "Cure for Cancer" is an easy simple marketing term you can throw around when soliciting donations.

You're more likely to fall asleep than donate if I explain what I do for a living. 

Some cancer groups have bigger/better marketing departments than others.  It doesn't nessicarly mean prostate cancer is any less well funded than breast cancer because public donations are a small slice of the pie.  There are many ways to obtain funding.

[kittensaver]

We will not find a cure for cancer as long as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries can make a handsome living off the insurance companies (and government and private foundation research dollars) treating and researching it.

Flame away.

[HoneyBBQ]

Sept 24, 2013 15:30:26 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

So is there any point in donating money to medical research, where the past 20+ years haven't yielded any results? 

That's a pretty offensive opinion to those of us who work in the field. And in fact, there is a cure for cancer - you kill the cancer cells with radiation, chemotherapy, and/or targeted drug agents. So we CAN, in fact, CURE cancer - the definition being 5 yrs without disease. The problem is we sometimes can't keep UP with the cancer. We have made huge improvements just over the past 10 years alone.

Here's some data if you think we haven't made any improvements:

Among adults, the 5-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined is now approximately 68%;
Among adults diagnosed with cancer during the period from 1974 through 1976, the 5-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined was 50%.

During the same period, the 5-year relative survival rate for all childhood cancers combined was about 62%.The 5-year relative survival rate for all childhood cancers combined is now approximately 81%.

source: report.nih.gov/nihfactsheets/viewfactsheet.aspx?csid=75

[HoneyBBQ]

Sept 24, 2013 15:55:39 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

So if it's not possible to find a "cure" for cancer, isn't that a bit misleading?

Furthermore, why do we need to donate money at all?  I can't think of anytime a pharmacutical company came knocking on my door to ask for money for whatever drug or treatment they ask for.  To my knowledge, heart disease kills far more people than cancer, and yet you don't see as much, if any, fundraising for it.  Why is it okay to collect for some medical conditions and not others?  Furthermore, if we're collecting all of this money for breast cancer, is it fair that people don't donate nearly as much to other types of cancer, like prostate?

I always thought if they found a cure for one type of cancer, they could find a cure for all types.  But I guess that isn't the case.

Most heart disease is caused by people being fat and eating too much.

We don't really know what causes most cancers, and its usually not gluttony.

So which would you rather contribute to? Something that most people know they are developing and won't do anything about (put down the cheeseburger) or to a innocent 8 yr old who ends up with Ewing sarcoma because of unlucky genes?

[sheilaincali]

Sept 24, 2013 16:00:46 GMT -5 kittensaver said:

We will not find a cure for cancer as long as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries can make a handsome living off the insurance companies (and government and private foundation research dollars) treating and researching it.

Flame away.

I know several people that feel the same way.  It makes one wonder if there is an almighty $ point.  You don't hear much about whether or not they are looking for a cure for AIDS anymore but the drug cocktail keeps people healthy and symptom free for years and years.  More money in the treatment than a cure. 

Common cold- why cure it?  If one $10 shot keeps me from getting a cold they are losing out on 10x that in Kleenex, cough drops, and cold medicine that I buy every year.

You have to wonder and be a little cynical and question things sometimes.  That's my opinion anyway.

[sheilaincali]

That being said- my mother is a cancer survivor and very active in our Relay for Life and fundraising efforts.  She was the local co-chair for the Relay for 7 years and is currently acting as the "Survivor's Chairperson".  I support her in her efforts. 

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Phoenix....when I first started out, I did cancer research.  Our lab looked at ONE chemotherapy mode for ONE childhood leukemia.

Just about every organ in your body has cells that can go haywire.  Not only that, each organ has several different types of cells that can go haywire and treatment is not the same for each.  There are at least 4 different types of lung cancer, and each have a different prognosis and are treated differently.  My data is probably old as I last researched this when my mom had lung cancer, so around 1998.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Sept 24, 2013 16:08:01 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

Sept 24, 2013 16:00:46 GMT -5 kittensaver said:

We will not find a cure for cancer as long as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries can make a handsome living off the insurance companies (and government and private foundation research dollars) treating and researching it.

Flame away.

I know several people that feel the same way.  It makes one wonder if there is an almighty $ point.  You don't hear much about whether or not they are looking for a cure for AIDS anymore but the drug cocktail keeps people healthy and symptom free for years and years.  More money in the treatment than a cure. 

Common cold- why cure it?  If one $10 shot keeps me from getting a cold they are losing out on 10x that in Kleenex, cough drops, and cold medicine that I buy every year.

