<p>Does anyone know what some good undergraduate majors and good schools (preferrably in the south east US) would be for an aspiring radiation oncologist?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>UG school/major does not matter. Any combo your heart desires. There is no specialization in UG.</p>
<p>Terrible career choice.</p>
<p>If cancer is cured in the near future, you’re out of a job. $250k and 10 years of training out the window. Lets not forget we cured/ wiped out a lot of diseases…</p>
<p>Way too early to be thinking about a specialty. UG major does not matter…find something you like, can be passionate about and be highly successful studying. Same goes for school…academic success is greatly influenced by how happy you are with your school choice. Find a place that gives you the best mix of academic and social experiences…what happens AFTER classes end each day can greatly impact how well you do IN class.</p>
<p>Cancer isn’t a single disease and thus it is not likely to be cured in the near future. Further, we haven’t wiped out that many diseases and most of them were through hygiene and prevention rather than cure. Sadly, cancer isn’t going anywhere.</p>
<p>Jason,</p>
<p>Couldn’t that be true of any medical problem? Further, radiation’s a rapidly evolving field and still very medically relevant (see, for example, the relatively new treatment option MammoSite, its analogues in liver cancer and other peritoneal cancers, shrinkage of prostate tumors with radiation, and palliative radiation for metastatic bone disease). </p>
<p>If you truly believe that radiation will be obsolete any time in the next decade or two, then clearly you have not done any cancer research or are at all familiar with current therapeutic techniques. Like mmmcdowe already mentioned, cancer’s not going anywhere. Nice try though.</p>
<p>Sure maybe not 10-20 years.</p>
<p>But you are going to commit to being an oncologist for the next 50- 60 years. Can you guarantee that cancer wont be cured by then? </p>
<p>Vaccine effectively “cure” disease. When no more people start getting cancer, the condition is effectively cured.</p>
<p>Yes, I can guarantee that cancer won’t be cured by then or probably ever. In the words of one of the great oncologists of our day, everyone gets cancer if they live long enough. Even if it is in 50 years I will be heading on out anyways. You youngins would have a good 40 years, that’s a full life of practicing for many docs.</p>
<p>You can’t vaccinate against all cancers and certainly not so that 100% of the time the disease is defeated. There is not a breast cancer antigen that can be attacked in all cases, nor prostate, nor cardiac, nor bone, etc etc. This is because there are many, many ways for the cancer to evade. To an extent, treatments of cancer can make them “evolve” in that host to avoid or overpower the treatments. One could argue that every cancer, regardless of what cell it came from, is unique to a given individual. There are some combinations that are more commonly followed to malignancy, but the path to them is exceedingly varied.</p>
<p>That being said, I’m sure that infectious, life style, and iatrogenic causes of cancer will diminish over time.</p>
<p>Cancer will never be cured. It is a process of evolution of the cells in our body. Mutations happen in our DNA everyday from sunlight, radiation, viruses, mutagenic chemicals, and even our DNA replication makes its own mistakes. If the gene that the mutation effects is one that regulates the cell cycle and gives the cell the ability to prevent apoptosis (death of the cell) or proliferate quickier then that cell will become cancerous. You can’t really stop cancer from happening. The longer you live the more likely you will have it. </p>
<p>Infectious diseases however can be prevented and cured through vaccination and better sanitation. Cancer on the other hand will never be cured. Honestly the only way to cure cancer is to go into your body and kill every individual cancerous cell. I doubt we will have the technology to do that anytime soon. The only thing we can do is to tell people to have limited exposure to the sun and stay away from mutagenic chemicals (like cigarettes).</p>
<p>The question to be asked is not whether or not cancer will be cured but will radiation be the best treatment for cancer in the future? As of now it, I think it is the most effective treatment. I doubt we will find any better anytime soon.</p>
<p>Radiation oncology is safe. I think you should be questioning the future of anesthesia (due to CRNA) and radiology (outsourcing) .</p>
