Interesting Article

Nice article from CNN, "Where's the Cure for Cancer?"


The President is proposing billions more dollars for cancer research, with the goal of a cure for cancer. (His mom's cancer is no doubt playing into that decision.)


The article, though, brings up the complications that come with that noble goal: there are over 200 different kinds of cancer, all very different. (Heck, there are 30 different kinds of NHL, all extremely different from each other.) So finding "a cure" is going to be tough. Some researchers think a cure might even be impossible for some cancers, and a more realistic goal is to keep some cancers in check so that they are more like chronic diseases. Follicular NHL is often seen in that way -- chronic, so that it is treated as necessary.


I'm no cancer expert, but it seems to me that some of the research being conducted does hint at a common genetic trigger for a lot of cancers. I wouldn't want to abandon a search for a single cure -- it's from that research for a single cure, looking deep into a bunch of individual cancers, that we'll learn more about those individual cancers. I say, don't cut off any possibilities. Big gains come from big goals.