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I grant you that this is a seemingly extreme opinion. It is however my conclusion form thinking about this problem for a long time. I work inside this field, and see people suffering terribly from cancer every day, both physically and psychologically. I think we are overly focused on treating established disease, and not focused enough on preventing cancer. The end game, in my opinion, is making ourselves more resistant to cancer.

The most difficult version of this is modifying the germline. There could be other less extreme versions, for example giving young adults a long lived population of genetically modified immune cells that persist and eliminate pre-neoplastic or neoplastic disease. A more advanced version of this would be introducing a new type of cell lineage that exceeds the limitations of immune cells (for example specific modes of recognition, and restriction to certain anatomical compartments), and delivering it as a therapeutic. But modifying the germline is the only way to really get the incidence approaching zero, I think.

I hope however there is some easier, quicker way... for example if we discover unknown viruses actually cause a lot more cancer than we thought.



> I think we are overly focused on treating established disease, and not focused enough on preventing cancer.

You should see the warnings we put on cigarettes.


Warning Label: "May cause birth defects"

Bill Hicks: "I found my brand!"

In this case, not sure of the label's use in this conversation.


I think you're confusing the warning California requires on products with traces of lead on them with the warnings that are required in every state on cigarettes.


I think you may be confused on who Bill Hicks was.




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