News Will Ferrell taking to Twitch to fight cancer

Damn my bank account is empty at the moment, but if the donations are still open next week I will donate.

 

This seems like a great idea. I won't do this because I won't be able to take advantage of his offer, but I wish him luck.

On a more cynical point of view, I lately haven't been very fond of cancer research projects. I think it'd be fantastic to have a cure, I would never wish cancer on anyone, and I fully support the people who want a cure, but I think the "researchers" are taking advantage of people and their generosity. I just find it hard to believe the amount of billions of USD spent on research and so little has come out of it. There are truly amazing discoveries and products in this world that have quickly and quietly disappeared - it wouldn't surprise me if a cure to cancer is one of them. I remember hearing about how a Chinese teenage girl found a cure to a type of cancer, and shortly after the news the progress of that went eerily quiet.

 

Cancer itself is the reason for the lack of visible progress. It's not a single entity, every cancer is different as it inhabits different parts of the body and is composed of different cells. A "cure" for say pancreatic cancer may have little or no effect on say liver cancer, it may even make things worse. Personally I feel that people group up cancer too much, as a result, any of the advancements that are made in some areas are completely overshadowed by other parts where progress wasn't made.

It would be fantastic for there to be some universal panacea that simply cures all cancer forms. But do I wonder if realistically it won't be on the horizon for quite a while. Also, given what causes cancer in the first place (DNA deterioration/mutation regarding cell division), I wonder if a true cancer cure would be something that prevents said mutations from occurring? In that case, things start to get awfully sci-fi in regards to things like ageing etc. Food for thought.

 

There are about 300 different types of cancer --that we know of. Even then we are still surprised by something never encountered before (HeLa is a graphic example, but I also have seen at least two patients who have something that the oncologists simply cannot classify. One patient carries a breast cancer gene that was hitherto unknown. The genetics team are very excited. The patient and her family less so). Haematological cancers are almost in a class of their own. Occasionally two seem to pop up at once in the same patient, at the same time, to tag-team in some weird and nasty way. We don't know why this happens.

Despite the miracles and magic of science, cancer still holds up a mirror to reveal us as frightened children clutching a make-believe magic wand. Cancer still manages to scare us. As such we hope for miracle cures, magic bullets; we quest for the holy grail. Such a strong hope can make us see things that aren't there. So yeah, every now and then we hear in the media reports of scientists and ordinary folk alike thinking that they have cracked the secret code, discovered the alchemy to the elixir of life, claiming to have the long-lost the treasure map with X marks the cure. But real research is harder than that.

Small steps, Ellie. Small steps.