Pretty disingenuous to compare cancer, one of the most heavily studied medical conditions on the planet, to this. Just because there’s no cure to being made of cells? It’s not that simple.
To be fair though, cancer as a whole gets a lot of study dollars but it’s incredibly complicated and every form of cancer varies wildly in how it affects the body, how best to treat it, how to screen for it, who are at risk, etc.
The comment you replied to was referring to a single variant that affects only men (incorrectly associating it with Steve jobs, but regardless), not the entirety of cancer writ large.
Studying bone cancer, skin cancer, and studying prostate cancer etc for example are wholly separate things and shouldn’t really be put under the same bucket in this context.
That’s a good question. I don’t know for sure. I just meant to imply that thinking about cancers in terms of “cures” isn’t a very useful way to approach the matter.
A cursory search suggests that reptiles and birds do get cancer, just at a noticeably reduced rate. Maybe something to do with metabolism? Or a side effect of bodies capable of live birth? Dunno.
I’ve also heard that whales and elephants get less cancers than we would expect from animals (or I guess mammals) of their size.
I’m just saying this from memory so I may be wrong, but I think size will be a big factor for reduced cancer in small animals. For whales and elephants they have had to gain extra adaptations to handle cancer which accounts for the difference.
Prostate cancer hasn’t been cured yet… steve jobs died early… it’s not that simple.
Steve Jobs had pancreas cancer
Pretty disingenuous to compare cancer, one of the most heavily studied medical conditions on the planet, to this. Just because there’s no cure to being made of cells? It’s not that simple.
To be fair though, cancer as a whole gets a lot of study dollars but it’s incredibly complicated and every form of cancer varies wildly in how it affects the body, how best to treat it, how to screen for it, who are at risk, etc.
The comment you replied to was referring to a single variant that affects only men (incorrectly associating it with Steve jobs, but regardless), not the entirety of cancer writ large.
Studying bone cancer, skin cancer, and studying prostate cancer etc for example are wholly separate things and shouldn’t really be put under the same bucket in this context.
I’m uninformed, but isn’t cancer largely a mammalian feature?
That’s a good question. I don’t know for sure. I just meant to imply that thinking about cancers in terms of “cures” isn’t a very useful way to approach the matter.
A cursory search suggests that reptiles and birds do get cancer, just at a noticeably reduced rate. Maybe something to do with metabolism? Or a side effect of bodies capable of live birth? Dunno.
I’ve also heard that whales and elephants get less cancers than we would expect from animals (or I guess mammals) of their size.
I’m just saying this from memory so I may be wrong, but I think size will be a big factor for reduced cancer in small animals. For whales and elephants they have had to gain extra adaptations to handle cancer which accounts for the difference.
Not a good example. He had an extremely curable form of cancer and chose to try a fruitarian diet instead of going to doctors, until it was too late.
The fruitarian diet might have even been worse than ignoring it entirely, with the sugars basically “feeding” the cancer.