Cancer research

moneymoneymoney wrote:

Unlimited funding for a job that requires zero results. Multitudes of charities throwing donations at you and even more government grants to fund your research.....but NEVER ever questioned where the money is going or has gone.

Hermes link ice blue mink wrote:

As a postdoc in biomedical research trying to start my own lab in 2-3 years, let me say..lolol. Please direct me to all these funding agencies you speak of here!

Right. Except that the numbers don't reflect that it has come a long way in 50 years. The incidence of cancer has not changed in the fifty years we have been dumping money into this black hole. The advances that have been made are in prevention and earlier detection. No fundamental progress has been made in coming up with an actual effective treatment.

So yes - considering the half a trillion dollars spent to date, cancer research has been a total failure.

Which is a plus. Doctors (who are not bio-engineers) have been running cancer research for 50 years and have gotten exactly nowhere. So we know doctors aren't capable of producing meaningful results.

It is time to give someone else a chance. Engineers are trained to solve problems given limited time and limited budgets. No engineering program could waste half a trillion dollars over 50 years without being fundamentally restructured, or cancelled. Yet we keep dumping money on generations of cancer researchers without holding anyone accountable. That's just plain insanity.

Who do you think designs and builds those instruments? Elves?

Your ignorance is astounding. Because of the attitudes of people like you, cancer research will keep going nowhere. It's time for a change.

time for a change wrote:

You ignored my primary point, so I'll give you another chance to refute it:

Engineers have surface-level understanding of the underlying science.

I've come to accept that 95% of America has zero knowledge about the scientific process in America, particularly with respect to drug discovery/approval/production.

The amount of misinformation is insane.

If drugs that 1) cure you 2) don't kill you at the same time were easy to find, they'd be out there. There is no evidence otherwise. I'm pretty knowledgeable in this field especially.

moose wrote:

time for a change wrote:

You ignored my primary point, so I'll give you another chance to refute it:

Engineers have surface-level understanding of the underlying science.

Engineers do not need a deep-level mastery of medicine to be able to structure and direct a systematic approach to solving a complex problem, such as finding a cancer cure. That's exactly what they are trained to do.

It's perfectly acceptable for doctors or other bio-medical staff to continue to do the grunt work of medical research, as long as they work in a cross-disciplinary project structure managed by engineers trained in medicine, or medical staff trained in the engineering discipline.

Instead of viewing engineers as the enemy ("God's gift to humanity"), the medical establishment should realize that the skills doctors bring to cancer research are simply insufficient to make headway in finding a realistic solution.

Of course, since we have now raised literally generations of medical cancer researcher who only know this one way of life, that'll be a very difficult admission for the medical establishment to make.

time for a change wrote:

Right. Except that the numbers don't reflect that it has come a long way in 50 years. The incidence of cancer has not changed in the fifty years we have been dumping money into this black hole. The advances that have been made are in prevention and earlier detection. No fundamental progress has been made in coming up with an actual effective treatment.

So yes - considering the half a trillion dollars spent to date, cancer research has been a total failure.

This is completely false. You are so uninformed on the subject that you no clue just how ignorant you sound.

Here's one example in a nice graph form:

Melanoma is a brutal, aggressive cancer. Survival rates past a few years were virtually unheard of.

In the last few years we have made a remarkable advance in treatment. Immunotherapy has given a small but significant (~20%) subset of stage IV melanoma patients an effective CURE for their disease.

Recent biomedical advances are turning death-sentence diagnoses into treatable illnesses. That is remarkable.

time for a change wrote:

Engineers do not need a deep-level mastery of medicine to be able to structure and direct a systematic approach to solving a complex problem, such as finding a cancer cure. That's exactly what they are trained to do.

This is exactly the kind of logic that leads tech industry titans into bioscience only to discover that biology:

1) doesn't operate like a computer

2) doesn't operate like a system in which you know all the laws

3) is continuously adapting

4) is orders of magnitude more complex than traditional engineering disciplines.

The hubris is unfortunate to see, but I think people are starting to learn that you can't design-build-test your way to a biological breakthough, there just aren't well-defined starting conditions.

See: Theranos, for one. Not a single biomedical PhD on their board....

Harambe wrote:

This is completely false. You are so uninformed on the subject that you no clue just how ignorant you sound.

So you cherry-pick an example of a single type of cancer, show some marginal improvement, and claim that this refutes the unassailable fact that cancer death-rates have not materially changed in over the last 50 years.

Right. You are an idiot, unworthy of an intelligent debate.

Here is a cancer incidence curve that shows the real situation. Regardless of how you try to twist it, facts show that cancer rates have flat-lined over the last 50 years.

