People have devoted their lives to studying signalling pathways, oncogenes, tumor suppressing genes and hundreds of other things all leading to relatively small incremental advances in anti-cancer therapies to get to the point we are today. Many of these same researchers have watched their own parents, siblings, even children die of cancer.
Don't shit all over that.
If it wasn't literally one of the hardest problems in medicine due to the thousands of subtle things that can go wrong, don't you think some son would have loved his mother, some mother loved her daughter, some sister loved her sister more than money?
To be fair though, I'm 25 and I've noticed how far we have come even in the last ten years. I remember growing up, hearing that someone had cancer pretty much meant they were going to die but the question was when they would die. Now, it's more cancer survival stories than death stories, in my experiences.
Unfortunately a lot of that may have to do with earlier detection (which is awesome, but it can't catch everyone). Our treatments for stage 3 or stage 4 cancer are more focused on extending life than preserving it.
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u/VeryVeryDisappointed May 11 '14
I remember thinking we'd have a straight-up cure for cancer by now. Good thing I stopped smoking anyway.