Unfortunately cancer is not one thing… It’s many things, most of which we do not understand. It would be lovely to have more money, man power, and more effort directed toward cancer research, but cancer is always multi-factorial in nature. There’s genetics, which we know some about in regards to cancer contributions, there’s exposures, such as smoking, alcohol, other environmental hazards, fire retardants in clothing, furniture, and other things that we may not even know about our day to day living environment.
There are, of course, thing that we know contribute toward cancer, on the molecular level, free radicals on a lot of reactive oxygen/carbon molecules can affect and mutate DNA, things that have aromatic rings (like benzene) can move into a DNA molecule (intercalation) and modify it/break it/mutate it. We are exposed to sunlight, with the higher energy UV rays, they can also cause mutations in DNA, this does not cause much to make a problematic strand of DNA. We do have protective mechanisms in place that help with recognizing these errant cells and our body does attack a lot of it. But sometimes one is missed and it proliferates at a usually much faster pace than normally dividing cells. Thus we run into this kind of situation. Not to mention our bodies last a lot longer than it did before. A lot of these cancers also occur spontaneously, without rhyme or reason, and because of their rapidly dividing nature and invasive growth, they tend to invade surrounding tissue and spread, many of them long before any physical symptoms or reliable detection.
I am not sure how to respond to this. I am an optimist and like to think that our research, once it’s been reliably reproduced and data confirmed, is then to move forward to utilize this research on a fundamentally development level in order to create better methods for cure. Once they show results in trials that also need to be clinically reproducible in terms of results, then it is made available to the public. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration oversees what gets qualified into the usual repertoire of drug or other therapies available for treatment. Unfortunately most of this process takes many years, from the discovery of something with potential, through the necessary research and confirmation, until the actual approval, production, and distribution of a cancer drug. Out of many ideas does one viable option arise, and that often is good for a selective cancerous condition. Once again, I will just reiterate that there are many forms of cancers, a lot of them we do not know enough about. There are a lot of biological and molecular processes that we have some idea regard, but are unsure about the real mechanisms. We guess and hint at methods of cell replication, of DNA repair/modification, at the many processes within each cell. A lot of it we understand, but I think there are so much that we do not understand.
It’s really easy to point fingers at corporations, drug companies, etc for influence and wanting to make money. I think that’s absolutely correct and I think that’s why a lot of this is very costly. But if they don’t make money off it, how will they have the incentive to put together these massive research teams, all working on small parts, all putting ideas into a think tank, and to implement and try to move forward? Sheer fundamental curiosity is not going to feed families, much as we like to think that we can live on joy and the happiness of discovery alone.
At the end of the day, human knowledge is more than most other earthly creatures, but what we do not know heavily outweighs what we know.
Disclaimer:
As I once again weigh into a heavy subject, please redirect any disagreement/discontent my way. My views are purely my own, and do not reflect anyone else here on Chrono, and certainly not the site itself. I will be happy to elaborate, to speak about, to go further in detail, or redact based on further discussion or gained knowledge of anything I may have introduced here.
