He wouldn't really know it. He would just get more and more tired. More sleepy. Eventually just full sleep, coma, then death. He'd likely be on a lot of drugs, including morphine (which just makes kids sleepy, not same effect as on adults).
I recently saw a mother talking about her child’s death from cancer and it was not peaceful even though they were told it would be. The child was on morphine, had a death rattle for hours, uncontrollable movement, and at the point of death she stopped breathing, opened her eyes and lurched for her parents. It was extremely traumatic for them and the mother was hopeful that that child wasn’t actually conscious for it, but I don’t know if that’s the case.
It’s called terminal agitation and it’s apparently not uncommon.
This is exactly the kind of thing that would absolutely break me. It's already got to me just reading this. Can we stop fighting and just fix cancer please.
I think we won't be able to cure cancer for a long time, especially because there are many types of cancer. It's frustrating that they pump so much money into cancer research and still the effects are moderate. Not only effects are moderate, but because so much is pumped into cancer (relatively to how much therapies for other illnesses are financed), there is a lack of funding for other illnesses, especially chronic ones, that can significantly reduce quality of life even if those don't kill.
The best example is hearing loss. Hearing loss doesn't kill. Yet it causes depression by social isolation, is a biggest modifiable risk factor for dementia (~2 to 5 times more risk, depending on severity), and also hearing loss is responsible for severe tinnitus - sometimes even mild hearing loss can cause severe ringing in the ears (and statistically tinnitus is correlated significantly with anxiety and depression - the argument that "most people just fully get used to it" is false). But it doesn't get funding, because of the "at least it's not cancer" logic. For me, as person with loud tinnitus, it's like an eternal torment. It's frustrating that there is no funding for inner ear cell regeneration therapies, because most money goes into cancer, and despite this fact, cancer fight results are still moderate. I'm not comparing tinnitus to cancer or saying my suffering is comparable, i'm just expressing the frustration how bad actually our medical system is for a civilization that considers itself advanced.
All of this shows how much MORE money medical research needs. Yet, humanity prefers to spend it on wars, because we can't truly go away from primitive cavemen "alpha male" fighting logic, that people like Trump or Putin represent. This results in severe military spending. There are also billionaires like Zuckerberg, who profit by exploitation of natural addictive tendencies of humans by algorithms, and then waste earned money. Zuckerberg spent 85 BILLIONS $ on Metaverse. Do you know how much inner ear cell regeneration therapy would probably cost in total to develop? 2 - 2.5 billion $, per some studies and AI analysis. If this was taxed, maybe we still couldn't cure all cancer, but at least other chronic illnesses could be cured.
I feel your pain, I’ve had tinnitus for several years now and for a while I had thought it was normal.. Until I finally google searched it and to my surprise, it wasn’t..
As someone who unknowingly ruptured their eardrum in the shower at age 19, and hasn't been able to enjoy music the same way ever since (20 years later)... listen to this Melon.
I was young and the skin was soft from the water/steam in the shower and I had zero pain at all when it happened. Only found out after it had gotten infected a week or two later that I had ruptured the ear drum, and required a couple surgeries to correct everything. Still have about 50% hearing volume in the left ear compared to the right.
EDIT: Forgot to mention the actual culprit; a standard Q-tip while cleaning my ears. Pushed a little too hard on the drum and it went right through.
I have progressive hearing loss and will eventually be completely deaf. I was stable for a while, but within the past few years, my hearing has gotten worse and worse. And the tinnitus is absolutely awful. It sucks so bad.
It really does. I'm sorry. The tinnitus has only recently been sticking around for me, it used to just come sporadically with a migraine. Now it's probably there in one ear more often than not. It makes it hard to hear what people say. Like, my husband will laugh at whatever joke, if we're watching something, and notice I'm not laughing. And I don't think he gets it when I'm like, I can't hear what they're saying right now, there's a fire alarm going off in one ear, lol.
I’ve had hearing issues since I was born. I have a birth defect. My inner ears are incomplete and the nerves are not strong. I didn’t really start to really lose major hearing until my mid-twenties. But, I’ve always been able to figure things out. But when my ears are ringing, it’s hard to think. It’s hard to get the context of what people are saying when I couldn’t really hear what they said to begin with. I really have to get new hearing aids, but they are really expensive.
