Submitted by MeronDC t3_10l96j0 in Futurology
moehassan6832 t1_j606xi4 wrote
Reply to comment by Impossible_You_8555 in Which medical specialty will deal with immortality? by MeronDC
A very unique take, could you clarify something please.
Why do you think that cancer means one's end of life, as we sometimes see kids get cancer.
My understanding is that it is just a bad mutation that makes the cell divide indefinitely.
So in no way does that imply that cancer means the end of life.
Impossible_You_8555 t1_j608u1z wrote
I'm not saying it would mean end of life
Two things
What allows increased life span things like telemore extensions, cellular repair also increase often cancer risks, essentially what often limits cellular repair, regeneration often limits cancer
We all have latent cancer but sometimes something us kills us first. Mice get cancer in such high rates in old age because essentially natural selection in the wild made it so most didn't live past a certain time, so cancer in old mouse age wasn't selected against, again with humans, extreme old age will mean certain cancers might show up at 130 that we wouldn't see without
moehassan6832 t1_j6091co wrote
Makes sense, thanks.
SARSSUCKS t1_j6341vc wrote
Cancer is often a death sentence. We measure survival rates in 5 years time. And if you are one of the lucky ones to handle enough poison to your body to push it into remission, the chance of a sudden and aggressive reoccurrence isnt 0 due to the amount of DNA damage from radiation and chemo. When I had a scare I learned about valter longo’s research into fasting and chemo, and that may be one way to improve survival rates by protecting the healthy cells but the treatments may cause a new cancer in the future. Younger patients are extremely resilient and have a better chance of keeping it at bay and handling higher doses of chemo. Also some pediatric cancers are curable because they irradiate the bone marrow and replace it with a donor essentially changing the child’s immune system. That being said cancer is not my specialty and maybe an oncologist can weigh in better than I can. Either way it’s one of my biggest fears and I pray we keep making headway with immunotherapies vs chemo and radiation
Edit: also some cancers are treated with only surgical intervention and this does have less chance of reoccurring in the future. My post may sound a bit more bleak than reality
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments