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Comment by lebuffon | Hacker News Reader

I say this as often as I can. We have a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer with ~83% efficacy. Following the "bread-crumbs" seems like a good strategy to me.

We have this little beasty in wild. Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1, but no vaccine. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-t-lym...

We have correlation with cancer with other viruses. Hep C for example.

How many more clues do we need to expand research in this direction?

Could the implications for the existing cancer "industry" preclude finding prophylactic methods? Asking for a friend.

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I used to think this and I don't think so anymore. Consider a company who develops the de-facto cure for a cancer. Let's say a course of normal treatment to remission cost $200,000.

There's no reason this company wouldn't release the cure. They would simple charge <COST_OF_NORMAL_TREATMENT> * <MARGIN> + <OPPORTUNITY_COST> for the drug. People would pay almost any amount for such a cure. The company would have no problem padding it's bottom line sufficiently.

Devil's Advocate:

What if these companies did find a cure, and after running the numbers, determined it was less profitable? Wouldn't 'death by a thousand costs' be more profitable a one-time cure (or limited rounds)? Just because people would be willing to pay almost any amount does not mean they can pay almost any amount.

(Personally, I think they would release a cure if they could find one, but I have heard arguments as to why it would be less profitable, and I am curious about your opinions.

These companies are evil, but it's not entirely their faults. I think they are a manifestation of a sick society -- with each answer to our hopes and prayers the Monkey Paw curls.)

It might be less profitable if you view cancer treatment as MRR. Actuarial tables tell you that this MRR will certainly end unless you produce remission and so I'm not sure if that is a good reason for them to not release it as a single dose. Though, there's no reason they wouldn't divide the dose. Charge say 375,000 instead 200,000 for the treatment using 3 doses instead of 1. But then the question is asked - why wouldn't they just release the treatment at 375,000 then?

Not even limited to cancer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32423720

Does the vaccine help you if you already have the virus?

People will never accept this theory because it means having more sex is giving us more cancer. Instead they'll say our diet is worse (it isn't) and that we're exposed to worse chemicals (we're not) than 70 years ago. We're definitely having more sex but that's not allowed to be a theory. It's like theorizing that cars are killing flying bug populations-- it's just a non-starter. Come up with something else.

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