Quote:
Originally posted by Donut:
Thank you Willow. So what you are saying is that as well as treating different types of cancers differently we will not win the war on cancer unless we eventually address the root causes. Even though this may be unpalatable to some?
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Yes, at least IMO. We do not know enough of cancer yet. For instance two patients arrive with colon cancer (colon cancer is fairly stable in its mutations so it makes a good example here). Both patients are males and receive the same treatment. Only one survives. Why? We don´t know. If we had the knowledge of how and why cancers appear we might be able to cure all patients. I´ll continue with colon cancer. The 1st mutation is üsually in a gene called APC. Now why does that gene mutate? If we knew that maybe we would be able to prevent it. Thus we would be able to cure colon cancers before the cancer appears. I agree that we´re spending the money unwisely. It´s not us doctors that decide what to research nor is it cancer experts. Unfortunately this leads to fractioned research although there are some very interesting research being done. Hopefully treatment will improve and fatalities decrease. But we´ll have to wait for the cure. The most efficient treatment today is as Attalus said a mixture of suregery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy to get rid of all mutated cells [img]smile.gif[/img]
[ 12-02-2002, 10:13 AM: Message edited by: WillowIX ]