How many people who you were really close to have you lost to cancer? I lost my dad to lung cancer (smoker), and 3 really good friends to colon cancer. My dad was 63 and the friends were all in their 50's. It really surprises me no one has been able to develop a cure yet. I know the whole theory that the money is in the treatment not the cure, and I am sure there could be some truth to that, but it seems like someone somehow would have found a cure by now.

Sorry for your losses.

More to gain from treating than curing, methinks.

There is no money in a cure.

Mom, Dad, Granddad, Aunt, Mother in Law, Wife's best friend. So far.

There’s no cure for cancer, just like there’s no cure for the common cold.

Cancer isn’t just one disease - it’s thousands that present similar symptoms.

My grandfathers both passed from cancer. One at age 60, soon after I was born.

The other lived to 84, and I have a lot of memories with him. The last one is him crawling and playing on the carpet with my infant son, his great-grandson.

Now, I’m going through cancer. At age 43. Stage IIIA rectal cancer. My case seems relatively straightforward, so the prognosis is good. Finishing 3rd round of chemo. 8 rounds, then radiation, then maybe surgery if there’s anything left of the tumor.

My mother and my oldest sister. I miss them both dearly.

Lost my Dad and Brother

I've been lucky that I've only lost two, a cousin who was like a brother and my FIL. Cousin died from metastatic colon cancer that spread to his lungs.  FIL was lung cancer.  My mom, dad, and myself are all cancer survivors at this point bit who knows how long any of us have until it's back.  Maybe we're lucky, idk

There are so many cancers and not that many are related. It is a very generic term. I would be we have at least a few hundred or thousand here on arfcom alone.

I have prostate cancer right now.  Already been treated once.  Also lost a relative to it and my dad.  Don't know what the future holds for me at the moment.  Hoping for many more years because I got shit to do.

I have met guys in their 40s with it so get tested starting then and not when you're old like me.

do you even understand what cancer is and the mechanisms it works by?  nano bot tech decades from now (optimistically) will be the only answer

Five. There’s no money in a cure.

Cancer is very individualized. Your body loses the blueprint to create new cells. Each person’s cancer is unique to them. It’s tough to cure that because each case requires an individualized treatment.

I’ve been in treatment for a rare cancer for over a decade. There is no cure, there is no grand conspiracy to keep a cure from the public, A lot of researchers and Oncologist go into the field because they’ve lost people close to them. They’re not going to keep that to themselves.

Yes, cancer sucks and I've known several people who died from cancer.

The reason there is no cure is that there is not just one kind of cancer and cancer really isn't a foreign substance in your body. It's your own cells which makes it hard to treat. Sometimes a person's immune system will target cancer cells, sometimes not. In the case of antibiotics the drugs are toxic to bacteria but not to human cells. Can't really do that as well with cancer.

It really doesn't have anything to do with the money made from treating cancer. Don't get me wrong, I am sure that a few doctors and executives at pharmaceutical companies are sociopathic enough to do this. But not enough are and there would be so much money, prestige, and fame associated with curing cancer that anyone with the cure would have a huge incentive to release it to the public before some other company (perhaps in another country) released it. Think of all the industrial espionage out there. If a cure existed don't you think the Chinese would steal the cure and then release it. Don't you think all the nations with socialized medicine would do the same?

Besides, you are going to die of something and the medical community can make a lot of money off of treating older patients as well.

I lost an uncle to lung cancer that had become everywhere cancer by the time they found it. Treatment seemed to be going well, then he went downhill pretty quick.

Lost two coworkers to cancer as well. One to pancreatic cancer, and another to multiple myeloma.

I don't know why it is so hard to treat.

1 friend a few months ago. Was not pleasant, 6 months from diagnosis

Close family 0. We don’t live long enough.

Wife, Father, Grandfather, and others. I have esophageal and prostate cancer both right now, but scans have been clear - off the juice since December.

