ACS: Cancer Mortality Continues Steady Decline, Driven by Progress against Lung Cancer

[PeterMP]

57 minutes ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

 

@PeterMP Thanks for your response.  You seem like a good example of a person that I like to have this type of conversation with because you lay it out well and are knowledgeable in it.  I had to read it a few times but thought it brought up a lot of good points.  I’m curious to hear where you think the ethical lines are?

 

I'm Catholic and I teach.  I believe struggling and suffering can have value (note, I know some Catholics and teachers that seem to think that all suffering and struggles have value.  That's not me, and while it seems like a subtle distinction, practically it isn't.)

 

In terms of near end of life treatments for diseases, I'm pretty lenient and don't have much trouble leaving that to doctors and the family as long as they are acting in a non-corrupt manner (e.g. not doing things like billing for services that weren't provided) and based on science (e.g. we aren't going to leave somebody on life support for ever because of the families religious conviction despite science says the chances of recovery are essentially 0), or have the money to pay for it themselves.

 

In terms of working on doing things like research on diseases so we can treat people better in the future.  I don't overly worry about diseases becoming more common because people that have them live longer and are more integrated into society much.  

 

I do think there should be more of an effort to fight diseases that limit long term productivity.  I'd fund research related to diseases of the young, especially more potentially recoverable diseases more than the elderly.  On a longer term basis, that would affect end of life care and care in cases of extreme health issues.  But that's more for big picture societal benefit than an evolutionary concern.

 

I also think we should focus much more on disease prevention and cures vs. treatments, and I think we should even be more pro-active in terms of what are we doing that's likely going to contribute to diseases.  Even if that means slowing down "advancement".  That we didn't really start worrying about the health effects of PFOA until the early 2000s and are still working on what exactly they are is crazy (IMO).

 

https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20050113/is-teflon-chemical-toxic-epa-seeks-answers#1

 

 

[TheGreatBuzz]

1 minute ago, PleaseBlitz said:

None of those things should prevent you from having some compassion for others.

They don’t.  In many ways, I’d say they increase the compassion.  Having known the hurt one feels gives you a unique view on their emotions.  And unless you are a sociopath, you wouldn’t wish it on others.  But that doesn’t stop the conversation on if healthcare goes too far sometimes or if sometimes “letting nature take it’s course” is better from being an interesting and worthwhile topic.

 

And with that, I’m done with you on this topic.  Deuces.

[PleaseBlitz]

3 minutes ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

They don’t.  In many ways, I’d say they increase the compassion.  Having known the hurt one feels gives you a unique view on their emotions.  And unless you are a sociopath, you wouldn’t wish it on others.  But that doesn’t stop the conversation on if healthcare goes too far sometimes or if sometimes “letting nature take it’s course” is better from being an interesting and worthwhile topic.

 

And with that, I’m done with you on this topic.  Deuces.

Yikes. 

[TheGreatBuzz]

7 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

I'm Catholic and I teach.  I believe struggling and suffering can have value (note, I know some Catholics and teachers that seem to think that all suffering and struggles have value.  That's not me, and while it seems like a subtle distinction, practically it isn't.)

 

I grew up Catholic.  Maybe that is part of my problem.  (I kid.  As a devoted Athiest, I have a lot of respect for religion in terms of the values they teach.  But that is a topic for a different thread.)

 

11 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

  I don't overly worry about diseases becoming more common because people that have them live longer and are more integrated into society much

This is where I admittedly don’t know a whole lot.  I like the idea of Darwinism on the basic level that I know it but am smart enough to admit I don’t know what I don’t know.

 

13 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

I also think we should focus much more on disease prevention and cures vs. treatments, and I think we should even be more pro-active in terms of what are we doing that's likely going to contribute to diseases.  Even if that means slowing down "advancement".  

This I agree with for the most part though I don’t know the effects of preventing a disease that a person would have gotten otherwise.  Does that do anything to “strengthen” that persons bloodline or is it just a bandaid?  Out of curiosity (and I get you may have religious bias here), do you support terminating a fetus that is shown to have a marker for a certain disease?  If so, how do you draw the line of which ones are okay and which are not?

[PeterMP]

8 hours ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

This I agree with for the most part though I don’t know the effects of preventing a disease that a person would have gotten otherwise.  Does that do anything to “strengthen” that persons bloodline or is it just a bandaid?  Out of curiosity (and I get you may have religious bias here), do you support terminating a fetus that is shown to have a marker for a certain disease?  If so, how do you draw the line of which ones are okay and which are not?

