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Pickledicklepoo t1_j3f28mk wrote

Reply to comment by PixelizedPlayer in New Study Uncovers Potential Target for Stopping 90% of Cancer Deaths by skraddleboop

Cancer just sitting there being cancer doesn’t make people die. Most people who get prostate cancer die with prostate cancer not from it for example. When cancer starts to spread around the body and make little bits of cancer all over the place, just growing and growing because that’s what cancer does….ultimately that’s what makes people die from it. The treatment for cancer is all basically different ways of trying to stop it from spreading, slow down the spreading, detect and treat the spreading for as long as possible, and treat the symptoms caused by the damage from the spreading.

If this concept ever bore fruit the idea would be basically just a super effective way of preventing the spreading before it can happen in the first place. So there wouldn’t be damage to fix or live with. There are many many many types of cancer which is why it’s such a big problem for humanity to solve. But if we ever one day discovered a common flaw in all cancers that we could solve and stop them from spreading then that would mean that cancer would change from being a life limiting condition to being more like a chronic medical condition that can be managed. There are lots of cancers that in the past 5-10 years have come leaps and bounds towards achieving this. CML is an example of a cancer we have been able to change into a mostly treatable chronic condition. It is not out of the realm of possibility that one day we will discover a puzzle piece that will allow us to replicate this success. That’s the dream anyways.

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WarpedHaiku t1_j3fko86 wrote

> Cancer just sitting there being cancer doesn’t make people die

In most cases this is true, but brain cancer is a notable exception. It can kill you without metastasis, and will likely degrade your quality of life on the way, because it being there means its squashing your brain.

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PixelizedPlayer t1_j3f7oyr wrote

>Cancer just sitting there being cancer doesn’t make people die. Most people who get prostate cancer die with prostate cancer not from it for example. When cancer starts to spread around the body and make little bits of cancer all over the place, just growing and growing because that’s what cancer does….ultimately that’s what makes people die from it.

Cancer that spreads is what inevitably degrades your quality of life, after certain amount of damage even if you are in remission you can still have a severely decreased quality of life depending on the lottery of where cancer spread to.

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Pickledicklepoo t1_j3f7z56 wrote

Yes which is why a treatment that prevents it from spreading and affecting quality of life in the first place to a significant degree would be a game changer

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PixelizedPlayer t1_j3foa4v wrote

Stopping it spreading is pretty much a cure for the most part. If cancer never spreads it never reaches terminal, curious why we wouldn't conclude that as a cure ?

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Pickledicklepoo t1_j3fqnth wrote

Well, think about diabetes for example. It isn’t a death sentence because there are treatments and things you can do to manage how the condition progresses but if you don’t have access to those treatments it’s gonna be a bad time for your longevity. A cure would mean you get a treatment that means you no longer have diabetes and you no longer need to worry about managing it or taking regular treatments to keep it from progressing. Likewise we wouldn’t say we have cured a cancer until we know that it has been completely eliminated with the underlying mutation or trigger or cause so to speak repaired or removed. Even when we can no longer detect cancer in a persons body it is not called cured if it had spread throughout the body it’s simply called “no evidence of disease” because it is likely it will ultimately cause trouble elsewhere in the body. If cancer has not yet spread and is removed then in theory that would be a cure yes.

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PixelizedPlayer t1_j3g0za1 wrote

Isn't the idea of a vaccine being your immune learns to deal with it so its not a lifelong treatment of taking medication like diabetes? So is that comparable ?

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Pickledicklepoo t1_j3hdip6 wrote

Yes, however that might be a bit of a blurry line depending on if this is a vaccine you must get boosters for for the rest of your life or if it’s a single treatment.

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