POLL: What Does the Future Hold?

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Ah, but the people who came up with the cure, be that a vaccine, treatment, whatever, would patent the formula and become filthy rich selling it to hospitals. So, yeah, the money for research would stop, but the fact that those responsible for the cure would become very rich, there would be no motivation for them not to come public with the results.

 

I'd like to hear from the person who said we would colonise another planet in 2005! How is that going to happen?

 

And I would like to see who said that there is no chance of ever being a liberal president again.

Yes, all seven of you.

Oh, what a shame. A chance to cure millions more than there are affected by cancer.


Let me guess, it's their own faults, right?

[ January 12, 2005, 00:10: Message edited by: Caleb* ]

 

Maybe I read that wrong, but are you implying that more people die from AIDS than die from cancer?

Taken from the CDC. I highly recommend looking at the chart on page 5 of the .PDF. I'm assuming that Malignant Neoplasms (the #2 killer) is probably cancer. Curse those medical people for not speaking English.

As to do the HIV sufferers deserve to die, because they did it to themselves, probably not. Even I can't be that heartless. However, when you look at the statistics of what is most likely to kill someone (heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers, the flu) the HIV people should be lucky that they get any research at all. If it wasn't for having a very vocal lobby, nobody would care.

I lost my mother to lung cancer (she was a smoker) and Mrs. Snook for the past two years has been fighting with her second bout of breast cancer. It looks like she has beaten it, but now it is a life long fight. She will be undergoing treatments for the rest of her life (may it be sixty years). Luckily, breast cancer is one of the lucky diseases that gets a lot of government and public support. I would hate to have something that no one cared about.

 

I think I said that there would be a liberal president within the next 10 years. I think that if the Democrats are ticked off enough at George W. they will try to rally all their supporters to get more people voting in hopes that they will outnumber the Republicans...

 

Do you mean that it isn't dangerous for others in the closest vicinity if you smoke?

 

This poll is great. It really shows how much crap is going on. If human kind is on the right track, we should be able to answer 2005 to all questions, except the nuclear war-thing, of course
BTW: 13% so far believe that we have aliens on Earth -

 

I am sorry if anyone mis-understood my comment. Regarding my full post I said it was a shame that it gets more funding than cancer (there are many types of cancer that are un-preventable) not that it gets any funding and in some cases it is peoples fault. If you sleep around, know about the dangers of STD's and don't use protection then it is your fault or share needles with strangers. However I also believe a lot of people contract HIV accidently through no fault of their own.

Regarding living on Mars would anyone really want to do such a thing? Our own planet has many beautiful places.

 

AIDS could have a cure already, but theres nothing to interest private Drug companys to develop anything, as most of the AIDS sufferers live in Africa, and the drug companies would get very little money from selling the drug to these countries as they couldnt afford it.

 

Cesard, you are forgetting or just delibirate ignore the point that there is not known around large parts of Africa that you get AIDS from sex, some see it as their God's punishment, other as an accident, and some know the truth, but not all do.

 

During college, I could get my hands on pot and hash whenever I liked. Still, I dont see it being legalised. Most of our laws still refer to pre-1900 years.

Gay marriage aint never gonna be legalised. Not in a country where the uneducated, ignorant plebs consider marriage outside your cast illegal and gangrape the young wife for her crime .

I dont think Jeff Bush (?) is gonna be the next presidential candidate. So in the next 10 years.
Mind you, that does not necessarily mean for the next 10 years.

I think Mars will mark a human footprint sometime during the next 50 years. Though it will take a lot to push us into properly colonising even the moon.

I believe in MiB

So long as there still is oil in the region, the US will never stop its interferance in middle-eastern matters. And the locals cant even seem to get to the same table without ****ing things up.

If you mean the type on which the Terminator series is based, then no. True Lies could happen.

Nope. Cancer and HIV are just too virulant and widespread for there to be a single cure for them. And I think we can forget about immunisation. The poor and developing countries will mess up that program.

Final proof, no. General scientific acceptance and inclusion in calculation/theories, yes.

 

Caleb, and in the parts that do know AIDS comes from sex, the husband blames it on the wife, calling her a w***e.
And when asked if they should not use condoms for personal safety, the men answer, "do you eat candies with the paper still wrapped around it?"

 

A cure for cancer within your lifetime? Haha, think again. HIV, yes possibly. Cancer is *preventable*, but curable? Don't bet on it.

 

There will be no cure for aids anytime soon. No disease caused by a virus had ever had a cure found for it. The best that anyone can hope for is a vaccine. But if some one has hiv or aids right now, it will kill them.
Now if people could learn to control their behavior, aids could have been almost eradicated by now.

 

The big reason why many diseases will never be "cured" in a hurry is that the pharmaceutical companies make far more money from various drugs that address symptoms and must be taken for years than they would from a cure that only needs to be taken once. Conspiracy theorists would suggest that a cure for cancer has already been found but has been covered. Those pharmaceutical giants wield such immense power that who knows.

 

The most f'd up thing I got was from an investment company that offered shares in companies that had the only cures for certain diseases.

As for gay marriage I think it should/could be legalised soon. Bush says it de-values the sanctity of marriage but what about adultry?

To Calab* I was talking about countries that should know better. Do you really think that everyone in Africa does not know about HIV and AIDS? As for it being Gods punishment people could say that about many things from Aids to breaking your arm when slipping on ice. AID's does deserve funding but I think that treatment for cancer should get more priority. It comes to the ago old 'differences in opinion'.

 

Answered "not in my lifetime" to almost, everything, except "nuclear war", which got a "in my lifetime". Oh yes, and dark matter got a "what the hell?"

Concerning cure for cancer, it's not a matter of conspiracy theories and pharmaceutical companies wanting to make money (they do make money - HUGE amounts of money - but that's not the issue). I don't know how to explain it to someone who isn't at least partially involved in this type of research, but if you actually see how it's conducted, you'd understand why I don't think it will happen anytime soon. The approach needs to be completely rethought.

Gay marriage? Nope, not anytime soon. The world is becoming MORE conservative, and fanatisicism is on the rise. Those two things don't exactly make it likely.

A liberal president in the US? That *is* the funniest joke ever

Ok, so I'm a pessimist...

 

@ Ziad

With regards to cancer research, yep that's exactly it. We all know the current routine is a waste of time, but we still do it. The whole system needs to be completely revamped.

 

@Tassadar: Yes, this is the expression I should have used. A waste of time. You take a chemical and you use it to treat human cancer cells in a test tube. It works. Then, in order to prove that it doesn't kill normal cells, you take MOUSE cells and show that they're not affected by the chemical. You then go on to publish that you have discovered a new treatment for cancer X that is in no way toxic...

This is just bad. And it's done everyday. A month ago a colleague was defending her thesis, and that's exactly what she was doing. And the scary thing is, there were a dozen professors in that room, and not one said a word, not one stopped to say, "look guys, isn't this logic slightly flawed?"

Of course, this chemical will never be approved for clinical testing, so it's not really a danger or anything. It's just money and time wasted on a research that basically goes nowhere. Sad.

 

@ Ziad

Which lab are you working in?

Too bad she will need to go through that exact process for approval in the first place by the FDA, etc, before clinical trials. And then they'll find out it doesn't work in humans because all the screening was done in mice. If it actually does work (and most likely in one very specific and rare tumour), they'll say "told you so", without questioning whether results were simply coincidence or a total fluke. But at least her thesis is done.

I'm sure the research at the moment is sound, the procedures just need to be changed. We are possibly missing millions of potential compounds with the way we are doing things, and promoting ones that are duds or perhaps only moderately effective.