Oct
It seems like billions have been raised for cancer research but you never hear of medical breakthroughs.
Answer:
There are few breakthroughs, only incremental improvements usually.
Here are some to consider:
1) Tyrosine kinase inhibitors for chronic myeloid leukemia: Major breakthrough here, just ask most anyone with CML how important this drug has been to their lives
2) 4 new drugs in the treatment of colorectal cancer, which has basically tripled survival on average
3) 3-4 new drugs which actually improve survival in kidney cancer, having basically tiny before then
4) 4 new drugs and treatments in myeloma, which have probably doubled life expectancy at least
5) Cervical cancer vaccine and hepatitis B vaccination which are making/will make difference in prevention
6) Herceptin, which cuts recurrence risks in half for those women who have Her2 breast cancer
The reason it takes billions is because all of these cancers are different: they’ve different causes, different genetics, different protein issues, different responses to agents, etc. It is much more complicated than most people realize. To treat a problem you have to comprehend it- that takes millions in basic science research and might take decades. Then one has to accidentally discover or genetically engineer medications, which takes more money. then one has to go through mounds of legal/governmental issues to get clinical trials done to actually show a drug works, and unfortunately after spending 10s-100s millions so far, most drugs fail here.
Blessings
Answer:
Money raised for cancer research goes to cancer research, and is a drop in the ocean of what’s needed.
It's thanks to research and the medical breakthroughs that have been made that so many more people survive cancer these days, and so many lives are prolonged.
No, there isn't a guaranteed cure for any cancer, but thanks to progress that's been made quite a few cancers can be cured: seven out of ten children are cured of cancer; testicular cancer, Hodgkin's disease, and many cases of leukaemia can all be cured in adults with chemotherapy, most skin cancers are cured with surgery and many cases of thyroid cancer and cancer of the larynx are cured with radiotherapy.
Many other types of cancer are also cured if they’re found early enough.
There isn't going to be a 'cure for cancer'; The problem with finding a cure is that cancer isn’t a single disease, it's an umbrella term for over 200 different diseases. The difficulty with finding a cure is that different cancers are caused by different things, so no one strategy can prevent them They all respond to different treatments so no one treatment can cure them, so there isn't a magic bullet that cures all cancers and there never will be.
So there'll never be a Eureka! moment when someone discovers a single substance or procedure that will reverse all cancers; but there will be steady progress and ways found to slow down one type of cancer, reverse another type, prolong the lives of many suffering from yet another type, and more effective treatments found.
One example of a recent breakthrough is Herceptin; many women with breast cancer have benefitted from this in the last couple of years
Answer:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/…