Would offering 50 million dollar + reward for the cure of cancer help?

[Iamme]

Has this even ever been tried? It seems like it could help. It might lure real brainy people to not go into engineering or some other technical research type job, and instead concentrate with all their being on trying to find a REAL cure for cancer. I mean, something that attacks and destroys any type of cancer cell and leaves surrounding cells intact.

While we are on this subject, do you know if doctors ever use liquid nitrogen injection of breast cancer tumors as opposed to lumpectomy? If not, WHY not?

[Loss Leader]

IAmMe - Do you know the application cost for FDA approval of a single drug? Find it out and then you'll have some idea what one of the obstacles to your idea might be.

[BenBurch]

I couldn't hurt. But really the rewards for doing this are already much higher than that...

[Jimbo07]

Originally Posted by Iamme

It might lure real brainy people to not go into engineering or some other technical research type job

Because as we all know, those lazy engineers have never done anything positive for society...

[bruto]

Think about this a little, Iamme. Assuming, for the moment, (wrongly, I think) that the effort is not already being made by many dedicated scientists with a great deal of work and a great deal of money; that the usual rational arguments about how one might go about doing and funding the research are momentarily abandoned; that the effort would not be a hugely collaborative or corporate one, as is more likely; and that the success is a measurably complete one, rather than just another level of incremental progress: then let us imagine for a moment that somebody does indeed come up with a "cure for any type of cancer." Of course if you did, it would also constitute a radical new understanding of how cancer operates and what it is in the first place, and thus a grand coup in pure science quite apart from the medical utility of the cure itself. It would be the discovery of the century at least. A Nobel is guaranteed, which is only a couple of million bucks these days, but not hay. Write your own ticket - jobs, patents, lectures, books. You'd be a medical superhero, your name forever in the annals of history. You'd be the greatest medical celebrity alive - forget pikers like Salk and Fleming and Barnaard: you'd be up there with Harvey and Watson and Crick. The prize is already inherent in the success.

I don't know about the liquid nitrogen question, but off the top of my head, I could think of a couple of problems that might be worth considering. First off, how effective would freezing be? It isn't very consistently effective against something as simple as a wart. How do you know you've hit the whole tumor? What do you do with the now necrotic tissue? My guess is that no such scheme would work without surgery anyway, and if that is the case, why not remove the lump instead of killing it first?

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by Jimbo07

Because as we all know, those lazy engineers have never done anything positive for society...

Welll. I was never implying that engineers are otherwise not doing useful things. I am simply prioritizing. Would you like to go to an early grave while owning an iPod and HDTV, for example? Wouldn't you, on your too-early deathbed, think it would have been better if thousands of these brainy engineers instead were working on cancer, to help you live, just so you could go for a nice enjoyable walk in the woods or to bask in the sun on the beach while drinking a beer and listening to some old fashion battery radio?

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

But really the rewards for doing this are already much higher than that...

Really? There are? Who is behind paying out this reward money?

[this charming man]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Really? There are? Who is behind paying out this reward money?

Do you honestly think the only rewards are monetary?

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Really? There are? Who is behind paying out this reward money?

Any sick person.

And their insurers.

It's called PROFIT.

And if you had a fail-safe cure for cancer, you'd quickly be the richest SOB on the planet/

[this charming man]

And anyway the first drug company to find and patent a drug that truly cures or prevents cancer, will make a whole lot more than 50 mil.

[Skeptic Guy]

As BenBurch said, if you came up with a cure for cancer, in all its form or in just one, you would make much more than $50 mil. The prize is there waiting for someone to take it.

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by bruto

Of course if you did, it would also constitute a radical new understanding of how cancer operates and what it is in the first place, and thus a grand coup in pure science quite apart from the medical utility of the cure itself. It would be the discovery of the century at least. A Nobel is guaranteed, ....

Yes. I know. Exactly. Hence the reward and hoping some braniac can figure out what others so far have failed to achieve. We are where we are at in EVERY field today due to numbers in play; numbers of people. The two heads are better than 1 thing. A billion heads are better than 2, etc.

Quote:

I don't know about the liquid nitrogen question, but off the top of my head, I could think of a couple of problems that might be worth considering. First off, how effective would freezing be? It isn't very consistently effective against something as simple as a wart. How do you know you've hit the whole tumor? What do you do with the now necrotic tissue? My guess is that no such scheme would work without surgery anyway, and if that is the case, why not remove the lump instead of killing it first?

