Hacker News Reader

Comment by benjijay | Hacker News Reader

I am not a biologist but I've known a few in my time;

It is highly unlikely there will ever be a singular "cure for cancer" as cancer is a bit of a blanket term given to multiple diseases, however this is a seemingly reasonably good breakthrough in treatment - being able to destroy cancerous cells without exposing the patient to further harm via targeted radiation or harsh chemo drugs (basically targeted poisoning) feels like a win.

If we can break the cells down and let the body's immune system take care of the remnants instead of having to slice someone open, huge win!

View on HN

Or better yet find out how to prevent cancers since it's better to not be sick than to treat you once you are sick.

Things like the HPV vaccine which in my province saw a 90% drop in just a few years. I think everyone should get it no questions asked which maybe they don't anymore?

The Hepatitis B vaccine too since having the disease is a cause of liver cancer.

But if all else fails it's also good to have a tools to try to get rid of cancers.

HPV is a unique one because it's essentially a contagious cancer, and you're not vaccinating against cancer, you're vaccinating against the carrier (HPV). A really interesting cancer treatment that's very promising is customized vaccines that specifically target cancer cells for each individual's cancer!

Preventing cancer seems like a fool's based on my understanding of the disease. You have cancerous cells in your body every single day. Your immune system kills them all off. It's like saying you want to prevent all bacteria from entering your body. It's just not realistic (at least, not right now).

Maybe the OP meant "prevention" in the sense of "improving your immune system so much that cancer never manifests as a disease".

HPV causes cancer. The prevention here is literal - by preventing infection from the oncogenic HPV variants there is no cancer.

Replying to a post noting a 90% reduction in cancer thanks to the HPV vaccine with "preventing cancer seems like a fool's errand" is pretty amazing. Would you care to expand on that?

HPV is a carrier disease for one strain of cancer. Cancer is a type of disease - as said elsewhere, it's like saying "I found a cure for virus".

He gave a couple of examples. Another one is aggressively treating GERD so that it doesn't devolve into various conditions that lead to stomach or esophageal cancer. It's possible something like this could treat pre-cancerous things too, like Barrett’s esophagus.

Whales are fairly resistant to cancers (and so are other mammals, such as bats or naked mole rats), at least compared to humans.

Possibly, we may one day run DNA modifications on ourselves to copy whale/bat/naked mole rat genes into our cells in order to acquire similar protection.

Sounds wild, but it once sounded wild to infect yourself with a cowpox pus in order to prevent human smallpox.

> It is highly unlikely there will ever be a singular "cure for cancer" as cancer is a bit of a blanket term given to multiple diseases,

"It doesn't make sense to say 'cure for cancer.' Cancer is a wide variety of disorders with different manifestations and etiology. It makes as much sense as saying 'a cure for virus'."

> https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-11-21

An enhanced immune system would functionally be a “cure for virus”.

It’s conceivable we could find a technique that targets and ruptures any cancer cell, functionally becoming a “cure for cancer”.

Which could increase the risk for autoimmune disease. Current immunotherapy treatments for cancer that I'm aware of have to be carefully monitored so they don't kill the patient.

I am of more positive thinking here. I think our problems with cancer are due to misunderstanding what cancer is in the first place.

Here, Thomas Seyfried can explain this much better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KusaU2taxow

I think once we know where cancer comes from we can be much more effective at preventing it in the first place (proper diet) and treating it after the fact. With the current progress I think at some point we should be able to prevent pretty much close to all deaths from cancer.

Obviously, people will always be dying of something so preventing a cancer will only mean we will have other challenges to face.

It's been a few years since I was as deep into this realm so I might be slightly off but;

Cancers and Tumors mostly happen as a result of some errant mutation - there are limitless causes for such things and the best diet in the world can't save you from random biological chance or solar radiation. Everything comes with a risk and 98 times out of 100 your own defences will see this mutation happen and shut it down before it gets too far

A 100% effective 'prevention' for cancer would basically be a souped-up immune system to the point that we basically never get meaningfully sick, and probably live another 30-50 years as a result (most cases of "died of old age" are more like "had 7 different minor cancers which overwhelmed the body's systems")

Yeah— it's obviously worth interrogating how our environments affect our cancer risk, but considering that the disease was named by Hippocrates in the 300s BCE, it seems pretty unlikely that any single avoidable environmental factor could be "the cause," or any single factor could be "the mechanism."

Certainly there are myriad 'causes', and likely at least a few mechanisms if you get into specifics, but as a general rule a cancerous tumour is a group of cells that multiply faster than they die (or don't die at all), and consume resources without 'giving back' to the organ in which they reside - effectively the "I have outlived my designated usefulness" switch gets commented out and replaced with "multiply even harder, forever"

A non-specific treatment that revs up the immune system increases the risk of autoimmune disease. It would have to be specific to the cancer AFAIK, so more of a treatment for an existing cancer than a preventative measure.

Lies. Lies about the nature of shared-conception. The universe is a representation of the collective will, and lies obfuscate that in ways that are consequential.

It’s unfortunate that the intellectual curiosity of religious leaders led to science, as they are probably also responsible for the problems it seeks to solve.

And here is counter-response from David Gorski:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ketogenic-diets-for-cancer-...

TL;DR we are researching metabolism of cancer but findings so far are not even close to validity the claims that Seyfried makes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com