Should we cure Cancer/Diseases/etc?

Dog-- said:
@Farrow - eventually.. When it's too late..

By the way, my problem is with overpopulation, cancer seems to be the biggest preventable factor within it. And please don't say war.. That's something you can't stop no matter what you do.
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HA! Cancer the biggest part of "preventable" population culls? How about societal change? How about famine? How about war? No really, how about it? How about cardiovascular disease? Smoking? Drinking and driving? All other accidents? Homocides? Suicides? Genocides?

Cancer accounts for less than 24% of all deaths, and I would hardly consider cancer "preventable". And besides, everyone who today dies from cancer WOULD OBVIOUSLY DIE OF SOMETHING ELSE LATER! Have you ever thought of that? If all of the sudden cancer is cured, the people who currently have cancer would die of cardiovascular disease, or an auto accident. The numbers in those categories would rise, the same number of people would be dying, they would simply be redistributed.
 
Cancer is a horrible disease. My mum got a highly malignant brain tumour 15 months ago...she wasn't expected to survive longer than 5 months, so she's lucky on that front.
I'm thinking she may just beat the odds here, but even if she does, it's like half of her has died already. She's a different person now...she's lost a lot of her intelligence and personality, is always ill, falls asleep all the time and finds it very difficult to speak properly. Often, what she says makes no sense. She sometimes forgets how to open a door or get dressed and gets in a state of child-like panic, or she pours water from the kettle all over the worktop instead of in the mug...all sorts of strange things like that...
At least heart disease doesn't turn you into someone else...
 
Dog-- said:
Think about it.. If we found a cure for, say, cancer tomorrow, within, for example, 100 years, we'd have an extra 6,827,600 people.
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This figure isn't really correct since it's assuming that those people go on to live for another generation. But most old people die of cancer because cancer is more prone in old people, so they die of that or natural causes (heart problems).

And 6 mil is almost nothing compared to the 7bil and rising population. The growing pop is just a product of MORE PEOPLE ****ING. It grows exponentially.

A cure for cancer would simply save more people from dying at a younger age and giving older people with it a little more time on Earth. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, as far as I can tell.
 
That reminds me of one of the stupidest statistics I heard on TV: "If you don't die of something else first, you have a 100% chance of dying of cancer."
 
Dan said:
That reminds me of one of the stupidest statistics I heard on TV: "If you don't die of something else first, you have a 100% chance of dying of cancer."
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That's not stupid. It makes perfect sense.
 
Yes, my mom had melanoma, but thankfully my dad saw it and told her she should get it checked. They took a whole bunch of tissue out of her leg and she's fine now. A few more months, though, and she would have been in serious trouble. Sometimes I stop and think about just how lucky I am to still have her. I'm very thankful.
 
This is the kind of issue that has no end to it. Morally, that would be wrong because one would be Deliberately letting people die, but on the logical side, holding the earth's population constant would theoretically save more lives.

Lets look at this issue historically even though it's hard to compare. Take the Japan Atomic Bombings, they knew many would be suffering for ages to come but they knew it would be for the greater good. In all cases, if you were saving more lives by reducing a few, it would be alright, but morally wrong. Thus, in the end, inevitably such a thought might just occur in the future, when population really becomes a pressing problem..
 
Hell yeah, curing cancer would be great for us.
I thought there were some theories floating around saying we are becoming infertile, which means we should reproduce MORE so we have a better chance to survive as a whole, and the larger population rate has to do with the easy accesibility to food.
 
Cure 'em and then cut off their dicks.


Obvious answer is yes we need to cure it asap. We need to deal with overpopulation at the same time as developing a cure, but neither really need to be figured out before the other.
 
There are some conspiracy theorists that claim there already is a cure for cancer, that it's only reserved for the "elitist" New World Order/Free Mason/Illuminati parties. (Yes, here we go with another ridiculous conspiracy theory rant. You guys can thank me later! ;))
 
I don't mean to be an ass or anything, but speaking as a healthy person right now, I think it would be too soon to develop cures for these things. I think we should have some sort of plan first, before we atleast release a cure to the public..

Anyways, this is just something I was thinking about earlier today.