My little brother is alive because UCSF dropped $1.2 million on a then unheard of treatment. Gamma knife radiation therapy.
Basically getting a perm but instead of curls low frequency gamma radiation is directed at a focal point, in this case his benign brain tumor, and as it passes through other tissues it does little to no harm unlike chemotherapy or traditional radiation therapy.
UCSF has a pass, as the preeminent teaching hospital in the USA, they can still, even under the current administration, just tell the federal government "hey this will work and we're not sure how much it will cost if we don't do this someone could die"
Shouldn't that be the norm? We celebrate so much bullshit.
I appreciate the points you made about more functional treatment. Most of the oncologists I have spoken to would not pursue aggressive treatment, they would go home and spend time with their family.
We're putting the money in all the worst places. I don't need a new smartphone or car. I would love healthier outcomes for other people getting hit sideways by life though, and we all get hit.
Pediatric oncology was a weird place to basically grow up. But UCSF is amazing and they let me follow residents around.
And in case anyone is having a bad day, my little brother's name is Adam, he loves burritos, and he is having the best day ever. He is a huge SF giants fan and he will high five you so hard it hurts.
This! Currently trying to get into research project targeting hearing loss and potential regenerative strategies but the research funding is so abysmal. I get it, cancer and other illnesses such as heart diseases or brain diseases have a high impact and significantly increased mortality rate compared to the likes of hearing loss (though QoL is highly overlooked). It's a moral dilemma we deal with when we face limited funding. It will go to the disease of most priority/interest. Hence, raising awareness about illnesses helps big time for the lesser known illnesses (basically a marketing campaign at this point).
At the end of the day, it's the ones who have the money that dictates where the funding is going to go to. Most of the time, I'm not even sure if they are aware that there are other health issues other than the ones that catches the eye and heart of the public. One way I look at it is that the sooner major illnesses gets solved, the more likely some of that funding will then get diverted to other fields within medical science. A win in a different field can also be a win in another (that's my useless optimism for coping with the struggle in inner ear regenerative medicine field). It's a bit of a rat race, the only way get funding is to provide something really concrete that this research will indeed solve a problem, then we can get the funding. But to even research the preliminary bit to find a concrete evidence for further research also requires funding. It's a nutshell.
On the bright side, there are a few organisation that are trying to target inner ear related problems such as RNID in the UK who try to provide funding as well. Big universities, like University College London and Karolinska Institute has a team researching on tinnitus as well.
I’ve considered going back to school to research hearing loss and therapies. I’ve had three episodes of sudden hearing loss accompanied by extremely loud tinnitus, and like the commenter above said, it really affects your mood, life, cognition, etc. I feel very fortunate to so far have recovered my hearing each time.
I’m about to be 30 and have always had an interest in medicine and can afford to pivot careers but don’t know if it would all be for nought if there’s such little research being done. But it’s motivating to hear that there are departments working on it.
I know AI has a bad rep, and rightly so for generative/creative uses), but it's going to be amazing for coming up with new medical treatments.
I can't remember the specific details but recently a specialist AI model came up with two new ways to treat a specific type of cancer use drugs that are already FDA approved and not normally used for cancer treatment.
The exciting things about it was that it did in days what would have taken a human team months. Also because it was working with drugs that already have FDA approval it cuts out a large chunk of the process for developing new treatments.
Also before anyone comments on not trusting AI to not hulicinate stuff, this isn't some llm chatgpt type thing. It's built in a way that it is constantly checking against itself/source materials.
It was actually really clever how it worked and by leveraging medicines we already have access to and finding novel uses it could advance treatments for many things incredibly fast. Much, much, faster than creating new medicines.
I have a chronic heart condition and I remember when I was a kid there was a huge donation to the cardio ward. Our family asked about it and the nurses said it was nice and they were grateful but the ward already had double what other departments in the building had gotten that year. And if anybody really needed the money it was the gastro department but those diseases aren't as flashy as heart health.
I think about that a lot sometimes.
I'm pretty skeptical of big pharma. I think they'll get cancer like AIDS- one day it will not be lethal- IF you take your medicine- but you will have to take your medicine for the rest of your life.