<p>Radiation oncology is difficult to match though. I wouldn’t go to med school dead on with just one specialty. The amount of radonc residencies is small and the people who apply are superstars. You need high step 1/AOA/honors 3rd year/lots of publications.</p>
<p>Not all mutations are bad. Not all mutations cause cancer.</p>
<p>While there are connections between genetic damage and cancer, cancer is also linked with carcinogens. </p>
<p>“Cancer on the other hand will never be cured.” </p>
<p>Oh really? That must be the exact reason why the NIH and Universities has dedicated HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars to finding vaccines and cures for cancer. The Ph.D’s obviously think it could be done and expressed their ideas very well on paper. The NIH grant people would certainly agree.</p>
<p>“Radiation oncology is safe. I think you should be questioning the future of anesthesia (due to CRNA) and radiology (outsourcing)”</p>
<p>Well first of all, CRNA exist only because of SHORTAGES in anesthesiologists. Radiology cannot be outsourced. 2 reasons: 1. YOU NEED A LICENSE. Indians in India are not US board certified. Lets not forget American Radiologists run the board that certifies radiologists. It obviously makes perfect sense for them to allow radiologists in poorer paid countries take their Profit$$$$. 2. The expense of PACS is so prohibitively expensive that it will require substantial investment for outsourcing to be even remotely possible.</p>
<p>You’re just wrong about cancer being cured someday. Sorry. There are too many cancers. Cancers are too successful, too good at what they do. Harmful DNA mutations will always occur. Carcinogens will always exist, etc etc etc, all outlined pretty well in the posts above.</p>
<p>I don’t think the goal of any scientist or oncologist is to eradicate cancer or invent some magic pill that makes it go away… I don’t think anyone even remotely knowledgeable about the field is naive enough to believe that it’s possible. Research aims to pinpoint the mechanisms of cancer cells, which eventually leads to better treatments for when it inevitably arises. Even if we develop superstar cancer drugs, even if we learn how to efficiently treat it, cancers will always exist and will always be unique from disease to disease and from person to person. We will always need oncologists to diagnose and treat patients depending on their specific form of cancer.</p>
<p>You can pull out NIH numbers and talk about fancy Ph.Ds all you want, but to suggest that oncologists won’t be necessary down the line because “cancer will be cured” pretty much destroys the credibility of any of your posts about the subject.</p>
<p>Or any subject… Most Cancer research isn’t about cure and vaccine. It’s about treatment, diagnosis, data compilation, conferences, epidemiology, public health, ethics, mechanisms, policy, etc, etc, etc. Considering that the NIH spends 6-8 billion a year in cancer, I’m inclined to believe that they might have spent over a 100 billion in cure and vaccine, but I’d like to see your source other than your own profound belief that all cancer research is to cure or vaccinate.</p>
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Rebut:
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<p>As for anesthesiology, I don’t think its prospects are ugly, long-term. Big name urban hospitals will always want “legitimate” anesthetists - aka people with an MD degree - delivering the anesthetics. After all, that is pretty much the primary reason why anesthesiology was formed (CRNAs have been here long before anesthesiologists).</p>
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</p>
<p>Carcinogens = chemicals that damage the genes that regulate the cell cycle. </p>
<p>You have to damage the DNA to get cancer. The only other way is to be infected by a virus which still affects the DNA by incorporating their DNA into yours.</p>
<p>^Or by random mistakes during replication. Or methylation errors. Or by cross over. </p>
<p>The bottom line is a bunch of things can go wrong and modern medicine can’t stop them from doing so. The best they can hope for is to minimize the damage.</p>
<p>JasoninNY, I hope you’re ■■■■■■■■. Because if you’re serious, then you have a fundamentally flawed understanding of science and because of that, I sure wouldn’t want you being my physician.</p>
<p>I doubt jasoninNY believes half of the garbage he spews out. He’s just toying with you guys.</p>
<p>^^^titcr^^^</p>
<p>Norcalguy</p>
<p>let’s hope so…otherwise he has the worst case of rectal cranial insertion I’ve seen in a long time…;)</p>
<p>I’m not a thorough reader on threads, usually just skim & selectively read. Must’ve read over this statement.
Quite affirmative, but quite wrong. Nurse anesthetists have been established long before anesthesiologists.</p>