I read an excellent blog (<a class="postlink" href="http://pipeline.corante.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://pipeline.corante.com/</a>) by a chemist working on drugs in the pharmaceutical industry, not because I understand it all but because he has a way of putting interesting things in easy to understand terms.
On this topic:
"Now, I'm actually kind of an optimistic person, or so I'm told. But I'm not optimistic enough to think that we can eliminate deaths from cancer any time soon, because, well, because I've worked on drugs that have attempted to do so. As has been detailed several times here (and many times elsewhere), cancer isn't one disease. It's a constellation of thousands of diseases, all of which end up by showing uncontrolled cell growth. Calling cancer a disease is like calling headache a disease.
No one, I think, knows how to eliminate deaths from cancer other than the way we're doing it now: detailed investigation of all sorts of cancers, all sorts of cellular pathways, and all sorts of therapies directed at them. Which is all a lot of work, and takes a lot of time (and a lot of money, too, of course). It also leads to a huge array of dead ends, disappointments, and a seemingly endless supply of "Hmm, that was more complicated than we thought" moments. I don't see that changing any time soon. I'm optimistic enough to think that there is a bottom to this ocean, that it's of finite size and everything in it is, in principle, comprehensible. But it's big. It's really, really big."
He has no time for conspiracy theorists either, so thumbs up for that too.