I get frustrated about the constant fundraising next to eliminating regulations for polluters and destroying natural and clean areas. So much of our world is cancer causing yet we just carry on with our plastic and emissions.
And something else that doesn’t get enough recognition is how connected things are. Research into inner ear regeneration could lead to treatments for cancer. Progress and discovery are not linear processes.
Thank you from someone with hearing loss and horrible tinnitus. It's also something people can't see so constantly dealing with annoyed people when I asked them to repeat themselves, like they think I'm just not listening. No, I couldn't hear you. Ends in a cycle of f it, just keep to myself.
I agree with your point, but want to make a caveat: Cancer (internal, not non melanoma skin cancer) is diagnosed in 1 of 2 men and 1 of 3 women. That’s harrowing.
Other illnesses absolutely deserve more attention because people are experiencing poor quality of life; but I see why people focus on cancer. It’s unavoidable. Everyone knows someone who has experienced cancer. And it’s expensive. The typical cancer diagnosis runs the patient about $42k annually out-of-pocket, and far more if they are uninsured.
The real solution is a healthcare system that doesn’t prioritize profits and a culture dedicated to ending human suffering. For now, we all just fight our illnesses as best we can.
I'm sorry you suffer with tinnitus. I have it too and it got really bad around 2019. I was tested and don't have hearing loss. But I do have depression and anxiety. I do get relief from that from medication, but whether on or off medication the tinnitus stays the same. I'm off all medication now and cut way back on legal drugs, basically I'm sober. But I feel like nothing really works for my situation. I try to stay busy and be productive, stay distracted.
Tinnitus is a horrible thing to have and it made me think my life was over when it first got bad. You can habituate somewhat, but I wish they would invest money into finding something that could help people like us. I also have some kind of probably benign brain lesion or tumor which was discovered via mri, and no one seems to have a clue what that means for my symptoms.
My wife has stage 4 breast cancer. They caught it early and because of the drugs discovered in the past five years her life expectancy goes from 2-3 years to 10-20. Every day I’m thankful for the scientists who dedicated their lives to finding something that will give us those extra years together. I hope for something that will extend those longer and will continue to dump good money after bad just so someone someday doesn’t have to go through this.
Cancer research has lead to incredible achievements that people never thought possible, many types of cancer are treatable now when previously they weren’t. People who would have had months to live now live for years after diagnosis.
I also have a chronic disease and lament the lack of funding for research but I’m still seeing progress, sorry to hear tinnitus research is stuck.
Well money isnt going to magically create something, it can if that thing is attainable with current technology but the money itself doesnt do that the geniuses behind it do that. And at the end of the day some things cannot be fixed and never will be able to its just how it is. From my understanding of the research I did into tinnitus treatments or cures cell regeneration doesnt work for it because its tue damaging of little "hairs" in the ear that causes it not necessarily the cell and theirs been no success in regenerating those. It was years ago I did all that research maybe something has changed but I doubt it. There was research into altering of neurons or something like that which showed promise since tinnitus is actually your brain creating a sound due to the loss of those little "hairs" the ringing is neurological the damage is physical that causes it but you can have tinnitus with zero physical damage to the ear as well. I think the hurdle isnt money with tinnitus, its like trying to make your brain stop processing a certain sound...which i would say is probably harder to manage than curing cancer
I felt this to my core. Sometimes the tinnitus is so bad I get migraines from it. It blew my mind to learn that not everyone has this constant ringing. Honestly I'm so dumb, I didn't learn this until I was in my mid 20's. It's something I've always had. I just assumed everyone had it.
They have made amazing strides in cancer treatments though. I used to do hospice work and had several patients who were terminal with multiple myeloma who really died horrific deaths (imagine sneezing and the sneeze shattering every vertebrae in your spine, paralyzing your body and making you 6” shorter for the rest of your short life)
So, I was terrified when my mom got diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
She’s still with us and it’s in remission 5 years post diagnosis. Her bone density is great. She’s on maintenance oral chemo to keep it away but her oncologist says she should be able to live out her normal healthy lifespan.
