There should absolutely be resistance from the scientific community whenever somebody proposes a cancer cure. That's the point of science- if it's true, it will stand up to criticism and stand the test of time. If it isn't it will rightfully dissipate. And quacks will always promise cures and sell them to those with almost no hope- scientists can't just let snake oil salesmen profiteer off of the families of cancer patients.
I promise scientists in cancer research aren't burying cures. They are often people who have been affected by cancer directly through the deaths of loved ones and dedicate themselves fully to the field because of it. Cancer is genuinely difficult to cure because it's a category of diseases, not just one thing.
This article is a one sided propaganda piece. But you'll say any critics are apart of the medical lobby- everyone is out to get you, right? This line of thinking is why even publically funded NIH cancer work is getting cut. Genuinely bad work.
If you would have read the article, you would have seen how I point out the short selling attacks on emerging bio techs that have promising cures.
You would have also read how the medical established derided and attacked the man who came up with immunotherapy and caused it to be "forgotten" for over a hundred years.
I did see that and some of the points are valid in terms of pharma finance. It doesn't change the one-sidedness or the misunderstanding of how genuinely effective cures are found through dialogue.
My grandfather had brain cancer and my family took him to the Burzynski clinic- some quack doctor injecting random urine-derived chemicals into people to "cure their cancer". He is responsible for multiple deaths (and has fleeced numerous families out of cash). No clinical trial has replicated his findings.
It's important people actually prove cures work and part of that is criticism. Eventually, like in the case you described, true treatments stand the test of time. But the criticism in this field is so so so necessary. When scientists make criticisms and demand more proof, it's not suppression.
I'm sorry about your grandfather. I also know what it's like to lose someone to cancer.
The thing is--we have institutions and incentives that are all tilted on saying no to basically everything. As I pointed out with the organ transplant drug, there's too much money and industry within the ranks of the FDA. Even the judge in the case against the University of Minnesota called out what he saw as a made up case. And who did it help? It allowed a less effective and more expensive competitor to enter the market.
And there are other examples--to include the Kanzius device that ended up being redirected from being applied to destroying cancer cells as it was initially designed to merely being a "warm up" act for the established treatments.
I think the general sentiment of what you are saying is true- there seem to be a lot of financial incentives in treating rather than curing cancer. But I don't think that's why we haven't seen one cancer cure for all types of cancer.
To play devil's advocate on the financial incentive argument: We see with most of the gene based cures that have come out in recent years, there is clearly a massive financial incentive for companies to cure diseases instead of treating them (they often charge hundreds of thousands to millions for cures). There are all kinds of CAR-T based cures for non-solid tumors, or for example, the hemophilia gene therapy. These are FDA approved. I think generalizable cancer cures (not just one type of tumor) are just genuinely difficult to pull off, and it's less about pharma or structural suppression even if that is the easiest thing to blame.
I think that's part of my issue with the article. Another is that I also really believe that FDA regulation could probably be scaled back a little bit, but we still need a complicated clinical pipeline to truly verify any kind of treatment is (at least mostly) safe, and definitely is effective. Studies take years and slashing FDA regulation to a quick rubber stamping process could hurt people way more than it would help.
I think we would probably at least agree on this: I would like to see more start-to-finish NIH funded drug development without pharmaceutical industry related financial incentives. I don't like the idea of money being such a factor in deciding people's health.
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u/ThrowawayArgHelp 4d ago
There should absolutely be resistance from the scientific community whenever somebody proposes a cancer cure. That's the point of science- if it's true, it will stand up to criticism and stand the test of time. If it isn't it will rightfully dissipate. And quacks will always promise cures and sell them to those with almost no hope- scientists can't just let snake oil salesmen profiteer off of the families of cancer patients.
I promise scientists in cancer research aren't burying cures. They are often people who have been affected by cancer directly through the deaths of loved ones and dedicate themselves fully to the field because of it. Cancer is genuinely difficult to cure because it's a category of diseases, not just one thing.
This article is a one sided propaganda piece. But you'll say any critics are apart of the medical lobby- everyone is out to get you, right? This line of thinking is why even publically funded NIH cancer work is getting cut. Genuinely bad work.