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Comment by doormatt | Hacker News Reader

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Remind me again what glioblastoma is? Is it some form of diabetes? Cateracts? A bacterial infection? Vitamin D deficiency?

Is this an arthritis treatment?

Is this a fertility treatment?

It is in fact a cancer treatment.

My wife is cooking fish at the moment. Wait, she's coking trout, not "fish". Except wait, slovenly fog brain, she's cooking rainbow trout, not "trout".

This is a rather pedantic comment, it is a world first for a common cancer type, giloblastoma, therefore world first for cancer treatment is correct.

You’ve got to differentiate between a generalized cure for all cancers and a very specific cancer though.

The very first sentence of the article makes it clear, in the uncommon case that someone thought the headline meant a universal cancer treatment. 10 words.

"Glioblastoma [...] is the most aggressive and most common type of cancer that originates in the brain"

What value do you think this pedantry adds to the conversation? Do you really think that many readers here were going to assume it meant a universal cure for all types of cancer and somehow be harmed by getting their hopes up for the second or two needed to read more than the headline?

I've been scolded on here that some folks may be on the spectrum and not understand the implications of these sentences.

I understand that, but I also understand that people who are willfully ignorant and overly pedantic will hide behind any excuse they can get. To be clear I'm not saying all folks on the autism spectrum are those things, just that some people will appropriate whatever title they need to feel vindicated.

I would be surprised if anyone read that headline and thought that it meant every single cancer.

I found the headline confusing. It would have been helpful to include the type of cancer in it. Or if it's a pan-cancer treatment, to say so explicitly.

Surely that's why you would read the article, sentence one leaves literally no doubt.

I drove a buddy of mine to work for years because of his glioblastoma, once he recovered from having 37 staples in his skull.

Recently I’ve been dealing with cancer as well, lost a nipple in the process. We are both under 40.

Cancer sucks, any positive progress in sorting out ways to treat and defeat cancer is only a good thing.

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