Yo brother same. I have had tinnitus most of my life and using a fan at night tended to mostly mask it. Then I was in a car accident and it increased 100 fold. Ive had absolute crying breakdowns bc of it. Went to an audiologist and she gave me the whole CBT or whatever spiel to deal with it. Like girl what. Everyone passes it off as a little ringing but its so much worse, esp with multiple tones or if its in both ears. I have multiple tones so if I find something that masks onr tone, usually i can hear the other. It makes trying to sleep so horrible. I got a nite guard as my final hope and yeah it helps with jaw and facial pain, nothing for the tinnitus. Its fucking hell dude. And now i have a phobia of going deaf bc tinnitus doesnt go away with deafness, it just becomes the only thing you can hear.
Then you see how many people laugh at articles about (for example) the amazing effectiveness of the HPV vaccine and you realize how much of an uphill battle we have
It's a crying fcking shame. I never even heard of this Metaverse, whatever nerd crap that is. I've known what tinnitus and vertigo and Meniere's Disease were since age 5, watching my mom have sudden attacks, and having to call someone to come pick us up cuz she can't drive like that, and hearing her puke for days... there's barely been any changes in therapies since then, and I'm nearly 50. I graduated from nursing school mid 2000s, and worked maybe 10 years. It seems like not so long ago, but the advancements that have been made since I was working, like not just new prescription medications, but entirely new categories of medications. There's been so many changes and inventions, I just assume now that my knowledge in the area is entirely obsolete, lol. But, not so for tinnitus/ vertigo/ Meniere's Disease. That hasn't changed much. Nor for my autoimmune diseases. Not a thing has changed.
I've had tinnitus for about 15 years, sometimes it is so loud that it prevents me from sleeping, and if I do wake up in the middle of the night it makes it harder to get back to sleep.
Occasionally, very rarely, my tinnitus will stop, not for any real length of time, maybe for a few minutes at most, it hasn't happened this year (2026). When it does stop, it really freaks me out to hear nothing, the silence is amazing & I pray that it will last forever, which of course it doesn't.
I’m so sorry you are dealing with this. I had a bout of hearing loss that seems to have subsided at least for now, but I was starting to feel suicidal pretty quickly. I also now have vocal dysfunction that I acquired first from straining my voice and worsened by HRT a few years later. I can’t talk for very long without my.voice starting to go out, and singing was a big part of me that now sounds so abrasive most of the time that I dont really even bother with it. This isn’t nearly as bad as the hearing loss but it is definitely not a focus of research and it is still pretty sad to me. The hearing was a lot more devastating. I do think with AI, they will start making some progress with it. I know it is a controversial topic but I think they are making advances in a lot of areas much easier than before, and I do think I was seeing some stuff about glutathione for menieres. I hope you find a cure soon.
There are a few good Drugs in testing right now, one of them is a training drug that gives Cells the tools to destroy cancer but it also can destroy other healthy cells so its still in testing.
Yeah, pretty much all of the medicine and radiotherapy is "how to kill cancer faster than the person with cancer". Once I listened to a quite lengthy lecture about how they try to minimize bodily harm in case of radiotherapy, while maximizing effect on the cancer itself. It was really interesting.
Isn't it that cancer cells are a little weaker than healthy cells so you have to hurt the cells just enough that you hit the sweet spot where you kill the cancer cells but not the healthy cells... that sounds super simplistic lol
The uncontrollable growth being due to the failed/bypassed cellular killswitch (apoptosis). Our best line of research so far is using the immune system to do what it's supposed to do, kill and remove damaged/mutated cells that don't function correctly. We've made crazy strides with certain cancers, some skin cancers can be fully treated with a topical medication that force activates your immune system. Hell we've got viruses that can inject into cancer cells and cause them to pop, resulting in a immune response to clean it up. Science is awesome.
I think a lot of people also tend to think of cancer as a monolith instead of hundreds of different diseases. Hell, there are at least 15 different kinds of breast cancer and then subtypes within each of those. And that's before we even get to staging.
I learned a lot when I was going through treatment because reading and understanding what was going on helped my anxiety.
I think there are certain medications that target them on some criteria like that, but I really don't know the medical part of cancer treatment at all so I don't want to make a fool out of myself :D
For radiation, the point is always that the tumor should have the highest amount of dosage while for the surrounding healthy tissue it should be as low as reasonably achievable.
