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Comment by waboremo | Hacker News Reader

Why shouldn't he tell the public that every cancer is unique? It's technically true, much in the same way it's technically true you studied cancer but have for years been working with entirely unrelated fields to the advancement of cancer research. You're as much of an authoritative figure on this topic as a random person on the street.

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Technically true is how most science education got screwed up in every field of science. We went from educators like Carl Sagan and Feynman who would take great pains to make sure they don't just tell technically true statements to most researchers today blatantly saying misleading technically true statements for a living to get grant money. Every second grant and paper nowadays literally starts with a disingenuous generalizing statement about whatever thing they're studying (xx gene has implications for cancer or whatever). No one says anything because it's technically true but everyone knows it's practically bs. After doing this for decades they start believing their own koolaid.

And thanks for trying to question my expertise. Please look up the no true Scotsman fallacy and see if that may apply here.

> They all literally share the same DNA, they can't be that different.

They share the same DNA in the sense that every cell in that body does. But the different types of cancers have different mutations per cell type and the increasingly precise identification of those is the basis of the recent new treatment options. Histological classifications become less and less relevant, instead mutations and subtypes of mutations give directions for treatment paths. So I think that statement is a bit confusing.

There are also cancers where the root cause is not a cell suddenly stopped functioning properly out of nowhere but instead the rootcause is a virus/chemical (that may or may not still be present in the body/cells).

> Histological classifications become less and less relevant

What do you mean by "histological classification" because every interpretation I can think of is very incorrect.

I meant that every cancer diagnosis is done by a pathologist who describes the looks of the cell/tissue and is trained to assign a cancer classification to it. This is currently changing to genetic testing where the underlying mutation (that is causing the tissue changes) is identified. AFAIK the tissue classification is still the gold standard for most cancer types, but I am positive that this will be completely replaced by the new methods. Medicine will not put the cells under a microscope anymore but into a DNA analyzer instead.

That's incorrect.

If you mean diagnosing the type of cancer (e.g. clear cell renal cell carcinoma) we've already been using molecular markers for over a decade now.

Since you mention "describing the look": mitotic rate and local staging (depth of invasion, lymphovascular invasion, perineurial invasion) matter far more than any DNA/type of cancer and this isn't changing at all nor will it ever change.

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