Why Curing Cancer is Impossible

This statement is both sound and agreeable. Again, though, I've never questioned that we have (and continue to manufacture) very good methods of treatment. I merely state that a perfect cure is impossible.

Dunno if it's been said already, but from what I understand, not only can cell errors be missed by error detection, apparently certain factors can actually affect your body's ability to actually find these errors in the first place.


An example of cell error detection I remember reading was a "checkpoint" diagram. It ran in a continuous circle, and if there was a fault at any of the checkpoints in the circuit, the cell would either be instructed to undergo apoptosis, or would be dealt with by the immune system if the cell would not respond to instructions normally.


The example of damage to this checkpoint system was something like certain influences could "remove" checkpoints in the circuit, so that certain prerequisites were either no longer checked, or not checked as thoroughly, thus increasing the likelihood that a cancerous cell would be able to replicate itself unchecked, until it was too late to halt its growth normally.

At least that's how I remember it, correct me if I'm misunderstanding.

Read this: http://sensf.com/files/pdf/WILT.pdf

That would have the side-effect of preventing further evolution of mankind in terms of genetics. That's not a logical trade-off.



No one could pay for it, because no amount of money could feasibly fund the curing of every single possible kind of malignant cell mutation that could possibly occur within the human body.

And, when it comes to the curing of one particular mutation, people would be in an uproar; "No! The money should go toward this one!" "Absolutely not! I insist the money should go toward this one!", and so on and so on...

There might be malign mutations, even benign ones, and most of time neutral ones.


What make/define a cancer is not one (random) mutation, but the association of five conditions :
- non-response toward regulation factors and particularly apoptosis induction factors
- anarchic growth of a tissue
- secretion of angiogenesis factors
- loss of cellular specialization or "despecialization"
- beginning of colonization/invasion of other tissue (metastases)

Thus there are indeed some key mutations on which scientists and doctors focus their research -- because nowadays we know "a bit" enough about cellular metabolism, to (more or less) guess which mecanism seems involved, them which proteins may be "guilty" by disfunctionning, so we can rely it to a gene or a locus, then do verifications and maybe find a way to deal with the problem or sometime prevent it by regular healthcare monitoring.

A key factor within cancer progression is the time : the sooner you discover the trouble, the better one would/can deal with it, the best will be your chances to really be cured.

Because yeah : there are complete remissions with no reappearance of the (cured) cancer over the years and years of control monitoring.

Nonsense. We could already engineer super humans, we're just too obligated to some antiquated sense of moral foolishness and superstition that's keeping us from it.

And honestly, we could make something far superior to humans. Evolution may find what works but it's very clear there wasn't any kind of intelligent design. Not only that but things beneficial according to evolution may not necessarily be beneficial to us.

For instance, animals whose young have a very high rate of mortality tend to have more young and animals who have shorter lifespans tend to reproduce more quickly.

The entire point of reproduction is the survival of your genome. If you have an incredibly long life, or didn't die, you wouldn't need to reproduce for the survival of your genome. That would certainly be beneficial to us as individuals but it's unimportant as far as evolution is concerned since the individual doesn't matter to it since it can just pass it on via reproduction. Of course, as a direct result we end up suffering from aging.

We have no claws or fangs or even any kind of natural armor like scales or even thick skin. We don't even have fur or layers of fat to keep us warm. We're very fragile creatures compared to practically any other on the planet. We forge our claws and armor from steel because we evolved without them. Do you really think in our lazy dullard lives that we're going to evolve in a way that actually improves our species? These things are selected when they're needed... When was the last time you needed armored plating for survival, or claws to defend yourself or kill prey, fangs to rip flesh? Venom? Wings?

Our muscles will deteriorate and grow smaller. Our heads will grow larger, our eyes larger as well. In the end, we'll likely end up a lot like the "grey" aliens made popular in science fiction, the tiny weak little ones with big heads and saucer eyes. There's already been a few projections showing that it's where we're headed. To be honest, I'm not even sure our brains will continue growing. As I recall they've actually been shrinking since as lazily as we live our lives our brains have become less important. It's been shrinking for the past 30,000 years. It's shrunk the equivalent of about the size of a tennis ball.

We could engineer something so much better. Natural evolution will evolve our species into drooling helpless dullards. We could make something strong and vicious, armored, brilliant, immortal, with insane regenerative abilities, and more...

We are amazing apes, really fit as throwing machines -- as far as I know, there are veeery few animals able to throw anything at a 160km/h speed like star pitchers do. I don't think there was a lot of predators then, who would have been able to defy us with real carefreeness. We may even had stolen their freshly killed preys under their very snout, just chasing them away with stone throws and bludgeon strikes, as some nasty kids or pests.