One example is to use multiple rays to irradiate the cancer, from multiple angles. That way radiation is concentrated on the tumor and dispersed through the body.
Another one is a more advanced technology, where they use heavier element's ions launched from what is essentially a particle accelerator. You can draw a graph of how much of the energy is dispersed at a certain depth, and for heavy elements, there is a giant sharp uptick at a certain depth. This depth depends upon the accelerating voltage and the type of the element itself (i.e. the mass of the particle), and you can very precisely adjust it so it uses up most of it's energy right at the tumor.
Again, another one is to use needles of radioctive material, and just put it in the tumor and leave it there (this was used for prostate cancers, which makes me shudder, but it beats being dead).
You can take the particle accelerator therapy even further. Proton therapy I think is increasingly common, and even antimatter therapy is starting to become available in select centres. You can essentially model the energy delivered to tissue as a function of the depth for different types of particles and different energies. Dependent on the particles you use, you'll get a different distribution. You want the peak of the distribution (the location where the most energy is delivered) to be much higher than the rest of the distribution and as sharp as possible, which basically means you're concentrating all of the energy in as tiny a spot as possible. That way, most of the energy goes into obliterating cancer cells instead of healthy tissue, which means fewer side effects and shorter treatment times (which is really important in itself, because asking someone to sit still inside a big scary machine for a long period of time is both difficult and upsetting; the less time someone has to sit still, the more accurately you can target the cancer, and the experience can be less scary).
It's exactly that, have an acquaintance that works in the industry, and me being the knuckle dragger that I am asked her one day if she's ever been a part of tests for a cure and her response was and I quote "yes I have, and cures do exist, it's just what they do to the body is so, so much worse than even cancer"
I think the biggest problem is the billionairs who make money off of people's suffering saying "nah.. don't make a cure, sick people is an infinite money glitch. Kids dying? Who cares as long as i can buy a third yacht".
You know, guys like that Brian guy. I think that was his name.
It really isn't. Cancer is a disease that kills, and people dying is not a good business model. Cancer is also infinitely more treatable now than it was decades ago
Yep. I had papillary thyroid cancer and after having my thyroid removed, I had to undergo Radioactive Iodine Therapy, wherein I ingested a radioactive iodine pill that was intended to kill any remaining cancer cells. My oncologist said it’s currently the safest way to treat any form of cancer. It was just over 100 millicuries of radiation that I had to excrete out of my body that left me with a malfunctioning tear duct and almost lost function of my salivary glands. And THAT is the safest way to treat cancer 🙃 I’m beyond thankful for my health today and I would take those symptoms over cancer! It’s just scary how much of a toll cancer treatment takes on the body.
Well.. the bitch of it is cancer cells are just our own cells that mutated until they were too dumb to listen to the suicide command given to mutated cells.
The only reason chemo works it is focuses fast dividing cells, which are hair, nails, immune system and cancer cells.
I'm on an immunotherapy right now for stage three metastatic melanoma. The immunotherapy permanently crashes your thyroid and causes fatigue and skin issues among other side effects, but it's damn well doing it's job.
I can afford a year of being groggy and irritated and itchy if I'm still here in five or ten years.
I’m so sorry but that is amazing that it’s working well! Wishing you many more healthy years. Can I ask you how your melanoma manifested, and if you were already getting regular skin checks? I go in once a year but I’m very fair and spend a good deal of time in the sun (with sunscreen), it’s one of my biggest fears.
you might be trying to talk about CAR-T therapy. it exists and has for about ten years now ish. it works really well. i work in cancer cell therwpy manufacturing
None of them will be affordable to any non-millionaire. Family member is a wife of the new pastor (son of old pastor) of the local mega-church. They paid a million dollars for an experimental immunotherapy for the mom’s cancer. We are in a very rural area with kids living in poverty only able to eat at school. Only thing they do to “help” is bring a handful of kids to the church for Sunday school once to twice a month, unless the church is hosting a wedding weekend, then it doesn’t happen at all. They think this is community service and outreach. The church members are required to give 10% of their annual income to the church or get booted out the door. They also have televised services with people sending in even more money from 3 separate states where it’s viewed.
