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Comment by jackschultz | Hacker News Reader

What an odd part of history we're in. Imagine 50 years ago, how few options there were for people with tumor problems. Surgery, drugs to help with things like associated seizures. And then imagine 50 years in the future where there could be more of these solutions coming.

Article says ~15 month life average after being diagnosed with GBM, but imagine. Then think how in 3 years this new drug could extend the life of a person by 6 months. 6 months is a huge amount of time for a person and their family. Changes happen so quick in medicine, even going past clickbait "new drug" articles.

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> Imagine 50 years ago, how few options there were for people with tumor problems [...] And then imagine 50 years in the future where there could be more of these solutions coming.

50 years ago we thought cancer would've been totally cured by now.

My mom died after about 12 months after being diagnosed with a GBM and honestly wouldn't even have wanted it to be 15 months let alone 18.

Like knowing the car is going to crash and somebody's going to be dead but then having to watch it in slow motion anyway.

People have wildly different views about death.

My mother had terminal kidney cancer and was given two weeks to live. After radical surgery and chemotherapy she got to live 4 extra years. The cancer was still terminal, and the chemo wasn't a walk in the park, but she was deeply grateful for the extra time.

It’s important to remember that we’re all terminal, just some more than others.

That's exactly the case. There's pretty significant probability that you will die before diagnosed terminally ill patient that will die in 15 months time. Just check actuarial tables for your age and be scared.

I just did and my probability of dying is greater than 1/500. Not great odds. Not at all. It's like being forever stuck in a big college class that's held in an auditorium, except every year someone gets shot randomly. And every year the class gets a lot smaller. By 60, the class has only 100 students.

Now imagine if we put in a real effort and 50 years turns into 25.

Change doesn't happen in the medical field as fast as you think. There's no upward sloping curve.

A large component of the progress can't be seen because it involves preventing cancer by banning and discouraging carcinogenic materials and practices. People are happy when they can ring that bell but when they never had cancer they take it for granted. Often there is resistance to a ban on things that cause cancer. Sometimes it's justified (needs to be traded off with other things) while other times it isn't.

Also, it's not deprioritized like you make it seem. New cancer therapies form one of the biggest fields in medical and biological research.

I didn't say it was deprioritized. I said if we increase research we'll gain more knowledge sooner.

As a percentage of GDP, most countries probably only spend a few percent.

A major contributor to the fact of a „no upward sloping curve“ by the way is that the average age of patients is itself an upward sloping curve. It‘s the reason we haven‘t made any apparent progress across a multitude of medical fields (like narcosis deaths and many more) on average. The picture completely changes when adjusting for age.

There were plenty of drugs 50 years ago, they merely got recalled

We’d be invincible if those other drugs didnt kill us!

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