Radiation Oncology

Emily2007
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:01:15 +0000

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.

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.

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.