Good question
Every few days we see a story about a new treatment that is a promising cure for some disease or halts aging. These aren’t from tabloid newspapers or websites. These are from respected scientific publications.
So if all these “breakthroughs” keep occurring, where are the results?
May 26th, 2010 at 9:25 am
short version…FDA Approval….why approve anything that might actually cure some one.
Bueareaucrats…hang them all.
May 26th, 2010 at 9:28 am
It’s a failure in the understanding of the scientific process and in the science communities interaction with the press.
Science at that level is rarely a “breakthrough” in the sense of “this will cure X” its a “breakthrough” in that something significant has happened to advance the field that other scientists can build on to do more things.
This kind of incremental science doesn’t show well in modern media. Even the Discovery networks water it down a lot from what they did when I was growing up. So the science community has had to start making things punchier to get any coverage. This has led to a problem because everyone isn’t using the same meaning for a lot of words.
There is an alarmingly large portion of society that will say things “hah stupid scientists can’t cure cancer”. If they don’t see 100% cures they don’t accept the advancements as being useful.
May 26th, 2010 at 10:02 am
I posted something about this recently
http://www.softgreenglow.com/wp/?p=9287
May 26th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Here’s your results:
Cancer Survival Time by Year of Diagnosis
May 26th, 2010 at 10:21 am
If you were diagnosed with cancer in 1975, you had a 50.3% chance of living at least five years.
If you were diagnosed with cancer in 2006, you had a 68.5% chance of living at least five years.
May 26th, 2010 at 10:21 am
this is why
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623#comic
May 26th, 2010 at 11:13 am
The FDA is part of the problem with getting new drugs on the market, but it’s not the whole problem. The industry also has issues, namely that they can’t find drugs fast enough to replace what’s going off patent.
There are several reasons for this, but a quick summary would be that most of the easy targets have been exploited already, and pharma’s paradigm for discovering drugs is no longer suitable for the considerably more difficult targets that are out there.
So a lot of these kinds of articles are scientists discovering biological pathways and mechanisms that could turn into breakthrough treatments. But taking that academic work and turning it into a pill your doctor can prescribe you is a gargantuan task. The FDA is certainly part of that picture, but it’s not the only obstacle.
May 26th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
My theory is this – we are stuck in an infinite loop of R&D. Used to, a new product came out and they companies started working on the next. Now a product comes out, a newer one is already in the works.
With science we have skipped the process of coming out with a new product – we are always working on the next thing, that is better. It is never profitable to sell the next big thing, because a better one is already in R&D and will make yours look bad, so you start R&D on the next next big thing. So on and so on.
that really seems the most reasonable explanation. 🙂
May 26th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
But there IS a cure for cancer! Not for humans, yet, but in part that seems to be because research is easier on dogs, where it WORKS. Cured my dog. FDA approved, too, so nyah-nyah.
http://www.softgreenglow.com/wp/?p=8937
May 26th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Some cancers are being cured.
http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/childhood/mortality.pdf
June 1st, 2010 at 1:37 pm
More
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/06/01/the_truth_shall_make_ye_unhappy.php