The world's scientific establishment is frustrating research into cancer, which could probably be cured in 10 years if fought through a central agency, according to one of the world's most eminent scientists.
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Along with one of Australia's top expatriate scientists, Bruce Stillman, Dr Watson is pushing for an international effort to map the genetic makeup of all cancers. It would be similar to the sequencing of the human genome, a task completed this year, but would cost much less - up to $A300 million compared to the $A4.5 billion spent on the human genome.
As I understand it, Watson's argument is that rather than parcelling smaller amounts of money out to many different scientists to study which ever facet of cancer they find interesting there should be a big systematic effort to examine a large number of cancer cell lines and to look at their gene expression for a large number of genes.
Watson is saying, in essence, we now have the tools to collect the genetic information we need in order to discover the changes in genetic regulatory mechanisms that cause cancer. Given that it is possible to do this he says we should spend the money on a big effort to collect the information we need to.
Hey, suppose he is right. But suppose the tools are expensive to use. If discovering a cure for cancer was going to cost, say, $500 billion dollars would you be for or against? I do not think it would really cost that much. But even if it did I'd be for it. Put that number in perspective. The US economy produces about $10 trillion dollars per year in goods and services. The health part of that is around 14% (give or take a percentage point - didn't look up the latest figures) and so is about $1.4 trillion per year. So what is $500 billion in the bigger scheme of things?
The late Lewis Thomas, former director of Sloan-Kettering, observed in his book Lives Of A Cell: Notes Of A Biology Watcher that diseases are expensive to treat when we do not have effective treatments that get right at the causes. He cited, for example, tuberculosis sanitariums. People had to be kept in professionally staffed institutions for long periods of time and could not work or take care of family while sick. But along came drugs that cured TB and the people walked out in a few weeks. The cost savings were enormous. Similarly, the cost savings that will come from a cure for cancer will be enormous. Even if we spent hundreds of billions on Watson's Manhattan Project to cure cancer we'd gain it back many times over because effective treatments would be far cheaper than radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and the other treatments currently used that have horrible side-effects and which can not even cure most cancer patients.
The Director of the US National Cancer Institute says death from cancer can be stopped in 15 years.
But with the recently announced historic completion of the Human Genome Project, and other advances in molecular biology and proteomics, medical science is about to take its largest leap, probably since the discovery of antibiotics.
The results for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer are expected to be profound. "We are now in a position to rapidly and continuously accelerate the engine of discovery, so we can eliminate suffering and death from cancer by 2015," said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, Director of the National Cancer Institute. "We may not yet be in a position to eliminate cancer entirely," he continued, "but eliminating the burden of the disease by preemption of the process of cancer initiation and progression is a goal within our grasp."
Cancer can be thought of as an information problem. Each cancer has genes that have been deleted and other genes that have been upregulated or downregulated. Go thru a large number of cancer cells and collect the information about the state of a large number of genes and it may be possible to deduce exactly what genetic switching combinations can cause or stop a cell from being cancerous. From that information it may be possible to devise effective therapies using RNA interference and other gene therapies. Also, drugs could be developed to target any genetic switching mechanism which is identified to be important.
By Randall Parker at 2003 July 13 10:20 AM Biotech Advance RatesThe savings in cancer treatment must be balanced against the loss of tax revenue once it is no longer excusable to make so much money from cigarette sales. :)
And what about all the anti-smoking agitators? Once cigarettes are safe again, they will turn and attack something else. Maybe something that I like.
You and everyone you know and admire will not die of cancer. Kinda hard to find anything that weighs significantly against that IMO.
Unfortunately none of this will happen because someone made the decision to spend over a trillion dollars to kill some people in Iraq. That money would have cured the top five or six killer diseases, no?
This is important to me because I realize that 100s of billions of dollars is not something people can grasp. What they give up when that kind of money is wasted on ill-conceived "projects" is much more meaningful. So when Bush invaded Iraq, which canceled the Iraqi contracts with the French for oil and moved that oil supply to US companies, he callously set aside the suffering and deaths that probably could have been prevented with some investment. Am I wrong, does money make a difference in the war against cancer (and other killers) or not? Please respond.