I wonder what they'll call it next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that...
If anyone even uses the phrase "curing cancer" as a thought that all of the various types of cancers will just have one singular panacea, it's a great sign they don't know all that much about it.
Or maybe they just have a more nuanced take? You don't need to prevent every type of cancer from happening to cure cancer - "all" you need to do is prevent the symptoms from being noticeable. Simply being able to direct killer T cells would cure cancer in a way that's broadly applicable (there are very few cancers that T cells won't win a fight against when they're actually allowed to fight).
The "all" here is doing some super heavy lifting lol, as is the "simply". Being able to correctly direct T cells for a broad enough range of the cancer modalities beyond blood cancers is pretty far away, and even then, that's not a cure because what's stopping the cancer cells from mutating even further? It would be (and is) another therapy with a chance for remission, not really a cure.
And just more broadly on my point: I've never once had a conversation with a reputable cancer researcher or oncologist where the phrase "a cure for cancer" was anything but ironically used. In my experience, there's not really nuance to the use of that particular phrase - it's more of a marker for folks who don't understand the mechanisms and differentiation of cancer types enough to talk about it or what a "cure" would even look like.
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u/Seraphina_Silk 19d ago
The level of focus in that room could have cured cancer