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Comment by reducesuffering | Hacker News Reader

Her son just died of a fentanyl overdose just a few months ago too?

Not even a billion $ will protect you from America's problems with cancer and fentanyl. We need to fix this. I mean, just look at this chart:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...

Is it pesticides like this recent HN thread alludes to?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182121

Idk. But the US is uniquely doing something very wrong.

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I don’t think the tox report showed fentanyl.

Looks like Xanax and Cocaine.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/us-news/cause-of-death-reveale...

Ok corrected. I was going off a cursory quote from the grandmother.

It is a strange chart. It for example shows that Belarus has pretty much the same rate all those 30 years. Cancer takes bunch of years to develop, and Belarus has had significant cancer numbers increase starting 10-20 years after Chernobyl. You can look up the articles on doubling rate of say breast cancer there which even without Chernobyl like events presents like 20% chances - now calculate what doubling of those chances means.

When it comes to US that chart looks a lot like the obesity rate chart, and obesity is a partial gateway to cancer, though they may just correlate too stemming from the same reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...

The problem with pointing obesity as the culprit is that ourworldindata has the same chart for obesity, where almost all countries are increasing at the same rate as US. But just US has this stark high cancer rate.

US is a standout in obesity - only Arab countries and Native Pacific are close to it where obesity has different character than in US. And may be the obesity and cancer has the same cause - high processed sugar diet for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.24302894v...

"The United States (U.S.) is the leading country in ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption, accounting for 60% of caloric intake, compared to a range of 14 to 44% in Europe. "

It doesn't pass the smell test.

In 1990, US was 18.7% obese with a cancer incidence of 1,760, UK and Australia at 780.

Most recent is 2016 showing Australia and UK at 30% obesity, yet their cancer incidence is lower than ever at 750 and 682, respectively.

Everyone but the US (and Poland) are increasing their obesity while their cancer incidence is flat or decreasing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a...

Something fishy with the data there as here

https://www.wcrf.org/cancer-trends/global-cancer-data-by-cou....

age standartized rate:

USA - 367 UK - 307 Australia - 462

Very strange chart. The US has more relaxed regulations on food additives, pesticides, hormones used in livestock farming, and environmental pollution compared to the European Union. But that still does not explain the differences with, for example, Australia or Asia. Obesity may play a role, but obesity has also been on the rise in the EU for a few decades.

If you live long enough you will most likely die from either heart disease, #2 killer, or cancer, the #1 killer. Accidental self inflicted injury is #3. We're not doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite.

Since not even having a billion will allow you to cheat death, perhaps we shouldn't allow billionaires to cheat everyone else in life.

Certain other countries in that chart have longer average lifespans than the US, eg. Canada, Germany, Australia etc.

And fewer billionaires too, I bet.

Health outcomes in the US are bimodal -- the wealthy have the best health care in the world, and the longest lifespans. The poor basically have the equivalent of 3rd world care.

That makes the average come out to less than other countries with universal healthcare.

But it also explains why wealthy people are against universal care in the US -- because they believe their level of care will go down so that everyone else's can go up.

Cancer _incidence_ is likely only loosely related to the healthcare system. Cancer _outcomes_ probably are but incidence is more related to lifestyle choices (active vs sedentary, smoking vs non-smoking etc)

    > Accidental self inflicted injury

What does that mean?

  "The leading causes of death for unintentional injury include: unintentional
  poisoning (e.g., drug overdoses), unintentional motor vehicle (m.v.) traffic,
  unintentional drowning, and unintentional falls."

From the following page. This is talking about only ages 1-44, but probably the "accidental" category means the same.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/animated-leading-causes.h...

Typically? Falling off a ladder and cracking your head.

the pharmocracy will allow a cure for cancer?

We've got a number of working cures and preventions for cancers, just not most types and many are not 100% reliable. I'm happy to complain about pharma and we've still got a long way to go, but this is a bad take. Yes, they've "allowed" it for years. (Did you get your HPV vaccine already?)

+1 - cancer prognosis used to be treated as a death sentence for most forms of cancer and "stage 4" was almost immediately referred to hospice. Amazing progress in our lifetimes, and an impressive roadmap ahead.

As I understand about the HPV vaccine: It only prevents new infections. It does not cure existing infections. And you need to get it very young to reduce chances of infection before vaccine.

Correct. That one falls under preventions. But that one also protects your partners.

Why not? Isn't it in "their interest" to keep people alive longer and longer?

A cured customer is a lost customer. Indefinite remission while taking a daily dose is plausible, or maybe $2.5M per head as Zolgensma.

How many people simply wouldn't be able to afford that and thus die?

Wouldn't it be better to have them cured and live longer and just spend their money on curing other illnesses we're all going to have anyway?

There is something about this cynic explanation that just doesn't sound right to me

Anyone who claims that there's a 'cure for cancer' somewhere that some company is sitting on for profit betrays their complete lack of understanding of oncology.

And also a complete lack of misunderstanding of profit

EDIT: lack of understanding

Other than cynicism, what is the basis for this argument? The economic and social interests of the pharmaceutical companies are to find a cure. If a company came up with a single dose pill that cures colon cancer, they could charge up to the cost of a full course of chemo for that pill and insurance companies would line up to cover it. Go see what has happened with Hep-C and DAAs.

Also, the industry and brand cred that would accrue from being the company that cured cancer would be immense. Think about what that would do for recruiting, influence and access. Ask yourself if Novo-Nordisk is in a worse position today for pretty much curing obesity.

But that profit margin would only exist initially. The cure would be much much cheaper than the ongoing treatment once the research pays off, making future margins for smaller yet simultaneously encourage ongoing research to discover a cure to the next disease.

So, Zolgensma is cheap?

Their argument is just that: 'The reason Zolgensma is so expensive is because that is the price Novartis has decided it is worth because it “dramatically transforms the lives of families affected by this devastating disease”'.

Basically it's "isn't you child's live worth 2.5 million?"

If someone found a one-shot no-side effects cure for a particular type of cancer there's no way they'd price it the same as the full course of chemo, they'd price it at "how much would you pay to be alive again". Insurance companies don't pay shit, their customers do.

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