RIP Brittany Maynard :(

[Excelsior]

Really?

...seriously?

Want to bring your experience to the table? I've treated well over a 100 brain cancer patients with radiation.

 

[Excelsior]

My mother's brain cancer spread like vines so they could not operate without removing most of her brains. They did the chemo but that was some serious suffering there. Still haunts me to this day remembering the horrific images of her suffering until the end

I'm sorry for your loss and her suffering. It is a truly awful way to go.

 

[Excelsior]

And that is only when they can surgically debulk or remove the tumor. Her glioblastoma was (reportedly) inoperable = start shopping for burial plots/caskets.
It raises the question....

Yep. It is a nasty one.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

She was so ridiculously gorgeous too. Glad my state has programs like this so people don't suffer if they don't have to.

 

[Brainonska511]

I guess my point it when people say "cure cancer!" it's not as easy as it sounds because cancer is a conglomeration of many different things. It's like saying "why can't we cure the common cold?" Well... 200+ different viruses can cause colds!

Precisely. I was merely complaining about the inane comment suggesting that a sudden "cure" would miraculously appear, defying everything about how the scientific process works.

you're confusing the process of random mutations with some idea that the mutations themselves, are random. They are not.

The process of mutation is a relatively random occurrence, however. That is what this means.

But yes, every cancer is astonishingly unique, and treatments and even cures that have worked for some will never work for others.

Yeah, I know. I decided to not write a dissertation on the subject. I was merely suggesting that some cancers share similar underlying mechanisms (eg: the same dysfunctional proteins) after the random mutations occur, so in some cases a set of common cures/treatments could work (in theory, in practice, it could be quite difficult, especially if one of the underlying dysfunctional proteins is one of the many kinases, which are notoriously difficult to hit specifically with a drug).

But take for example this story I read about recently: a drug which was tried on people with a very difficult thyroid (?) cancer but normally used for some other type of body-cancer (I forget the details, but the gist is something like this) - in the trial, only 2 of 20 responded to the drug, which would normally suggest the drug is pointless to use for this particular cancer. But genetic analysis of the two cases that worked showed it had the same cancer-driving mechanism those other types of cancers had, hence the drug worked.

But I have my own biophysics research to worry about, so I tend not to write in long detail here.