And even in cases where life expectancy has been increased with new therapies, you are ignoring the toll those therapies have on the unfortunate patients. Re-read the OP's post on the effects chemo has on his life. The current cancer therapies are the equivalent of blood-letting and leaches, it's positively medieval. Patients are half-poisoned so they can live a few more years in complete misery. You have no idea what that means until you have experienced the effects yourself.

Harambe wrote:

time for a change wrote:

Engineers do not need a deep-level mastery of medicine to be able to structure and direct a systematic approach to solving a complex problem, such as finding a cancer cure. That's exactly what they are trained to do.

See: Theranos, for one. Not a single biomedical PhD on their board....

Another irrelevant example. Theranos did not claim to be a cure for anything. It was just a stock-market scam.

Does it have to be explained to you again that cancer is a disease of old age?

People are dying less from other causes, infectious disease, accidents, even CVD! These people are now living longer and getting cancer - a disease primarily of the elderly. Hence, incidences of cancer go up..

Have you ever heard the old riddle about why introducing helmets in WWI actually led to more non-fatal head injuries than before? Same mathematical idea.

Adding to this, cancer death rates HAVE dropped by 25% in the last 25 years:

https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/cancer-facts-and-figures-death-rate-down-25-since-1991.html

Chemo =/= modern therapies. Modern targeted therapies and immunotherapies have far, far less side effects than traditional chemotherapy. This is one of the reasons that it is such an exciting time in cancer treatment. Front-line therapies are superseding chemo and dramatically improving quality of life.

It's unfair to accuse me of cherry-picking for listing a single example when you said "no fundamental progress has been made."

How about target therapies? Better molecular biology and biochemistry understanding leads to drugs that treat the cause of cell-proliferation, not the proliferation itself. Those have been around since the 1990s as a superior alternative/supplement to chemo and have saved many many lives.

How about genomic medicine? We just saw the first spate of drug approvals for cancers with specific genetic markers, regardless of their location in the body. Cancer can be caused by millions of different mutations.

There's not doubt we have a long, long way to go to make cancer a minor disease, but it's flat-out ignorant to write of the last few decades of cancer research as useless. If you or your loved ones want to be treated with 1960s cancer techniques, you are welcome to, of course.

I don't think I'm going to convince you because you've made up your mind based on the misinterpretation of a single graph. But I will certainly try...

time for a change wrote:

Harambe wrote:

See: Theranos, for one. Not a single biomedical PhD on their board....

Another irrelevant example. Theranos did not claim to be a cure for anything. It was just a stock-market scam.

We say that now.... It was supposed to be a huge biomedical breakthrough.

Anyway, the fact remains. If outside-the-field engineers could really solve our biotech problems, why haven't they? There are billions of dollars on the table. Surely it can't be that hard?

Hint: you aren't the first person who has had this idea.

Harambe wrote:

Adding to this, cancer death rates HAVE dropped by 25% in the last 25 years:

https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/cancer-facts-and-figures-death-rate-down-25-since-1991.html

When you quote a source to try to bolster your argument, It might be a good idea for you to actually read it.

Your own article attributes the majority of the decline in cancer rates and cancer mortality to prevention and early diagnosis. In one case (prostate cancer) the decline is simply the result of reduced emphasis on PSA testing. None of those improvements are due to the results of basic cancer research.

There's not doubt we have a long, long way to go to make cancer a minor disease, but it's flat-out ignorant to write of the last few decades of cancer research as useless.

It has not been "useless". The point is that given the time and enormous amount of money spent, the return has been catastrophically minuscule.

I do agree that ultimately the answer will likely be found in genomic research. Which is exactly why engineering, software development, and systems analysis type of researchers will be a lot more productive than traditional medical doctors alone.

So I guess you have helped to prove the point I have been trying to make in this discussion. A job well done.

time for a change wrote:

In a war on cancer, the cancer has won. It is time to bring in more engineers who are trained to actually solve complex problems instead of just studying them.

There are engineers and scientists working side-by-side in several areas of cancer research. What a silly post!

In my field - medical imaging, I have worked with applied mathematicians, physicists, engineers, MDs, biologists, biochemists, statisticians and computer scientists (I've probably left one or two areas out). Any significant breakthroughs need the collective wisdom of many.

The continual goalpost moving makes it hard to talk to you. Cancer rates have declined. You contended otherwise.

Certainly lifestyle changes and early detection are the best ways to stay healthy! Nobody argues that. However, since we cannot force people to quit smoking and eating too much at gunpoint, we need treatments.

You argued that the last several decades of treatment research have not yielded good results. This is incorrect. 'Modern' cancer therapies offer better survival and much better quality of life than chemo. This is common knowledge for anyone in the field.

You clearly have based your idea of modern medicine from primetime TV. I caution against that in the future.