Maybe my thoughts are a bit dark, but Cancer is as old as time. I'm still here because of reasonably new immunotherapies, but they aren't a cure. They also have side effects. When you have Cancer, you're in a fight, and you're just seeing how long you can stay in the ring.

I was commenting to someone recently that Cancer had been my life since 2019. Always with me...

Why is there no cure?

First, cancer cells are still *your* cells.  It's super hard to kill just *some* of your cells, and leave (most of) the rest alone.  Currently, when people go sterile and lose their hair from chemo, that's the collateral damage.  Essentially, cancer cells are sort of normal cells that despecialize, and lose their growth inhibition.  It's not like an actual foreign life that can trigger your immune system (for the most part), or a different type of life (bacteria, virus) where you can interrupt their life processes without hurting yourself too much.  It's literally a game of "how do we kill just certain parts of you, but not all of you", and that's a tough game.

Second.... There's a lot of different types of cancer, so other than the broad "kill all fast-growing cells" types, it's extra tough to try to come up with ways that are effective against some types of cancer.

Third...  if you fail to kill even one cancer cell, guess what... You still have cancer.

Fourth, most people don't realize they have cancer until it's....super advanced.

Fifth, we can only be reactive, we don't really have ways to prevent the mutations that cause the cells to go haywire.

Sixth, as you age, DNA replication just gets less reliable, all of your safety mechanics weaken.  Since we are relatively good at preventing other forms of death, having your DNA replication fail and getting a cancer-causing mutation becomes more of a default eventuality if you don't kick the bucket from something else.

Now, there have been a number of trials with genetically engineered viruses specifically designed to attack very specific types of cancer.  This goes back...idk, 20 years or so.  Each time, the trials are super effective (Like nearly 100% effective).  The problem is that in the cases where it went wrong, it just flat-out killed the participants.  Because of that, it's tough to really bring that to market.  However, these days, I *think* we have the technology to genetically sequence an individuals cancer samples, and genetically engineer the viruses to attack it on an individual basis.  But, that would currently be out of the financial reach of any but the most wealthy.

The only one I can think of right now is my maternal grandfather, he smoked unfiltered Camels and died of lung cancer. A good friend of ours actually beat Pancreatic cancer but the treatment has wrecked her body and she's now fighting heart failure.

I have neuroendocrine cancer in my colon that spread to my liver and lymph nodes. Now a spot has been found in a vertebra in my neck. Hopefully I may have five to seven years left. Who knows?

During my lifetime
3 family
~ 9 friends/classmates that I know of.
About a half dozen or more co-workers.

Grandmother Grandfather and step son and my wife just had her third round of cancer removed today

FIL less than a year after wife and I tied the knot, at least he got to walk his daughter down the aisle.
Wife just over five years ago.
Childhood friends.

None really. There was a co-worker about 20 years ago.
He was a heavy smoker and checked the stock market every day. I think stress caused his cancer.

There's many types of cancer.
The common causes among most are.

1- Poor genetics.

2- Compromised immune system.  

3- Not living a healthy life style overall.
No exercise, bad choices of food, drugs and alcohol. Exposure to chemicals, pollution, using chemicals in household cleaning, bathing.

There's no cure, only treatment for some added time.

Prevention is better than cure. Live healthy and in a chemical/pollution free environment.

Lost my wife at 40 to ovarian cancer.  She fought like hell.

She brought perfectly healthy twin boys into the world completely naturally, no pain meds, and was the healthiest pregnant lady her doctors had seen in a while.  

Then she was gone 29 months later.

Too fucking many.

And as much as I hate the government, big pharma, and the likes, I can’t blame it all on them.

I blame us. Bigger. Faster. Cheaper. Easier. Etc. Etc.

Something will give.

I have prostate cancer.  My grandfather died from prostate cancer.  I had a close friend that died from breast cancer and another from ovarian cancer.

It's very easy to cure or kill cancer.

The hard part is not killing all the other cells in your body.

