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Comment by fasteo | Hacker News Reader

You are right for the wrong reason. The problem with cancer research is that we are trying to solve an unsolvable problem, wasting disproportionate amounts of money. In some sense, cancer is a symptom of a body gone havoc. Research should be targeted upstream, to really tackle the root cause. It is like trying to fix a hardware issue by patching software. Yes, you can get some results by implementing better error correction, retrying I/O operations, etc, but at the end, you just need to change the fucking RAM module.

BTW, same thing with researching "illness related to malnourishment": Avoid malnourishment and then, there is no need to cure anything.

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It's not a waste of money. Therapies for certain cancers do get developed and, in conducting such research, we learn a great deal more about cell biology.

Yes, the trigger for carcinogenic mutations is mostly environmental influence - some of which can be controlled and some of which can't - but that's no reason to cease funding research into the actual cellular mechanisms of cancer.

Fair enough, but I see cell biology advances as a by-product of cancer research as in "how does this cancerous cell react to this candidate drug ?" instead of "why does a healthy cell go havoc ? Why is the immune system unable to detect and destroy a cell gone havoc ?"

I see what you're saying but it's not really just a by-product, it's an integral part of the research. Both the "why" and the "how" are needed, especially when looking at rational drug design to have specific targets to screen for.

Youre 100% right and im not a food scientist, but i strongly feel the increase on cancer in humans can be attributed to the largely corn based diet humans are fed.. and the other terrible food items were fed by the powers that be.

Everything is made with corn or corn byproducts and its not healthy at all.. not only that were feeding it to all our animals.. its a bad bad situation how our food supply is treated, and the more we push "lab grown food" the worse its going to get.

The rise in cancer incidence is mostly due to people living longer; advancing age is the biggest risk factor for most cancers.

Anyway there are many other risk factors, and evidence for corn itself being one is scant. Alcohol intake, smoking, red meat consumption, lack of dietary fibre, high salt levels in one's diet and obesity are much more concerning, given the correlative evidence.

either way, humans weren't made to eat a largely corn based diet nor were animals. Most of the food in grocery stores is just corn remade. It's extremely unhealthy food.

You can taste the difference in a cow that's been fed a corn diet and a cow thats been grass fed. Problem is if you see those cattle lots they have so many head of beef(far to many for the acreage) it's just dirt. Then it's dipped in a bath of ecoli killing shit, and squished up with a bajillion other cows.. it's disgusting. I'll stick to raising my own food.

If you want to invest in anything, buy land.

Is this overindulgence in corn a USA thing? I'm not overly familiar with your foodstuffs.

> im not a food scientist, but i strongly feel

If science has shown anything, it's that this is the wrong way to think. Leave the answers to those who do the science, feelings are a terrible way to come to conclusions. Blaming corn based on your feelings is irrational and very likely completely wrong.

I suspect the "increase in cancer" is noticeable because we're generally not being knocked over by something else first. I believe there is an interesting relationship between prevalence of heart disease and cancer over time (one rises as the other falls).

Reminded me of this article about Cancer Research and how we may still have a long way to go.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/07/world...

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It´s kind of natural for me. I am a geek and I have a genetic disease that is slowly destroying my body. I find lots of similarities between us/computers and god/humans. I am not a religious - in the strict sense - person, but the phrase "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26) really applies to us, "makers" of computers.

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