Well, LN is being used effectively to destroy tissue. There might be certain applications where necrosis is not a terrible issue? I don't know. And I thought it WAS successful with warts. Shows what I know, I guess.

Do people ever get finger (tissue) cancer? (Not skin or bone cancer on/in the finger.) How about arms, legs, eyeballs, teeth or hair? Hair? - you laugh? But hair is something that lives and grows from your body and is exposed to many elements, like bad chemicals. Teeth? They are alive also; look at what they are exposed to. Hands are exposed to bad chemicals. We know it LOVES hormone areas like breasts, cervix, testicles. But also picks on areas where there is irritation from the outside like in lungs. It also likes settling into the bladder and kidneys - areas of the body that process fluids. There is a lot of stuff going on with the heart, but I have not heard a lot about heart cancer. That be the pits to be so unlucky for a person to be recovering from quintuple bypass and then learn they have heart cancer, eh? IS there any real significant numbers of heart cancer? If not, WHY not? It is questions like this that I raise, that can help steer ones understanding better.

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by this charming man

Do you honestly think the only rewards are monetary?

No. Not at all. But -would you also hedge your bet that doctors all work on their love for their profession and humanity? Think there woud be AS many doctors if they were only paid max of say $50K a year?

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by this charming man

And anyway the first drug company to find and patent a drug that truly cures or prevents cancer, will make a whole lot more than 50 mil.

Depends on the type of system it relies on to work. If it were like a vaccine - a one shot deal - they'd make a killing at first. Then they'd have to pray that the world is still into producing lots of new babies.

[Iamme]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

Any sick person.

And their insurers.

It's called PROFIT.

And if you had a fail-safe cure for cancer, you'd quickly be the richest SOB on the planet/

Any sick person would pay the reward? Uh...even trailer park people who have to steal beer money?

[NobbyNobbs]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Welll. I was never implying that engineers are otherwise not doing useful things. I am simply prioritizing. Would you like to go to an early grave while owning an iPod and HDTV, for example? Wouldn't you, on your too-early deathbed, think it would have been better if thousands of these brainy engineers instead were working on cancer, to help you live, just so you could go for a nice enjoyable walk in the woods or to bask in the sun on the beach while drinking a beer and listening to some old fashion battery radio?

On the other hand, it may very well be the engineer who designs the spacecraft that visits the Oort Cloud and returns, thus discovering that conditions out there are perfect for cultivating the organism responsible for curing cancer.

Meanwhile, the medical researcher back on earth has come up with yet another form of biological warfare, which gets loose and spreads, wiping out the human population and making moot the need for a cure for cancer.

You never know what will lead where, so it's hard to place priorities. Best to let people do what they want, I would think.

[Kariboo]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Do people ever get finger (tissue) cancer? (Not skin or bone cancer on/in the finger.)

What tissue would that be then? muscle? In that case, yes, for instance: http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page=271, or
http://www.canceranswers.com/Muscle.Cancer.html
this also explains :

Originally Posted by Iamme

.How about arms, legs, eyeballs,

and

Originally Posted by Iamme

heart cancer?

Originally Posted by Iamme

But hair is something that lives and grows from your body and is exposed to many elements, like bad chemicals.

Hair is not alive, see: http://www.kidshealth.com/kid/body/hair_noSW.html

Originally Posted by Iamme

Teeth

are not alive, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth . The bloodvessels and nerves leading to it are. and there is sometning called odontogenic tumors (tumors that start in tooth-forming tissues) http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a

Originally Posted by Iamme

.Hands are exposed to bad chemicals. We know it LOVES hormone areas like breasts, cervix, testicles. But also picks on areas where there is irritation from the outside like in lungs. It also likes settling into the bladder and kidneys - areas of the body that process fluids.

Your point is??

[Loss Leader]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Hair? - you laugh? But hair is something that lives and grows from your body and is exposed to many elements, like bad chemicals.

Hair is dead from before it grows past the skin. It cannot get cancer or anything else. However, the hair folicles that are part of your skin can become cancerous. Such cancers are rare and, in any case, fairly easy to deal with.

You would know any of this if you did a little bit of research before just posting the first thing that occurs to your mind.

[Normal Dude]

Well, I hope all of you non-oncologists are ashamed of yourselves.