You have to wonder and be a little cynical and question things sometimes.  That's my opinion anyway.

There is a lot of research going on for AIDS, pick up any infectious disease journal and half the articles in there are about the strides being made to understand how the virus acts.

You cannot cure a cold with a vaccine. A cold is a rhinovirus, it rarely kills anyone and there are hundreds of different rhinoviruses that cause colds.e. The flu is caused by the influenza virus, ir does kill people. There is some repetition in the flu virus so that the strains are similar enough to have a cross reacting immune response.

[cronewitch]

Not all heart disease is from bad diets. My aunt has always been very thin yet the last few years serious heart disease. She is 85 now and I don't think they will find a cure for her it will probably kill her. She had breast cancer twice and was cured last time about 30 years ago so heart disease is worse for her.

Many are born with heart defects, student athletes fall over dead as a first sign. Some cancers are from behavior two like lung often is but people will continue to risk cancer and heart disease to live the way they choose.

[Phoenix84]

Sept 24, 2013 16:08:01 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

Sept 24, 2013 16:00:46 GMT -5 kittensaver said:

We will not find a cure for cancer as long as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries can make a handsome living off the insurance companies (and government and private foundation research dollars) treating and researching it.

Flame away.

I know several people that feel the same way.  It makes one wonder if there is an almighty $ point.  You don't hear much about whether or not they are looking for a cure for AIDS anymore but the drug cocktail keeps people healthy and symptom free for years and years.  More money in the treatment than a cure. 

Common cold- why cure it?  If one $10 shot keeps me from getting a cold they are losing out on 10x that in Kleenex, cough drops, and cold medicine that I buy every year.

You have to wonder and be a little cynical and question things sometimes.  That's my opinion anyway.

LOL, you jumped the gun Shealiaincali.

I had planned to start a follow up thread to this one asking this very question, "is it more likely that we'll start seeing more and more treatments, instead of cures, because that's where the money is?"  I was debating wheather to include it in this thread or not, and decided the questions were different enough to warrent their own.

[Phoenix84]

Living an unhealthy lifestyle is not the only cause of heart disease, there is a major genetic component to that as well.

My dad has high cholesterol and blood pressure, and is pre diabetic.  From what I just told you, you'd think he was overweight, never exercised, and didn't eat healthy.  But he exercises for over an hour a day, eats really healthy, and is a healthy weight.  It's just that he has crappy genes.

[Gardening Grandma]

phoenix,
That is a very good point. DH is an example of a very fit 64 year old. He exercises daily (runs 5 miles daily on a treadmill) watches his diet and alcohol (he is 5'11" and weighs 185 lbs) and doesn't smoke. But he has high blood pressure (heredity) and cancer. Go figure.  The blood pressure is under control with medication that he will have to take the rest of his life.

I'm overweight and sedentary.  I also have normal blood pressure (without any medication) and better cholesterol than DH. I take no prescription meds.  Just a Vitamin D supplement.  Again, heredity.

To address your original question, when DH was diagnosed with prostate cancer (he has two different kinds of cancer), the urologist stated that they could "cure prostate cancer" if they found it early enough. I was a little surprised at the claim, but apparently, in the case of early detection, it is highly treatable.

[Tennesseer]

A cure for cancer will not prevent cancer from initially developing.  A cure will vastly reduce the mortality rate.  But being cured will still require the patient to probably go through chemo, radiation and other treatments.

After her cancer infected left breast was removed through a masectomy, a friend of mine developed breast cancer several years later in the left breast area.

[The Captain]

Sept 24, 2013 15:30:26 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

I get a lot of stuff in the mail requesting I donate money to help find a cure for cancer.  I don't have any facts or figures, but the amount of money donated and spent on trying to find a cure must be staggering, and yet we don't have a cure yet. 

So is there any point in donating money to medical research, where the past 20+ years haven't yielded any results? 

From what I understand of the disease, it's caused when cells don't divide properly.  So the cause must be some inherant flaw in our DNA, or other basic cellular properties.  How can you "cure" something like that?

Maybe someone who knows more about biology than I do can comment?

The fact that my sister is alive, cancer free for over a year, and can be expected to have a normal lifespan from an aggressive type of breast cancer that would have metasized 20 years ago belies your comment.  20 years ago the only treatment for her type of cancer was to remove all lymph nodes, breast tissue, etc and buy maybe 2-3 years time, if that.