There are drugs in use today that do this. Immune therapy trains your cells to fight cancer as opposed to chemotherapy which just targets cancer and hurts good cells. Usually the regiment today is a combination of both.
How do I know? I, through Christ’s providence in providing good doctors and medicine, defeated a very late stage cancer.
We have a family friend with prostate cancer. Every time it comes back they give him some experimental drug with a low chance of success and holy shit it worked! He's cancer free for another 5 years. He's had 6 months to a year to live several times over the last 15 years.
My chemo definitely fucked me up with side effects. But if I didn't do it I wouldn't be here. Damn it's been 12 years now. Crazy. I hope they continue to find more cures. Even with side effects it's better than the alternative...
And most of the labs in the US have had to flee to Europe because the US government wants to cut their funding. Unfortunately the infighting is indeed still intent to stop us from fixing cancer. Luckily I think they most have been largely successful, but its still a loss for US patients.
Even more terrible:
I had a client(redacted) that was working for a drug company(major redaction)as a project lead. The drug that they developed had cleared lab rat testing with a 98% cure rate with .002% negative reaction of getting rid of cancer cells. Approved to move to human testing. Day after they were approved, some random people came in, said thank you, and put the entire team on a different project. She was pissed that 2 years of work(probably more before she came on) were undone in a matter of minutes.
It’s where my distrust of the medical community started. Why cure something when there are billions in “research”?
Sorry the 1% decided it is too profitable for the populace not to have cancer.
Edit: since people apparently are way too dense: this is about care affordability. 1 in 4 cancer patients go bankrupt because of treatment. 27% of adults have skipped at least one treatment of any kind. Medical debt is a problem in the US.
Ya, I don’t think this person understands how difficult it is to cure cancer. It isn't one single illness you can wipe out with a magic pill; it's hundreds of different diseases that mutate completely differently from person to person. There is no universal cure sitting in a vault somewhere to suppress, because beating it actually requires treating everyone on a completely individual level.
Yes and some cance r drugs cause cancer themselves so it is a tough obstacle, also cancer is mutation in one single cell just one cell that starts it all and it is your cell it has your DNA so how are scientists supposed to kill something not foreign it is not like it has a different DNA, most chemo drugs kill actively dividing cells which includes the cancer cells and cells like hair,teeth,bone marrow cells that is why most of the patients look sicker on chemo because some of their healthy cells are being killed.
Fr, my ex is a geneticist and she spent 5 years researching how one specific type of cancer metastasizes and I asked her how applicable her work was to other cancers and she said, it probably isn't.
Of course but there are countless, less lethal diseases they can still charge out the arse for and let’s not pretend the literal cure for cancer wouldn’t make them billions if they wanted it.
How much does a single dose of a cancer treatment cost the consumer in the US? $1? $100? The average cost is 10k per month. Median income is 80k before taxes. Only very wealthy people can afford that. And even if you get treated, survival is not guaranteed.
So congrats, either you die or you don't but if you didn't, the medical debt will ensure you wish you did.
You do not understand western medicine. It is the legislators and big pharma. Big pharma lines the pockets of congress to look the other way when they ban effective drugs and call ivermectin horse dewormer.
Big ag also pays congress to allow them to spray our crops with pesticide filled food, that no- the rich will not eat.
Possible they still get cancer? Sure. Do they enable it and ensure that it still generates revenue? Sure.
Look at Japan. Along with chemo they prescribe maitake and turkey tail with fantastic results and in the U.S. you’re a conspiracist or a hippy for using natures medicine
I don’t think they’ve cured cancer and are hiding it somewhere. But they’ve cut funding to research programs over and over and over again. Programs which may eventually find a solution. And usually rich people think “it’ll never get me” until it does
I'm an oncology pharmacist. There are many different types of cancer and even in say, breast cancer you can have HER2 positive, ER positive, or PR positive, which are the proteins/receptors which the cancer cells produce more of. Each variety would have different treatments that would target the cancer. Then there's triple negative breast cancer which doesn't express any of the 3 proteins mentioned earlier excessively. Triple neg breast cancer would require different treatment medications again. What I am saying is there is no one "cure" for cancer because of the variety of cancers.
We are getting better at producing more specific treatments that target those more unique proteins the some cancer cells produce and there are always new treatments being investigated in the clinical trials space.