Genomic medicine is already a mature field. It's a great combination of biologists, medical doctors, bioengineers, and bioinformaticians and they have revolutionized modern research and medicine. Essential to all of these is a deep understanding of the biology. It is a classic mistake to underestimate the complexity of a field you know nothing about. Until you have results or concrete ideas, your complaining is easy to ignore beyond arguments on a message board, thankfully.

researcher wrote:

time for a change wrote:

In a war on cancer, the cancer has won. It is time to bring in more engineers who are trained to actually solve complex problems instead of just studying them.

There are engineers and scientists working side-by-side in several areas of cancer research. What a silly post!

In my field - medical imaging, I have worked with applied mathematicians, physicists, engineers, MDs, biologists, biochemists, statisticians and computer scientists (I've probably left one or two areas out). Any significant breakthroughs need the collective wisdom of many.

Agreed, the collaboration in science is essential is the so-called 'interface' fields have delivered some of the most impressive results we've seen. Modern medicine, from basic science to process chemistry to clinical trials is an exciting all-hands endeavor.

Run the good race wrote:

Ken Martin ,

Glad to hear you are still with us !

Was thinking about you the last few years and was afraid to google your name .

You were the most versatile runner we have ever had - keep that spirit !

Been dealing with prostate cancer the last 5 years (am 56 now ) , but the cure is sometimes worse than the disease .

In no way I equate with what you are going through , but I will never be the same . Running is pretty much done - incontinence , peripheral neuropathy , psoriasis ( aka irradiated skin ) .

You know the deal .

To other poster looking to see daughter graduate ; keep fighting .

God Bless

Thanks! Yep, still around, running 30 min 5-6 times a week with some modest intervals included. I think this helps to keep my transplant related Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) in check due to exercise's anti-inflammatory effects. I'm in a couple of Facebook GVHD groups, and compared to what many others are experiencing I'm doing exceptionally well.

Yeah, side effects. My main one is Raynaud's disease, but it's manageable. Mark Conover told me before my first infusion that training for a marathon was harder than his cancer treatments, and that was my experience as well. Surprisingly, my VO2max returned to a high level (75 mL/kg/min) in 2012 a year after my first treatments. Shortly after that my Follicular lymphoma transformed, necessitating the transplant in 2013. I attribute that high VO2max with reducing the fatigue normally associated with a drop in hemoglobin after a reduced intensity bone marrow ablation. My hemoglobin never dropped below 8 that is typically the cut off for a blood transfusion, which I never needed. All those training gains in mitochondria and oxidative enzymes apparently 'sucked up' the reduced amount of oxygen that was circulating around. My VO2max was essentially cut in half when they ablated my marrow, but even at ~ 37 mL/kg/min I was higher than many cancer patients, who are starting treatments at 25 mL/kg/min or less. Imagine how fatigued they feel if their hemoglobin drops. With stem cell transplantation, it's like sending older, sedentary patients up to Mt Everest base camp, or higher. Incredibly, Steve Keith, Vanderbilt women's XC & track coach, was trying to coach at an away meet with a hemoglobin of only 4! That's equivalent to over 30,000 ft altitude!

OP, moneymoneymoney, yeah, we'd all like to see better gains, and faster, but there have been improvements. Sorry that may not be the case with the cancer you are having to contend with. Keep that good focus on your daughter, that attitude helped me throughout my treatments.

It appears this thread is dead, but should it be revived, Episode 32 is an excellent podcast on exercise-oncology, including the perceived slowness of implementing research into clinical practice, dose response, conspiracy theories, and importantly I think, approaching exercise-oncology research like drug research.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-32-dr-allison-betof-md-phd-effects-exercise-on-tumor/id1223832935?i=1000395021422&mt=2

Harambe wrote:

time for a change wrote:

Engineers do not need a deep-level mastery of medicine to be able to structure and direct a systematic approach to solving a complex problem, such as finding a cancer cure. That's exactly what they are trained to do.

This is exactly the kind of logic that leads tech industry titans into bioscience only to discover that biology:

1) doesn't operate like a computer

2) doesn't operate like a system in which you know all the laws

3) is continuously adapting

4) is orders of magnitude more complex than traditional engineering disciplines.

The hubris is unfortunate to see, but I think people are starting to learn that you can't design-build-test your way to a biological breakthough, there just aren't well-defined starting conditions.

See: Theranos, for one. Not a single biomedical PhD on their board....

As a biomedical engineer... I can say that this is a ~mostly~ ignorant viewpoint based on a cartoonish idea of an engineer.

As in most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The most powerful and groundbreaking research comes from teams of PhD engineers and MD doctors working together (see the Langer lab at MIT).