Btw; for those of you living under a rock.

Press release = more exposure = more research grants.

A press release costs 100 dollars and goes live on major news websites in a few hours.

Here is MSNBC saying my company is the beez kneez. (plug alert)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42149041/ns/business-press_releases/t/novrix-makes-it-easy-get-your-own-branded-iphone-app-apple-itunes-app-store/

so yeah, its ok to not do research if the payout is not worth it, lets just let people die instead.
hope u guys actually get cancer

The reason cancer isn't cured is not because of a conspiracy. It's because it's f'ing hard and expensive. Seriously; stop reading Michael Moore's tweets and read a damn book.

I don't link to unreliable sources.

when I read it I knew I did not trust it, I was planning to call the thread "cure for cancer??"

scientific research is expensive but you have to put things in perspective

estimated military spending of the world in 2010: 1630 $ billion

Probably a huge part of those budgets are justified, not going into that discussion here. But if every country would cut down on that by 6%, you would have 100 $ billion (on a yearly basis!)

depends where you lay your research priorities but you could easily find cures for aids, cancer, autoimmune diseases, etc in about 10 years time with those budgets. It's also a matter of governments and businesses WANTING to prioritize like that.

Also, Clean hybrid cars, clean(er) nuclear fission reactors, etc could all have easily been developed by now if the will to fund these things would have been there 20 years ago.

Be careful of falling into the trap of believing that throwing more money at a problem will always produce better results.

Take public education for example.

There are a lot of very very sophisticated studies and prototypes that are being developed where nanobots carry chemotherapy straight to the cancer cells. This allows the chemo to focus all its power on the cancer cells while avoiding healthy cells.

These types of methods are within 5-10 years of being brought to market.

My understanding of the cancer problem is that it is simply a difficult problem to solve. Many extremely intelligent people are working on it; but these things take time.

If you are suggesting that cancer is a threat to society that requires a Manhattan project type mindset to solve; I would respectfully disagree.

Cancer rates have increased over the years because of the absence of most ailments that killed humans before cancer could ever take effect. Cancer and heart diseases growth, in many ways, is a sign of progress. Not so long ago; hardly anyone survived long enough to have a heart attack or cancer. They would die of the flu, small pox, malaria, common cold, hunger, etc.

I in no means; am trying to diminish the significance of heart disease and cancer. But please be cognizant of where we have come from; progress is being made and I promise you; within your lifetime (I'm assuming most people here are 12 :joke!:) you will be upset about the funding for some new illness that we currently don't live long enough to contract.

pretty decent perspective dead.

im in my last year as a medical physics phd student, so basically that means i have a decent grasp of cancer/cures. im on the radiation therapy side of things, not chemo. my boss always says that its his dream to one day be out of a job. radiation therapy will never cure cancer, it just does a pretty good job of treating it. if a cure will happen, it will come via biochemical pathways.

but yes, the problem is INSANELY complex. you cant simply say, here is a cancer cell, here is a normal cell, here are their differences, so this is how we can create a magic silver bullet that kills the cancerous cell while leaving the normal cell alone.

over the past couple decades, there have been dozens upon dozens of times where researchers are like ZOMG LOOK I KILLED CANCER WITHOUT KILLING NORMAL CELLS. LOOK AT THIS PETRI DISH!!

but then we realize that once introduced in vivo in a rat, there are unpredicted results that mean sorry it dont work.

but then some researchers find a magic bullet that performs well in rat studies. but then, inevitably, human studies show that the human body is too damn different from rats, and so far 100% of these ZOMG biochemical agents have not succeeded.

dont mean to sound pessimistic, but i disagree with your assessment of us seeing a magic cure for cancer any time soon. ive heard some people in the field refer to cancer as humans natural death agent. its not like cancer is some evil outside agent that flies in through your pores and settles in your prostate and parasites your life. its a normal cell whose death mechanism gets turned off, but constantly proliferates/divides instead. pretty much every cell in your body has the potential to turn cancerous.

anyways, i hate cancer, and its a sucky way to die, and very painful. which is part of the reason i went into this field.

Please don't cure cancer monte....haven't you seen I Am Legend?

nothing on the topic of in which direction money goes montecarlo
it's just the way it is, that pharmaceutical companies wont do any research into a field when there is no payout possible (patents)