re: How long before they find the cure for cancer?

quote:

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.you think it's too big of a leap to believe a lab somewhere is holding something that eradicates the majority of cancers...?

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Yes.





Why is all cancer called cancer?
It is tied together because cells replicate out of control and, in some cases, lose the functionality of what made them that kind of cell in the first place. In others, they become too functional at what they do.

The one thing in common is that it's replication of the cell.
This happens because either
1) machinery to make the cell turn on is too active
2) machinery to make the older cells die is inactive

Problem: these mechanisms are active in all your cells. So a drug to stop replication makes you sick as shite.
A drug to promote cell death makes you sick as shite.
In certain cancers, we have identified the specific Gene that's on/off and found a therapy that alters just that specific machinery. When making drugs like this, it's very time-consuming, expensive, and in many cases, lucky - designing molecular-level interactions is difficult because we can only really study the way proteins are folded outside the body and the way they work inside the body can (but doesn't have to be) different. Mess up by a little bit? It can kill people or, heaven forbid, cause more/different types of cancers.

This is in contrast to something like an antibiotic or anti viral or antifungal medication.
In these cases, you have foreign material attacking the body, and they use different machinery to replicate and make you sick. It's much easier to Target overtly different machinery with little interaction with your own body, thus you have a multitude of very well-tolerated antibiotics that work for a broad variety of infections.