It still remains within our instincts, as lot of children have to be educated to not throw stones and such toward people or anything precious. When I talk about children, it includes very young ones around one year old. There is a similar instinct toward sticks, which even relies us to our cousin species.

Don't make us look like frail ones, we were far less defenceless than your words are meanning, Asata.

But if you agree that with enough money it would be possible to cure one particular mutation, you must also agree that at least theoretically it would be possible to cure them all, given enough money and time.

I aslo notice the french (and some of our neighbours too) healthcare & welfcare system(s) is(are) not bad, since here everybody can access treatment regardless his/her salary. The cost is supported by our taxes + (possible) private health insurances, and then we just sometime pay some allowances according to actual legal regulations and the insurance's contract terms/options you take out.

As for Research, it is supported by both taxes, donations, corporate bond and enterprises from pharmaceutical and such domains -- yeah, some of us still ignore that even comsetical enterprises, private hospitals, food factories... participate/support the Research.

Here's what I have surmised from your statement here alone (please do feel free to correct me if I have made any misjudgments here; I am purely basing these judgments on your above statement alone. As such, I have limited information about you to base them off of, and thus am prone to be mistaken.):

1. That you are starkly anti-theistic; possibly to the point where you actively refuse to allow others their right to believe what they choose to believe; belittling them to death and treating them with hatred, instead of leaving them to their own devices like any non-maliciously minded individual would (mayhap by cause of some unfortunate personal experience with some rude, belittling and uneducated individuals who also happened to be theists; judging those individuals' stupidness as being characteristic of theism and theists as a whole? Or perhaps you just think you are infinitely superior because you have somehow come upon what you believe to be "definitive evidence" that supports your stance, and thus simply scoff at those who are either sceptical to your evidence or are convinced otherwise that what they believe is true, as far as they are concerned?)

2. That you hold that the homo sapiens sapiens species is somehow ever-bound, and will never falter in its existance at any point in the future (or "shouldn't falter at any point in the future, but due to those blasted moralists, we will never achieve our deserved immortality.")

3. That we somehow have the right to control everything that goes on everywhere (whether we do that already or not is irrelevant to this discussion; these are merely observations that I have made based on your statement).

If my observations are on the mark (or at least very close), you would no doubt be an "idealistic dreamer".

Well, am I correct (or close to it?) If I'm not, please tell me what I said that was incorrect, and tell me the correct information.



I don't believe mankind could do such a thing, as homo sapiens sapiens are imperfect.

If we hypothetically had some non-human creature that was 100% perfection do the work, then yes.



"Our" neighbours? Are you assuming that I am from Eurasia and/or from a country that is a part of the Commonwealth of Nations (such as Canada or Australia)? Because I'm not. I'm from New England; a region that is technically part of the United States of America (though a lot of us New Englanders dislike that fact these days.)

In any case, what's your point?

By "our", I was meaning the french ones. Something like Frances' neihgbours or the french people's neighbours. Not yours. [size=10]I couldn't say "my", since I wasn't speaking about my flat neighbours.[/h]


One of my points is : we have less problems to access healthcare because of our european systems workings. At least a lot lot less because of money.

Another point is : Research about cancer does not depend only/mainly on private funds in those systems.

Même la totalité du monde combiné ne pourraient financer pas la cure suprême contre le cancer (en tant qu'un tout).

...And even if we could fund the research, mankind is too imperfect to actually succeed in developing a cure that would work.

J'avais bien compris l'idée.

But I don't agree. I know personally some people having worked on cancer and even a PhD thesis about a new substance (coming from a desert lizard) in study to block the growth of tumors. Also some sutdies about RNAi and some others about the papillomavirus and there is now a vaccin against it. And more. Lot of those things work for more and more cancers.

Just remove your "suprême" superlative and open your eyes.

Bah, I think each opinion is a matter of data.


And if you are that imperfect, do not act as if everybody (= each human) would wallow in mediocrity.

One can hope, if one so chooses. However, the fact remains that the sheer amount of what is ultimately a just barely sub-infinite number of malignant mutations makes the curing of all cancers impossible for an imperfect species like homo sapiens sapiens.

X-D I can't help here but LOL !

Once again someone who barely know the stuff and seems to believe in science and then talk about the evilish mutations -- booh !

Oh, have some mercy so I don't die from laugh (^__^)

Most of mutations, as I explain upper, are neutral. And statistically speaking, you have the same amount of benign mutations than malign mutations happening. Further more, as we get older, our cells renew slower and slower, so there are less and less possibilities to accumulate the five problematic mutations together within a same stem cell -- because yeah : it is mostly the stem cells who really matter, since a majority of other cellular cells barely divide if not never.

I can explain further about risks and all but I feel sleepy and I doubt it would be truly understood here. It would be on some other websites aiming science popularization, I would take the burden to fetch some on-line courses. Here, there're merely people believing they would be supposedly right just because they would be the last to post.

Oh my, what a sketch X-)

It doesn't matter when it comes to cancer, because it causes the cell, irrespective of the type of cell it is, to divide uncontrollably, creating malignant tumors (in most cases). In fact it is mostly benign tumors that do not divide uncontrollably, i.e. the ones we generally don't need to do anything about.

Generally, ADN tends to be alterable or modified only if uncondensed, meaning principally during ADN recopy, and also a little during transcription. Aside those two moments, it is on condensed form. Moreover, the uncondensed parts needed for transcription most of time does not involve the genes for growth and death control. It is interesting to look at epigenetic about ADN condensation control.

Also, some cellular types has lost the division capacity, as for example erythrocytes, neurons or islets of Langerhans's β cells. This does not mean you can't have a brain cancer or some pancreas cancer, but when it occures it is due to accumulation of malign mutations within stem cells and/or possibly from some other cells types still able to divide a little (normally 1 to 80 times depending the cell lign if I remember well) as well present within the tissue.

For a normal cell or stem cell, division occure under growth factors control, but the death as well must occure under factors control if possible -- that cell death is known as apoptosis.

• So the loss of apoptosis positive answer can but not automatically lead to cancer : you've got tumor and if the cells aren't stimulated by growth factors, they just remain.

• If cells begin to mutliply without growth factors stimulation, but still answer to apoptosis factor, then you have an ageing tissue which can eventually lost multipotente stem cells due to overabundance of apoptosis factors such as chemotaxis. It means you'll lose the other cellular types the stem cells may had been able to produce, so the tissue can present some malfunctioning.

• If cells tend to multiply without control and do not answer apoptosis stimulation, the body can put around the tumor some layers of proteins and cells, to dyke the tumor growth by cutting down ressources access + the fact the cells will be compressed inside that enveloped tumor, then die for the frailest ones. It is not perfect regarding the ressources and sometime it can't well content the multiplication of cells and then the total volume, but still effective on the smallest tumors.

Et cetera.

Just so you know, it's DNA in English. Like what you call VIH, we call HIV. Differences in grammar and all that.

I didn't know it could only be mutated during reproduction. In that case certainly stem cells would be more vulnerable to cancer caused by malignant DNA mutations. I guess that's why skin cancer is one of the more common types, because skin cells reproduce fairly rapidly (that and they're more exposed to radiation from the sun, being on the surface of our bodies).

But keep in mind that mutations aren't completely random. For instance, cervical cancer is usually influenced by the contraction of HPV. Carcinogens in cigarette smoke can cause lung, throat or mouth cancer. I don't exactly know how these cause the cancer, but it even so it shows that, while some cells reproduce less, their risk of developing a cancerous tumor is not necessarily less, as they can be more exposed to mutating elements than stem cells.



You won't always have a tumor. For instance, leukemia rarely produces a tumor. The cancerous cells are usually in the blood, so don't lump together to form a tumor.

My bad for the mistake ADN/DNA -- must be because I still think more in french than english when writting english.

As for the carcinogens, I did not forget them nor the fact that non-stem cells can turn into cancer. But it "must" be some cell still able to divide, so some growth factors have possibilities to put the DNA replication on. I write "must" because there exist others possibilities :

• Any mechanims whose genes must remain accessible within every cells (ex : TNF receptor involved in apoptosis mechanism). But in the same time, it makes/lets them vulnerable.

• The DNA repair mecanism, where you have 50-50 % possibilities either to return to the previous version of DNA or to rewrite the non-altered DNA version from the altered version. It is based on the non-complementarity between the two strands of DNA -- meaning there is an error so some proteins go look at it, but as stated its accuracy is 50-50.

• More simply, you also have hereditary predisposition, where some key genes already bear some problematic mutations. Depending the genes, you will be more sensible to some carcinogens or just have some "normal" hyperplasias here and there like polyps or nevi.

• You also have the viral possibility : some viruses bear oncogen genes to make the host cell turn into a tumorous one, in order to mutiply more accurately (ex : papillomavirus, which can trigger the cervix cancer). Fortunately vaccins exist for some of them.

• Finally, you also have some infections and parasites which can either trigger or protect from cancers, whose roles are actually investigated to determin each mecanism and how to deal with them.

Concerning leukemia, it's because you can classify cancers in three (meta)classes :
- carcinoma
- sarcoma
- hematological malignancy (one of which is leukemia)
It depends on the (meta)class of tissue involved.