Radiation Oncology

mmmcdowe
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:21:45 +0000

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.

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.

That being said, I’m sure that infectious, life style, and iatrogenic causes of cancer will diminish over time.