14th January 2016, 6:25 AM
My point is, cancer is NOT just one disease. It's a whole host of thousands of different diseases under one umbrella term. There IS no cure for cancer, there can BE no cure for cancer, because each one needs to be attacked in a different and specific way. There can only be treatments for different individual cancers. I think the problem is linguistic. We should refer to cancer in plural, "cancers", to remind people of just how many different dragons we're up against here. Just as an example, the 1990's definition of cancer was alterations in DNA which caused mutations. Many people still think this is what all cancers are, but that was overturned years ago. Changes in metabolism and protein expression can generate cancers without a single gene altered, and treating them requires whole different strategies.
This isn't a moon shot, it's a planet shot, and with the ambiguous goal of "reaching the planet" without actually specifying which one. Cancer research is important, but the general ignorance as to how best to go about it is resulting in this incredibly grandiose claim.
This article covers some good points about other problems with this proposal I hadn't thought of.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/d...moonshots/
This isn't a moon shot, it's a planet shot, and with the ambiguous goal of "reaching the planet" without actually specifying which one. Cancer research is important, but the general ignorance as to how best to go about it is resulting in this incredibly grandiose claim.
This article covers some good points about other problems with this proposal I hadn't thought of.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/d...moonshots/
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)