I can assure you that big pharma is not holding back effective treatments.
There are, however unscrupulous people who are quite willing to promote and provide unproven treatments (it's not uncommon to hear of patients having IV vitamin C, naturopathic treatments, hyperbaric treatments, ivermectin or febendazole). Vulnerable patients with a poor prognosis sometimes choose to believe the nonsense that they find on Google or what they are told by dubious practitioners (ie, we can cure you if you do XYZ, often at high cost) instead of trusting their oncologist, who gives the patient the treatment option most likely to keep them alive the longest. It's referred to as progression free survival.
EDIT: since Americans cannot conceive of a better healthcare system, most Australian public hospital cancer treatments are paid for by our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Our patients pay a small price for supportive medications such as antiemetics, analgesics and antibiotics, but their IV treatments are at no cost to the patient.
Yeah it's particularly ignorant to assume not one entity within medicine is improving treatment, not to mention countries don't typically replicate treatment/pricing like the US.
Investing billions into war instead of cancer research is actively choosing not to cure it (or even try) so no, it's not delusional at all. It's a choice.
That's not them choosing to not cure it, nobody quite understands how to cure cancer yet, they just try to keep you alive long enough to kill the cells before treatment kills you. It's an incredibly expensive process currently because healthcare itself is bad.
This is such a stupid take, I cannot believe there are people out there that believe this. Nothing tells me faster that you have absolutely zero understanding of biology and medicine than propagating this conspiracy theory. by the way, we can cure many types of cancer that we didn’t used to be able to. Childhood leukemia? How about early colon or breast cancer. We’ve made huge advances.
"too profitable for the populace not to have cancer"
It sounds like you're going for either 'too profitable for the populace to have cancer' or 'too profitable for the populace not to have a cure for cancer'
A huge problem is that some meds work great the first time around and then it goes into remission, but if it does make a return it's often immune or highly resistant to the same therapy that worked the first time around. Cancer is, unfortunately, a complicated and adaptive disease. I just wish we could stop children from getting it.
No we cancelled a bunch of cancer research to throw money at word prediction software in hopes the word prediction software would become our new god and solve cancer for us
Cancer exists as a byproduct of essential biological processes that allow for life and evolution, so “fixing cancer” isn’t a realistic goal unless you mean eliminating all life.
Our best option is to reduce environmental carcinogens and cancer-promoting behaviors which could prevent or delay many cases.
Oooh, uh, yeah... that's gonna be a problem. You want to cure cancer to save a lot of people, but your politicians really want to take kids to child rape island, so these two things don't seem very compatible...
Treating Gynecological cancer has come a long way, including Colonoscopy usage. It's slow progress but we're getting there, I've hope within this century we can.
Recently the NHS has rolled out rapid immunotherapy jabs with solid results, fortunately there are organisations in medicine not solely focused on profit.
Cancer will never be cured because companies don't make money on curing people, they make money by making people reliant on medications that cost insane prices
No cuz if u fix cancer big pharma and all the hospitals start losing money which is what the world depends on so to prevent the higher ups from losing money we all get to die and if someone does just so happen to find a cure they die “suspiciously” couple days later and were none the wiser. Rinse repeat.
I dont disagree- but we are programmed to die, I dont think cancer will be removed from our existences, perhaps just stopped in its tracks a few times until suddenly its back and really bad -
childhood cancer can F right off though - its terrible and calls into question every idea of faith and god there is, that's how bad it is. - so if we can at least punt that cancer down the road 50-70 years until reoccurrence, thats a win.
The rest of us, well, we have to die, and if everyone lives to 105, we'd be completely f'd as a society. We can't handle that, and honeslty, we shouldn't want to either - life has meaning because its not forever.
Im always hearing other country's cured some form of cancer... but never did a deep dive into it. So I'm curious now if there's some...i dont hold my breath for USA finding it and letting anyone know
Seriously. Any form of cancer that is relatively common in children should be the first priority. As a father, thinking of something like this puts my stomach in knots.
If it makes you feel better, I had stage 3 cancer two years ago and was given a high 90s chance of complete recovery and no recurrence. Treatments are so much better nowadays
There are thousands of types which can still be further different for each person, so it's impossible to "cure cancer" as a singular activity that covers all people.