When the disease is basically cells in a part of your body growing abnormally and multiplying, any treatment outcome is going to be different for each person.

I'm praying for you affected by disease.

#2 is the big concern many folks have going forward, the emergence of 'turbo cancers' after the C19 jab of a compromised immune system...

Both my grandparents.

Every patient cures, is a patient lost.

The cure is to stop doing all the standard American diet and lifestyle things and quit relying on big pharma to give you a pill.

It would literally make you the richest person/company in the world.

-Father died at 55 from pancreatic cancer.  He was a heavy drinker and smoker (Camels and Lucky Strikes.)
-Older brother died at 53 from lung cancer.  Also smoked & drank.
-Younger brother had turned 60 by a few weeks, died of lung cancer.  Smoked & drank.

I quit drinking at age 36 and picked up a cigar habit (first time I ever smoked), and dropped it later.  I'll be 70 this month.

I stopped giving to the American Cancer Society when I learned that the "Search for the Cure" money was going into anti-smoking commercials and legislation.  Those may or may not be good things, but that's not searching for a cure.

"Why is there no cure for cancer?"

Same question as

"Why is there no cure for viruses?"

There are a jillion different kinds and they constantly evolve. Some we can cure, others we cannot.

My grandpa, my grandma, and presently, my friend and my cat.

There is no "big Pharma conspiracy" hiding a cure to cancer from you.  Cancers happen when cells follow the same rules as the rest of the universe - entropy and death always win.  Asking for a cure for cancer is asking for a cure for death.

My dad killed himself smoking as well… ain’t no cure for that.

Can't cure it.

Only hope is better detection and better treatment.

Because the folks at the TOP of society don't want a cure.

Period.

We could invest more, much more into finding the cure, but we focus on personal power, greed, etc.

Even the cancer focused foundations don't even want to find a cure. Susan G Komen is a PRIME example of spending NOTHING on research, yet raking in millions.

Damn.  Good luck, man.  

Every fucking one of us is going to die....and something is going to kill us. Sometimes it is cancer.


Drug company execs and world leaders die of cancer.

Fucking stop being the the jackass that things the cure is hidden because it does not make as much money as something else.

Mom passed at 48 from breast cancer that had gone mets to her liver, lymph nodes and finally to her brain.  
She made me promise to take care of my sisters.  Miss you lots, mom.

I hope anyone reading this wins their fight.

Bingo!

The conspiracy theorists, of which there are plenty in this thread, are deluded. There's no conspiracy to prevent cures for cancer. Here's three reasons.

First, money. If there was a 100% cure for a cancer, especially a common one like breast/lung/colon/pancreatic/ovarian, there's NO WAY on Earth this could be kept secret. The company or researcher that develops this will become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Far more than the tired old trope of, "they won't release a cure because there's too much money to be made perpetuating the disease." Gimme a break. Tell me you don't know anything about medical research or treatments without telling me you don't know anything about medical research of treatments.

Second, fame/ego. The company or researcher who develops this will be instantly world famous. There are far too many people who want that level of fame (and the multiple Nobel prizes) that would go with it. It would never remain secret.

Third, altruism. Despite the mistrust that pervades ARF, most physicians really do want their patients to get better. If they have access to a cure for their patient, they're absolutely going to try to get it for their patient.

Bonus fourth. I hear talks about organized medicine suppressing this stuff. Organized medicine is an oxymoron, surpassed only by military intelligence. Researchers love to talk and argue and prove each other wrong. It's not staying secret.

It is curable, to an extent. It really depends on where you get it, the type, and the stage. Some cancers aren't even a big concern anymore, provided you get an early diagnosis. Medical advancements are one of the few things that haven't gone to shit in modern society. It'll almost certainly be eradicated this century, along with a whole host of other terrible afflictions. We've already made phenomenal progress on other conditions like AIDS and MS.

My precious Mom, 2 years ago. Dad had prostate cancer too, but he's been in remission for a long time. Got it early.