Her cancer was triggered by an overproduction of estrogen.  Specific genetic markers indicate the type of treatment which has the best long term success rate.  My sister's treatment was targeted to her specifically.

There are many forms of cancer, they just all get lumped (no pun intended) together.

[jkapp]

Considering how many hospitals/practices there are out there that specialize in cancer treatments, I doubt very much a cure will ever happen.  All we'll ever get is ever-more-expensive treatments, which we will still have to pay for even if we helped pay for the research.  Its a nice setup for the players involved, really...

[HoneyBBQ]

Sept 24, 2013 16:37:49 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

Living an unhealthy lifestyle is not the only cause of heart disease, there is a major genetic component to that as well.

My dad has high cholesterol and blood pressure, and is pre diabetic.  From what I just told you, you'd think he was overweight, never exercised, and didn't eat healthy.  But he exercises for over an hour a day, eats really healthy, and is a healthy weight.  It's just that he has crappy genes.

I said most. 

[Gardening Grandma]

Sept 24, 2013 16:52:46 GMT -5 jkapp said:

Considering how many hospitals/practices there are out there that specialize in cancer treatments, I doubt very much a cure will ever happen.  All we'll ever get is ever-more-expensive treatments, which we will still have to pay for even if we helped pay for the research.  Its a nice setup for the players involved, really...

Trust me, if you ever get cancer (which I sincerely hope never happens) you will be very grateful for modern treatment options.  

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Trust me, if you ever get cancer (which I sincerely hope never happens) you will be very grateful for modern treatment options.

Or any one of a hundred nasty conditions that a generation ago would have killed you.

A woman on one of my groups bitched incessantly about the cost of the drugs that were given to her, following her heart attack.  However, if she had a heart attack 30 years ago, before some of the drugs she was on were invented, she would have been dead.

Hell, *I* would have been dead if not for the antibiotic that I was on for my infection, as it was fairly new (and cost my insurance $726/week for 26 weeks).  Under normal circumstances, the infection I had had about a 30% mortality rate.

[thyme4change]

Yes - we will find a cure for cancer, or even a vaccine of some sort.  And we will eventually find a cure for all cancers that is better and faster and easier than the treatments we have now.  Will it be in our lifetime?  Maybe not.

Treatment has come sooooooooooooo far.  So very, very far.  I think money put into cancer research has been well spent.  

[Happy prose]

I myself have been cured of cancer. My particular outcome would not have been possible 20 years ago.

[Angel!]

Sept 24, 2013 16:52:46 GMT -5 jkapp said:

Considering how many hospitals/practices there are out there that specialize in cancer treatments, I doubt very much a cure will ever happen.  All we'll ever get is ever-more-expensive treatments, which we will still have to pay for even if we helped pay for the research.  Its a nice setup for the players involved, really...

Totally disagree. If this was the case, then we wouldn't have any vaccines since they could rake in money on the diseases. But, I just think of all the vaccines that have been developed, even vaccines for noncommunicable diseases. If they were only interested in treatment money, then why have an HPV vaccine, why have Rhogam? Heck there are trials for a cure for asthma, which based on your theory is crazy since asthma meds can cost upwards of $1k/month.

[sesfw]

'Trust me, if you ever get cancer (which I sincerely hope never happens) you will be very grateful for modern treatment options.'



As a person whose last radiation/chemo was August 6 I'm grateful for the second life that has been given me.  I have a friend, and her mother died about 40 years ago of the type that I HAD, stage 3 colon. 

When I entered the hospital last Dec I was dying and I knew it.  I had surgery and it was cut completely out, but a couple of the lymph nodes had some bad cells so I had the chemo/radiation treatments.  40 years ago these treatments were not available.

During treatment I met wonderful people fighting nausea, diarrhea, fear, depression ...... but each of us were fighting.  And we had wonderful nurses, Dr and everyone else helping us.

I chose to stay away from Cancer Treatment Centers of America.  They spend too much money on advertising and I'll bet the upper floor white collar set get nice bonuses every year.  I asked my Dr about it and he said for each type of the more common diseases the treatments are the same ....... and every improvement is published to everyone.

The treatments are tweaked for each individual. I started with full dosage but I don't have enough body mass and it was making me too sick and weak.  It was cut down by 30% and I tolerated it a lot better. I had a CT scan a week ago and yesterday the Dr told me my liver, kidneys, intestines were clear of disease.

So last night after choir practice a group of us went to the local frozen yogurt shop to celebrate.  That was good enough for me.  We did the happy dance.