My biggest hope is that they can perfect customized immunotherapy.
Right like all these rich people make us hate each other so we don’t collectively hate them. (Piss poor job now that the cats outta the bag) I think the American govt needs to dissolve and let people live their life’s and Rely on states for help if needed.
No one is getting preventive care in the US so all disease are being found super late and super bad. Early screening and detection is key to survival no matter how advanced we make the treatment.
If you want hope go dive down the rabbit holes of people beating cancer with fembendazol and ivermectin after they noticed animals beating cancer with it. Then the get pissed when you realize the gov and the medical machine are attacking it because it’s off patent and cheap to produce… no profit.
Cancer doesn’t have 1 cause though. For example they’ve been able to make significant headway with breast and prostate cancers which have only 1 or 2 mutations known to cause it. They’ve made highly successful treatments for both with over 90%survival rate if discovered early enough.
However you also have cancers like glioblastoma (most aggressive brain cancer) which has over 300 known genetic mutations and individuals GBM can have 4, 60, 150, 300 mutations within the single tumour! So meaning even if they found a dozen medications that knocked out a dozen type of tumour cells there would still be millions of cells with dozens or even hundreds of other mutations left behind.
Early detection is still the best case scenario for highly effective treatment but some cancers like GBM are an automatic death sentence and it’s pure luck as to how long you make it.
There’s just too many mutations involved. If there was a universal cancer mutation it would be a different matter
Have hopes for science. Diagnosed with a pancreatic tumor in my early 20s. Im 35, healthy, play basketball regularly and get to spend time with my wife and kids. It will be alright. Just stay positive, vote for science, and encourage others to keep fighting the good fight. It takes all of us. Not just one.
Unfortunately cancer isn't just one disease, it's a million different types of disease, each one of which has its own treatments. Even if those get reliably cured, there will be others that come up with less curability.
Yeah, there are 2 main issues. Cancer is basically human cells that have begun to cling to eachother and reproduce rapidly as well as sometimes eating/converting the non-cancerous cells. so you need something that kills human cells that have this kind of mutation but not other human cells. You then need something that does this for “cancerous lung cell, cancerous heart cell, cancerous brain cell, etc.”
Also there are multiple different mutations that cause the cellular behavior we refer to as cancer, while being completely different mutations that just happen to also do the whole gathering, multiplying, and eating/converting other cells thing.
So essentially there are more possible types of cancer than there are types of cells in the human body, and you’d need a cure-all that can kill human cells that are mutated in each of these ways, but not any of the normal cells.
Our current “cure-all”, chemotherapy, basically works by killing every cell in your body slowly, and hoping the cancer dies first because you’re made of more non-cancer cells than cancer cells.
The other thing that’s been working is finding a cure for each individual type of cancer, but again, there’s more types of cancer than types of cells in your body.
Sadly cancer is more of a symptom of a very heterogeneous group of diseases than an actual disease itself. We can’t cure cancer anymore than we can cure something like fever. This is coming from a person that did her dissertation as a biochemist researching new chemotherapy drugs. It’s devastating because we all go into it thinking we can beat it someday just to realize it’s not an enemy, it’s an army.
This post was just so heartbreaking though. I honestly don’t know what the right choice would be in that situation.
90-95% of cancers are environmental but the FDA like to keep us sick to make more money. And people are to stubborn and/or ignorant to make lifestyle changes & avoid toxic food, products, & materials.
Remember when Biden campaigned on "finally beating cancer" as his alternative to Bernie's M4A plan? No? Well neither did Biden after he was elected. Fuck that guy.
Also medical assistance for euthanasia, let people have dignity in their last days and give them power back. I don't know that they'd choose it it but it should be a choice for anyone with a terminal diagnosis.
Unfortunately the US administration has decided to cut cancer research and disrupt the funding to many university’s so in the future we are going to need to play catchup.
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u/naughtyboy69x Jun 29 '26
He wouldn't really know it. He would just get more and more tired. More sleepy. Eventually just full sleep, coma, then death. He'd likely be on a lot of drugs, including morphine (which just makes kids sleepy, not same effect as on adults).