 

In terms of strengthening or bandaid, the problem is that so many differences in humans that help contribute to diseases also appear to have advantages under other conditions, and at evolutionary time scales, we have no real idea what the future holds.  We may consider a certain variant of a gene to be harmful today (because it contributes to a disease) only to find that under some other conditions that occur 5,000 years from now, it is actually a positive.

 

We largely consider the breast cancer gene to be a negative thing, but studies show that the breast cancer mutations also likely have positive affects (under some conditions).

 

I'd rather see us not try to make decisions about whether something strengthens a bloodline or not because on human evolutionary time scales I think we'd be wrong a lot.

 

Generally, in evolution, diversity is good.  Diversity helps species survive.  Narrowing the gene pool because we consider some traits to be negatives that require bandaids I suspect longer term (at human evolutionary time scales) would be bad.

 

Like near of end of life treatments for other diseases, I'd tend to leave that to doctors and families.  I'd not be for there being a centralized decision making for that sort of thing.  I'd allow for diversity in opinions and actions (diversity is good).

 

(Connecting this to the outer space thread, I think the only serious threat to human extinction would be is if first we used genetic engineering, selective reproduction and modern (surveillance) technology to massively decrease diversity (of the gene pool and of behavior).  If you did that and than had some sort of cataclysmic event, then you could see true human extinction.)

[China]

‘Overwhelming Efficacy’ Found in New Lung Cancer Drug – Yale PhD Calls it ‘Transformative’

 

Clinical trials of a new lung cancer treatment has showed unprecedented results in decreasing the risk of death or recurrence from the disease by 89%.

 

After embarking on phase three trials, the drug Tagrisso’s early results yielded such “overwhelming efficacy” that the independent committee monitoring the trial data has ruled the trial can become unblinded, meaning that both patient and administrator know who has received the drug and who has received placebo.

 

At two years, 89% of all patients in the trial treated with Tagrisso, also called osimertinib, remained alive and disease free versus 53% on placebo. Consistent disease-free survival results were seen across all subgroups, including patients treated with surgery followed by chemotherapy and those who received surgery only, as well as in Asian and non-Asian patients.

 

“We are thrilled by the recommendation to unblind the Phase III ADAURA trial much earlier than expected and are incredibly excited with these unprecedented results in patients,” said José Baselga, Executive Vice President in Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca, the developers of Tagrisso. ADAURA is the randomized, double-blinded, global, placebo-controlled Phase III trial of the treatment to suppress secondary tumor formation in 682 patients.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Forehead]

I'll be happy when they figure out pancreatic, that one is a ****.  A friend of mine lost her father to that one and it was quick.

 

Of course from a personal genetics standpoint, I'd be happy if they figured out a whole lot of heart stuff.

[Mr. Sinister]

I think I've accepted that I am going to get it in some way or another. Runs in my family like Usain Bolt. Both my grandfathers and one grandmother died of it. One Uncle had it and survived. My dad went through his nasty ordeal with it and the botched surgery.

 

I also worked in dingy warehouses and dealt with harsh chemicals (like what's in RoundUp) in my late teens.

[Renegade7]

28 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

I think I've accepted that I am going to get it in some way or another. Runs in my family like Usain Bolt. Both my grandfathers and one grandmother died of it. One Uncle had it and survived. My dad went through his nasty ordeal with it and the botched surgery.

 

I also worked in dingy warehouses and dealt with harsh chemicals (like what's in RoundUp) in my late teens.

 

My father's best friend died from lung cancer and never smoked, dice are loaded against us sometimes and we don't even know it.

 

I wanted to do a 23&me to see what generics day I'm high risk for, but I don't trust those companies and what they do with that info once they have it now.

 

Going to look at what safe options there are for that kind of opinion, even if there's not much in an do about it.  I haven't got to that point in what I'm willing do to be proactive on something like that, even preventive gene therapy can backfire.

 

Enjoy what we got in the meantime.

[dfitzo53]

11 hours ago, Forehead said:

I'll be happy when they figure out pancreatic, that one is a ****.  A friend of mine lost her father to that one and it was quick.

 

Of course from a personal genetics standpoint, I'd be happy if they figured out a whole lot of heart stuff.

My understanding is that one of the issues with pancreatic cancer is it's very difficult to diagnose until it's essentially too late.  If symptoms showed up earlier the success rate would be higher but so many people are late stage before they even realize anything's wrong.