alt Hacker NewsI'm pretty much a pessimest when it comes to fighting cancer. I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field. But I've seen people close to me die of cancer and it seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease. I agree that the standard first attacks are very crude and have broad systemic side effects and the attitude seems to be "you'll die without this so that doesn't matter."
I read some stuff about mRNA treatment a while ago that seemed like it might be promising.
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I read a theory that we actually evolved cancer to ensure that something kills us.
Mortality is a feature when it comes to species level fitness. Sucks for the individual though.
> I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field.
I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have dedicated their lives to it?
i'm pretty much a pessimest [sic] when it comes to fighting smallpox. i think it just exploits one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out.
> seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease.
I think that's what the poster above you was saying. "Oldschool" chemo is basically poison, and the hope is that it kills off the cancer before the patient. But there are newer drugs that are extremely effective with way way way less side effects out there, depending on which type of cancer one has. Things like immunotherapy are really effective if you happen to match their targeted types of cancer, and some have basically 0 side effects, leading to a QoL improvement if they happen to work. People have gotten nobel prizes for some of these discoveries, it's really insane how far we've come in the last 30-40 years.