Do you think they will ever cure cancer? and if so, how?

Answer 1

There will never be a single cure for cancer, because cancer is not a single disease. There are dozens of different types, and within each type there are different mutations in the cancer cells that make them susceptible to different drugs.

There have been some successes, such as with her2 positive breast cancer and cml with the bcr-abl fusion. Hopefully other cancers will soon be included in this list, but even the current "cures" are by no means perfect.

Answer 2

Primary therapy such as surgery or radiation is considered a cure if it gets all of it and doesnt come back, but the problem is cancer that has spread.

For later stages, there are at least a dozen vaccines being tested right now. I read that one of them alone can add a year to a persons life. A combination of 2 vaccines can actually shrink tumors and be more effective. Not a cure, but a good start. This is a potential cure in the future as the treatment becomes more refined and better vaccines are developed.

What is holding it back? Money. It takes money to develop and test these treatments. The only way we will see rapid deployment to the market and to cancer patients is with government help. This is impossible because the government leaders, Bush in particular, decided to spend money to kill rather than save lives. More than a trillion dollars spent in Iraq does not leave anything for domestic health care reform or drug research subsidies. I agree with that other opinion, get Bush out of office. We need a new direction toward saving lives and spending money here in our own country.

If only one of these vaccines would reach the market right NOW, others would soon follow, and new ones would start development, eventually leading to a cure for some early stage cancers without surgery or radiation. Definately I see a prevention of cancer using this new therapy after it becomes more refined.

Answer 3

Though there are many medicines, different methods, doctors, claim there is cure for cancer, in my opinion there is no cure for this disease. If it is found in the earliest stage viz. stage I there is a possibility to cure, but this disease will not show you the signs at the initial stages. By all the treatments we can possibly extend the life of patients for a few years more, but ultimately the result will be death only. So it is very essential to treat the disease of our beloved on its merits as we can prolong their life for some time. Probably for this reason only it is said that CANCER IS STILL AN ENIGMA-

Answer 4

I hope so; soon would be good!

Cancer is hundreds of diseases though, not just one. The difficulty is that different cancers are caused by different things, so no one strategy can prevent them, and different cancers respond to different treatments so no one treatment can cure them all.

Some cancers can be cured these days though - 7 out of 10 children are cured of cancer. Testicular cancer, Hodgkin's disease, and many cases of leukaemia can all be cured in adults with chemotherapy, most skin cancers are cured with surgery, and many cases of thyroid cancer and cancer of the larynx are cured with radiotherapy.

Many other types of cancer are also cured if they are found early enough - 75% of breast cancers that are found very early - at stage one - for example. There is still a long way to go, especially with some of the commonest types of cancer such as lung, breast, bowel and prostate cancer.


And there is much research going on in all types of cancer to try and find cures- dedicated hard work by those same people Bruce K suggests are conspiring to hide a cure

Answer 5

There most certainly will be a cure for most cancers. It does NOT require stem cell research as one of the previous answerers so erroneously stated. In fact, there are researchers like my cousin who did studies to see if the body's own immune system can be trained to kill ovarian cancer cells. They met with some success, but it's difficult to streamline processes like these.

I am currently a biomedical engineering graduate student at the University of Arkansas - Fayetteville. My graduate adviser is working with carbon nanotubes as a means of treating cancer tumors. We are trying to coat the nanotubes with gold or some other biocompatible material and then use antibodies for proteins specific to cancerous cells to attach the nanotubes to the cancerous cells.

From there, we can use a low-level near-infrared laser to heat up the nanotubes (they accept NIR laser light that normally passes right through us). When the nanotubes heat up, they heat up the cancerous cells and cause the proteins to denature. If you know anything about cell biology...denatured proteins --> dead cells. So, in layman's terms, we stick these little carbon macaroni tubes into your body and then microwave your cancer without killing your normal, healthy cells.

This has already been shown to work on both mice and humans, but there are currently problems with cytotoxicity (meaning we don't know if 20 years down the line that these nanotubes might be harmful). So the current tests being done are trying to coat the tubes so that they never come in direct contact with the human body. That's what I'm working on right now for my thesis.

It may take some time...10 years? 20 years? But it will eventually get here. Of that, I am sure.

The only problem is that cancer is a random mutation that is not the same with every person or with every type of cancer. However, with treatments like these CNTs (carbon nanotubes), we can help to create a unified cancer treatment that is much less harmful to the normal cells than current chemotherapies.

Oh, and we don't have to use expensive stem cell lines to do it. Amazing!

Hope this helps!

Answer 6

stem cell research. that is why we need bush OUT OF OFFICE!!! any way, cancer can be inherited genetically, or you can just get it. you see, 99% of dna is something we call 'junk' dna. the rest is the dna is genes. not until recently have we discovered the that 'junk' dna is actually the switches that turns genes on and off. and, in turn, some of these genes are responsible for cancer. some scientists have already been able to trick genes into turning on and off. so now we just have to figure out how to turn of the genes that cause cancer. but i don't think we can cure every cancer because there are so many forms of the disease.

Answer 7

No, can never cure, except HPV vaccine.

They found only some cancer viruses, but cant kill them yet.

They can only treat cancers with new better medicines of cancer-cells-killing virus from common cold, VSV or new cattle disease; etc. whenever FDA approves but the cancer viruses are still alive and reactivate.

Answer 8

Cancer comes in many forms, but they are all basically a cell that goes into uncontrolled reproduction.

It maybe that one day we find the switch to reverse that.

Answer 9

Yes!
There is a a medicine that prevents cancer so i think that there might be a cure in the future.....

Answer 10

I think they can now but ther is to much money coming in to make them give it up!!!!!!!