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Any sick person would pay the reward? Uh...even trailer park people who have to steal beer money?

Doesn't matter with respect to being financially rewarded! Treatment of cancer costs on the average of $200,000 dollars right now, and if you had a cure you could expect to pocket much of that.

[bruto]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Yes. I know. Exactly. Hence the reward and hoping some braniac* can figure out what others so far have failed to achieve. We are where we are at in EVERY field today due to numbers in play; numbers of people. The two heads are better than 1 thing. A billion heads are better than 2, etc.

You don't get it, then. The reward is already there. It's inherent in the challenge. There are already numbers in play. Companies, agencies, organizations, clinics, faculties, hospitals, departments and individuals, devoting their working lives to this problem. Perhaps you think they're not working hard enough, or intelligently enough, but for that you'd have to come up with something in the way of evidence. Sure, a 50 million dollar prize would be nice, but if it's deferred, nobody but those already doing the work will be likely to see it, and they are already trying. Your 50 mil would be better spent on research, and let the reward fall as it will anyway.

Quote:

Well, LN is being used effectively to destroy tissue. There might be certain applications where necrosis is not a terrible issue? I don't know. And I thought it WAS successful with warts. Shows what I know, I guess.

It's not all that successful with warts. I've seen some news items that a piece of duct tape has better overall success. Freezing has about a 60 percent success rate, not all that good. It's cheap and easy, and worth a shot on a wart, but a wart is benign. If it doesn't work, you do it again. Or you try something else, or you just live with the wart. The wart won't have metastasized in the meantime. That is a luxury unavailable for cancer. Aside from that, warts are on the surface. The dead tissue falls off. Where does the dead tissue from an internal tumor go?

Quote:

Do people ever get finger (tissue) cancer? (Not skin or bone cancer on/in the finger.) How about arms, legs, eyeballs, teeth or hair? Hair? - you laugh? But hair is something that lives and grows from your body and is exposed to many elements, like bad chemicals. Teeth? They are alive also; look at what they are exposed to. Hands are exposed to bad chemicals. We know it LOVES hormone areas like breasts, cervix, testicles. But also picks on areas where there is irritation from the outside like in lungs. It also likes settling into the bladder and kidneys - areas of the body that process fluids. There is a lot of stuff going on with the heart, but I have not heard a lot about heart cancer. That be the pits to be so unlucky for a person to be recovering from quintuple bypass and then learn they have heart cancer, eh? IS there any real significant numbers of heart cancer? If not, WHY not? It is questions like this that I raise, that can help steer ones understanding better.

Once again, I'm less surprised than I should be perhaps, given the source, but still a little surprised. First of all, don't you look anything up before you start to expound? Some of these questions might be answered already if you take some time to look. But second, do you really somehow think that you're the first person to ask these questions?

Here it is again:

Quote:

...If not, WHY not? It is questions like this that I raise, that can help steer ones understanding better.

Has it steered your understanding better? If not, WHY not?

By the way, my father died of eye cancer (melanoma). That's a really easy one to research. Google for "eye cancer." Gee, who would ever have thought about using those two words together to search for articles on eye cancer?

Sarcomas are muscle cancers. The heart is a muscle. I wonder, wonder wonder....no, not who wrote the book of love, but...if you put those two ideas together, do you suppose our friend Google might cough up something interesting?

* p.s. I kind of like the word "braniac." I think John Harvey Kellogg and C.W. Post were braniacs, but although they came up with a pretty good cure for constipation, they both struck out on cancer.

[bobdroege7]

Originally Posted by Normal Dude

Well, I hope all of you non-oncologists are ashamed of yourselves.

Well, someone has to make the cancer drugs you prescribe.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by Loss Leader

You would know any of this if you did a little bit of research before just posting the first thing that occurs to your mind.

Indeed

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

[NobbyNobbs]

Originally Posted by Iamme

Yes. I know. Exactly. Hence the reward and hoping some braniac can figure out what others so far have failed to achieve. We are where we are at in EVERY field today due to numbers in play; numbers of people. The two heads are better than 1 thing. A billion heads are better than 2, etc.

And if there was such a reward, someone like you would come onto a forum like this, and without thinking first, begin typing....

"Hey, what if we doubled the reward for the cure of cancer to $100 million? Then twice as many people would work on it......"