[Closed] imagine the day when Cancer has a cure - what will the world look like ?

I'd have to sell my socks !

its reckoned that antibiotic resistance is the next global health disaster around the corner. I hope to see a cure for cancer in my lifetime.

What would be the next big killer

What would be the next big killer…

Pedestrians knocked down by electric cars that they couldn’t hear coming.

What would be the next big killer

Antibiotic resistance, obesity and air pollution.

I read an excellent book on Cancer. I think that it was called "The Emprorer is all malides"

It was positive about progress in cancer treatment. But it was very dismissive of of the attempts to "beat cancer" or "find a cure". Those phrases are dragged up by marketing people for cancer charities and drug companies

Cancer is a huge web of different disorders that all respond differently. As time progresses we will have treatments for more cancers and some cancers will have cures. But there won't be cures for all of them. There won't be simple pill cures for all but a few.

Cancer is nothing like treating a bacterial infection. Bacteria are very different to us as organisms. They get killed by things that don't kill us.

Cancer cells are our cells. So killing them without killing us is hard. Although there are patterns in cancer each cancer arises in that patient from that patients genes.

So I'm afraid I can't concieve of the situation that you describe

I reckon death will be the next pandemic.

There will always be something to keep the pharmaceutical companies in business ... you have to wonder .....

I'd say there probably 'needs' to be a severe downsizing of the global population ...

What would be the next big killer

Influenza epidemic

What would be the next big killer…

I have two proposals:

a) Brexiteer bashing, looking good and seems to be supported by the EU

b) Flu epidemic, bird flu/chicken flu/lama flu whatever.

There won't be a lot more humans roaming the earth, there will just be a huge amount of ancient humans sitting in pools of their own bodily fluids. brains turned to mush, just waiting for one of the few things that medical science hasn't yet cured to do them in.

The last article I read the other day suggested there was one particular thing they all had in common that could be targeted.

What will the world look like? More old people. They wont' want to work all the time, cos who does? But they'll to contribute and want to remain useful. So I predict a breakdown in the normal process of work all the time til 67 then stop. The labour market will become more flexible, allowing retired people to do a bit of work and young people to do less work so they can travel or be artists or whatever but still have an income.

To be fair though this could happen anyway if we just changed our ideas. Society could SO easily be such a better place, if we would just change our attitudes a bit.

"There won’t be a lot more humans roaming the earth, there will just be a huge amount of ancient humans sitting in pools of their own bodily fluids. brains turned to mush, just waiting for one of the few things that medical science hasn’t yet cured to do them in"

Inevitably someone brings Leave Voters into this discussion. Not big or clever pal.

Alcohol?

Cancers are mainly diseases of old age (which isn't to dismiss them - I'm no spring chicken...) So what that means you'll die, as people increasing do, older and of a whole bunch of things - a bit of dementia, some heart failure, bit of COPD, couple of strokes, and a few cancers too, no doubt, managed as chronic conditions. There. Something to look forward to...

While cancer is an awful thing... in terms of deaths it pales in comparison to wars, religion, hunger, pollution and people generally hating one another.

Once it's cured we still have a lon way to go

Inevitably someone brings Leave Voters into this discussion. Not big or clever pal.

If thats directed at me, I’m not your pal.

Over populated.

Didn't Will Smith cover this in I am Legend?

Cancer cells are our cells. So killing them without killing us is hard.

Amazed this thread has got to this many posts without an internet's telling us it isnt you only have to ......

To answer the Op it will look war ravaged there won't be a cure for cancer because effectively in the grand scheme we are it....we have a profound ability to destroy our own environment each other and everything else till we are all safely tucked up in a box underground or rotting in a pile on it..humanity won't learn from its mistakes and the leaders think they can take their money with em....last set of mugs to try that were the Pharaohs ...worked out awesome

And this too shall pass.

How many billion years until the earth becomes uninhabitable to life as we know it because the sun gets too warm and fuzzy? Do people reasonably expect humans to still be in existence in say 100million years?

Strikes me that this planet will become even more beautiful and not one of anyone will be here to witness it.

So full of our own self importance it’s rather sickening.

Dynamite with a laser beam.

So full of our own self importance it’s rather sickening.

I think that's pretty tautological tbh. Of course we are important to ourselves by our own criteria!

Antibiotic resistance and Alzheimers.

If cancer gets cured, we'll be world of obese 100 year old senile brexit voting zombie gammons.

While cancer is an awful thing… in terms of deaths it pales in comparison to wars, religion, hunger, pollution and people generally hating one another.

Cancer accounts for 28% of deaths in the UK and kills about 165k people a year here. In other words it takes Cancer about 3 years to kill the same amount of Brits who were killed in WW2 (both Military and Civilian) in 7 years. Obviously our population and average age is higher now, but still.

Since 2000 around 2.5 million Brits alone have died of cancer, compared to 3m globally as a result or war or associated disease or malnutrition.

Top response Nickhit3 😀
Although I feel pretty smug having just collected my blood tests from the docs today. All normal, inc PSA, and considering what I eat and drink, 65 y.o. and 95kg pretty amazing.
But I've just got back from a ride, and in my pocket is a receipt for a Wiggins bike for my grandson's 9th birthday, that we'll use to ride home from school together (like we always have) so I feel justified.

I was wondering the other day if the possibility exists for viruses and bacteria etc to evolve just like that slime did into fish and monkeys and humans etc? Or is there something about them that would inhibit such evolution? Regarding all other animal species on Earth, I think it's a bit sad the human race will most likely inhibit their evolution for our own convenience.

Worldwide figures:
https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death
"Injuries" (which includes conflict) fairly low.

Stealth edit because I can't read a bar graph...

Consultant reckons the same amount of people would be killed by heart disease anyway.

There are cures for some forms of cancer.

obese 100 year old senile brexit voting zombie gammons

So a bit like the posh areas now then?

As awful as cancer is, especially when the victim is young, without it and many other diseases an unsustainable population will be reached sooner. The war and suffering with then affect far more.
I've said it before but if medical progress continues to keep people alive some very difficult moral decisions need to be made.

Cancer is over 200 different diseases

And more to the point every cancer is different, because every person is different & cancer is just a corrupted version of you.

Some cancers are more treatable than others, we are getting better at it. Theres a whole raft of techniques in the pipeline & the potential for genomics-era personalised medicine is huge.

But theres so much we dont understand, (20 years in cancer research fwiw & I certainly know nothing)

Heart disease is next biigest killer, lets just assume we nail cancer thatd be next on the list, and we'd all end up dying of dementia

Im not sure whats worse

I was wondering the other day if the possibility exists for viruses and bacteria etc to evolve just like that slime did into fish and monkeys and humans etc?

You could argue that bacteria and viruses are probably a lot more successful than humans in terms of numbers and longevity on the planet, so why would they evolve into something less effective?

Cancer accounts for 28% of deaths in the UK and kills about 165k people a year here.

i reckon the actual figure is much higher.

start of 2017 i got aphone call from my sister saying mum had been rushed into Barts as she had Leukaemia.

we were told at the time that about 5%, just one in twenty, survive (survive meaning that after five years you are still breathing regardless of whether the blood cancer is still there) and supposedly she had one of the most curable blood cancers.

she eventually died about 14 months later and that was put down to pneumonia. but it was the cancer that killed her.

a similar thing happened to my uncle a few months earlier. big fat bastid. type 2 diabetes. went into hospital. his foot fell off and then died of pneumonia. again. the real cause of death was not recorded as such.

it does kinda make me wonder whether the docs are right to try and cure everything that they come across, even when they know the chance of survival is slim.

in a twisted kinda way i wish that the docs had let my mum succumb to the cancer rather than putting her and us, her family - immediate and extended, through an awful lot of pain.

and that is aside from the fact that each bout of chemo (that is, each syringe full of chemo, not he week long treatment) cost over 8K. the care that my mum received was amazing, but for her and ultimately most of the other people in that hospital , was for nothing. a few months, or maybe years at best.

if it isn't/wasn't cancer our society would find other ways of killing itself. i think the next big issue will be both antibiotic resistance and shit diet/gluttony, sorry obesity.

The next big killers after cancer, if we get that far, will be war, drought, starvation and antibiotic resistance.

As others have said. Cancer isn’t one disease so there won’t be a a “cure for cancer”

We’ve all got to die of something and given the options of heart disease stroke cancer dementia etc it’s hard to pick a favourite.

I think health inequalities are perhaps more important. On a global scale but also nationally.

We can measure mortality rates and life expectancy which is all generally improving but the gap in disability free life expectancy isn’t narrowing.
Social determinants of health are massive and need to be addressed as much as curing the diseases people get in old age.

Also, it's worth noting that as horrible as it is, a LOT of cancer is avoidable (not all sadly).

Lay off the pies, don't smoke, don't drink too much and move about a bit and you massively improve your chances of dodging it.

Paul

Social determinants of health are massive and need to be addressed as much as curing the diseases people get in old age.

Agreed

I'm very disappointed that the 100,000 genomes project is going to create a 2 tier health system to fund the next phase of the research. Tho even more upset with that idiot David Willets ( 2brains my arse) who listened to Illumina (the sequencing company) rather than asked academia because it could have been the 10 million (or even 65million) genomes (well exomes) project for the money we've spent.

a LOT of cancer is avoidable

No, you can reduce your risk factors, but that's not the same as saying it's avoidable. Don't victim blame (or write something that looks like victim blaming).

I don't think anyone is victim blaming. I think you are empowering people if they understand the lifestyle factors that can increase or decrease the chances of developing cancer. What people choose to do with that information is an individual choice, but more knowledge is a good thing.

You can't tie down an individual's cancer to their lifestyle in most cases- obvious exceptions are things like mesothelioma, and smoking related lung where you can often have a high level of probability that a particular risk factor, occupational exposure or lifestyle was involved.

However, what you can say is that a reduction in potentially harmful lifestyle choices across a population will lead to a substantial reduction in future cancer cases. You just can't say exactly which people will benefit.

Cancer immunotherapy will move the dial as far as treatment goes - there are no magic bullets for cancer as said above, but this is a huge development. A recent clinical trial in this area was halted due to efficacy, which is not something you hear everyday. The drug was working too well, making it unethical to proceed with the placebo group.

The last Nobel prize for medicine was in this area - v interesting history, a lot of popular science articles on it. Postulated for over 100 years that the immune system could be harnessed to fight cancer, but realising this took decades and decades of research and understanding.

"If thats directed at me, I’m not your pal."

?? It was a joke you bell, bikebouy. The post I quoted to execute the joke wasn't even yours so I don't know why you thought it was? If I haven't said joke enough it was a joke. A joke about thick leave voters.

Stress is a killer though you're right...

Dementia will be the next killer after cancer. The route has thus far been
Childbirth > Infectious Diseases > Cardiovascular > Cancer > Dementia ...

Some childhood cancers are curable already. Some cancers have been cured using CAR-T therapy in adults. Immune activation to kill cancer has been a revelation in recent years. But... An extension of life expectancy of three months in a trial against standard of care would be heralded as a breakthrough in many cancers. So don't raise your expectations too much just yet. And yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about it. Professionally and personally.

Lay off the pies, don’t smoke, don’t drink too much and move about a bit and you massively improve your chances of dodging it.

Stay out of the sun and have good genes helps a lot too. The last one can be difficult I'm afraid.