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Comment by askonomm | Hacker News Reader

I'm 31 which means I got maybe around 20? years before I become a prime target of potential cancers. I really hope by then most of even today's abilities are at least available in most hospitals, since right now cancer treatment in Estonia is still old-school chemotherapy. Not even sure if our doctors have heard of Car-T. 20 years is probably too little time to make dying from cancer a thing of the past, but maybe getting today's cutting edge mainstream by then would be possible.

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Looking at major developments in the world I feel like we're moving away from societies that enable the best healthcare for as many as possible and rather move to nationalistic, authoritarian states that drag everybody back into a 20th century mindset. Money spent on defence won't be spent on research and sure as hell not on affordable healthcare. The tech might be there when you hit 50 but will you be able to afford it?

Yeah, I tend to agree. Next year I'm moving away from Estonia, to Finland, precisely because at least there the government still cares to a point about healthcare whereas here they have entirely given up, defund it on a regular basis, and gatekeep access to specialists via family doctors who don't allow you to go anywhere and instead of any tests give you pills. All sorts of pills. Knee pain? Antidepressants on a Tuesday, ibuprofen on a Wednesday. People don't get help, just suppressing of symptoms (in the best case) and told to go die somewhere (in the worst case).

And that would be fine and all, and I wouldn't even care, if I didn't have to pay half my salary to taxes. If I could choose to not pay healthcare tax, I could use that money to get a very, very nice private healthcare insurance instead. But I'm not allowed to choose here.

Immunotherapy is the direction we want to go, but Car-T therapy can kill the patient.

Old school chemotherapy still works as a first-line defense, and the newer stuff is getting better (paclitaxel, antibody drug conjugates (ADC)).

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