Your thoughts?
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I think when your laying there, the cancer eating you alive, or worse yet, having to watch someone you love getting slowly reduced to nothing, you wont be so eager to play Hitleresque demographics.

Seriously though, I'm pretty sure you weren't meaning anything malicious by your thought, just a thought, but its a pointless one.

Modern western culture at least carries principals that, we at least try to aspire to most o the time, such as respect for human life and the rights of the individual.

There are quite a few alternative answers.

Improve the developing world o the developed world and all the contraceptive using small family goodness that comes with.

SPACE!. I know, it seems sci fi, but the sooner we start taking seriously colonies in space, orbit and the moon so on, the sooner we can move folk off Earth's back. And unlike terrestrial immigration, you never really ru out of space.

Hell, I'de rather have a program of chemical castration of so many humans, over just letting them die of a horrible disease.
 
zombieturtle01 said:
you dont realize that if we allow something like this, it wouldn't stop at cancer victims.

Maybe we should just stop taking care of people all together? Remove Emergency rooms?
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This.

Let's stop all scientific progress. In fact, let's go back to the stone age when we didn't cure anything.
 
Didn't you learn from I Am Legend

We should cure cancer as long as a woman isn't in charge with it.
 
Saturos said:
There are some conspiracy theorists that claim there already is a cure for cancer, that it's only reserved for the "elitist" New World Order/Free Mason/Illuminati parties. (Yes, here we go with another ridiculous conspiracy theory rant. You guys can thank me later! ;))
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Or not. Darn, I was hoping this would at least set off Atomic_Piggy. Wonder what Cpt. Stern would say about it though?:D
 
There really isn't.

For one thing the idea that there's one single cure for "cancer" as if all the different types work the same way is simply wrong.
 
Yeah, I think we should cure it all.




We can have a war or something if it gets out of hand.
 
Yes, as purposely stopping the cure for say, cancer, would very much be like shutting down hospitals for the sake of overpopulation.
 
I have a better idea. Let's find a cure and only dole it out to rich white guys!

Damn straight I just made your argument racist.
 
Of course we should save everyone. One of my best friends has epilepsy, and if it wasn't due to the miracle of modern medicine, would probably not be with us today. I'd not trade that in for the world.

-Angry Lawyer
 
Really? You'd kill everyone in the world before not curing him? :p
 
Angry Lawyer said:
Of course we should save everyone. One of my best friends has epilepsy, and if it wasn't due to the miracle of modern medicine, would probably not be with us today. I'd not trade that in for the world.

-Angry Lawyer
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Well said :)
 
Epilepsy doesn't have a cure, as far as I know, but the drugs suppress it.

And yeah, I probably would. I really like the dude.

-Angry Lawyer
 
zombieturtle01 said:
The entire idea of not-curing cancer because of population increase is best described as the term "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"
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Throwing the baby out with the bathwater would solve overpopulation, though.
 
For all who think war is a good population control: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_death

War accounts for only .30% of all deaths worldwide. Intentional injury (suicide, murder, war) accounts for 2.84%

You should really be thanking cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, strokes, respiratory infections and AIDS for population control.
 
sea said:
Yeah, that's basically it. The biggest problem is introducing effective birth control to parts of the world that really need it, like Africa and India, and breaking down the social stigma surrounding it so it becomes not just an exception, but the norm. Saving people in North America and Europe, because of low birth rates, is not going to make the population balloon.
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The Catholic church has a hell of a lot to answer for here.
 
Angry Lawyer said:
Epilepsy doesn't have a cure, as far as I know, but the drugs suppress it.

And yeah, I probably would. I really like the dude.

-Angry Lawyer
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I have multiple types of severe epilepsy too - I can certainly vouch for the miracle of modern medicine. Just 50 years ago, they couldn't do anything for it and I would be completely disabled.
Hell, even then the drugs had terrible, terrible side-effects. It's only very recently that people with epilepsy have been able to live truly normal lives.

There is a cure, but it only works in certain cases. Where the epileptic activity is localised to a certain region of the brain, they can basically cut that part out - but if the epilepsy is generalised across the whole brain, obviously that doesn't work. They tested me out for the surgery a few years back.
 
Errrm... yeah. Yeah, we should.


...is it really necessary to further argue this point?
 
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