Re: Cancer war, no progress? [URL]
Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2013 12:29 pm
Interesting article.Adam A. Wanderer wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/boomi ... h_20131105
After decades, and billions of dollars, what is the problem with the lack of progress?
Now, this is just my own personal opinion on the subject, but the article referenced above seems to be just a bit sensationalized, as many (most?) newspaper and TV news articles seem to be, nowadays. Perhaps (again, in my opinion) this is intended to get more "eyeballs" glued to the TV, or to sell more newspapers.
Yes, in any large, expensive, multi-generational scientific research project, there will be "scammers", as well as paths taken that, with the benefit of [20-20] hindsight, might have been better not taken.
No matter how good (or poor) the present-day cancer treatments are, they will not save every single person suffering from cancer.
And (in my opinion, and not specifically referring to the above article) it also seems more than a bit unfair and illogical, to lump together all the different diseases of the body that we call by the generic name of "cancer", and then to imply that only very poor progress has been made, in part because someone the author knows (directly or indirectly) was not "saved" by the present-day cancer treatments and therapies.
My final opinion about this topic, is that the "War on Cancer" waged by the NIH and others, should perhaps be looked at in the same way that we look at DARPA.
DARPA spends a lot of money on what some might call "crazy blue-sky projects", which can be (and sometimes are) attacked as a big waste of money. But when "you" start out on a very large, ill-defined research project, it may be difficult to initially "separate the wheat from the chaff".
Just imagine how different our world would be, if DARPA had not spent the money and done the research for (link):
DARPA supported the evolution of the ARPANET (the first wide-area packet switching network), Packet Radio Network, Packet Satellite Network and ultimately, the Internet and research in the artificial intelligence fields of speech recognition and signal processing, including parts of Shakey the robot.[10] DARPA also funded the development of the Douglas Engelbart's NLS computer system and The Mother of All Demos; and the Aspen Movie Map, which was probably the first hypermedia system and an important precursor of virtual reality.