• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Potential cure for CANCER!!!!!

You really have to be careful with science reporting, especially when it comes to ones relating to curing diseases. The press is eager to intentionally distort, hype up or just plain misunderstand the story in order to get an attention grabbing headline. Treat them with as much skepticism as you do the weekly news articles about how battery capacities are going to be 10x larger by next year ;)

The story is really that we now understand one safeguard that cells have against uncontrolled-replication (of many already known, and probably even more not known). They figured this out by taking various cancer cell types (grown in petri dishes), in which they knew this safeguard was broken, and manually turned it on again to see if growth stopped. If you have cancer in which that particular safeguard is broken (no two tumours are identical), then this could potentially 'pause' the worsening of the cancer, if they could make it a viable medical treatment someday, maybe.

Comparing the article to the real paper, I can tell you the explanation given by yahoo (who is quoting bgr.com, quoting the telegraph), is just plain wrong:

- PLEKHA7 regulates microRNA, not the other way round.

- The microprocessor (which was not discovered in this paper) is a group of proteins that regulate microRNAs, not the microRNAs themselves.

- I also don't see where the claim that PLEKHA7 is affecting 'cell bonds' comes from. The protein is found at the bond sites yes, but the paper doesn't seem to claim the protein affects bonding as such.
 
Last edited:
I completely agree... they tend to over exaggerate..
that is why I used "potential" in the title.

it does look like a good step in the right direction.
maybe there will be something concrete soon.. within 10 yrs.
fingers crossed
 
dan330 said:
it does look like a good step in the right direction.
maybe there will be something concrete soon.. within 10 yrs.
fingers crossed
Click to expand...

Yeah, don't let me diminish the actual science behind the article, by any means.

I just think it's irresponsible that these kinds of articles build up the wrong expectations. There is never going to be one big breakthrough when it comes to cancer. In part, that's the reality of science - progress is slow and incremental, and most problems can't be solved with a lone 'eureka' moment. But mostly, cancer is a variable category of diseases and can have no singular cure. Progress is more obviously visible in the form of survival rates, which are slowly increasing for most types of cancer, even now.
 
Last edited:
Fun Fact!
Vegetarians have about a 40 percent less chance of getting cancer compared to non vegetarians.....just sayin...;)
 
My mother died of of oesophageal sarcoma in 2008, horrible disease.

I agree that the media often over hypes discoveries in all science, particularly in medical research and cancer especially. I don't think it is intentional, more a misunderstanding of the facts and research. However this does not make it any less wrong.

I feel that the panacea of "A cure for (all) cancer" will never be found and probably never will be. I belive the best we can hope for is making it manageable so a sufferer may live a normal lifespan with a normal quality of life provided they take drugs for the rest of their life. Much like drug therapy can keep AIDS sufferers fit and healthy for a longer and longer time.

I hope I'm wrong and a universal cancer cure is found, but from my limited knowledge I find that hope extremely unlikely to become a reality.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom