The Moonshot program was the largest, organized effort by the U.S. government to find cancer cures. Congress voted it down.
  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    0·
    6 months ago

    Sounds philosophically consistent. What could be more pro-life, pro-business and pro-freedom than being in favour of endless cell growth unchecked by cell apoptosis? Come to think of it, not only does curing cancer sound like a socialist anti-prosperity regulatory agenda, killing off cells that would naturally grow is a little too close to abortion.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    We should keep a record of the nay votes so we can remind them should any of them be diagnosed with cancer.

  • astreus@lemmy.ml
    0·
    6 months ago

    Fun fact! Cuba has a vaccine for lung cancer - yes, it works and has been independently verified. No, you can’t have it because embargo.

    EDIT: vaccine here isn’t actually what I thought. In this case it is a treatment to be used for certain kinds of lung cancer, not a preventative measure as we are used to thinking of Vaccine. Thanks to the comment below for going through it and pushing me to do proper research.

    While my initial take was a glib link to a wikipedia page and not thoroughly researched, I do sill believe that the embargo has directly caused this treatment to come to market in the west as the levels of cooperation are non-existent. It has been used for 7 years in Cuba but is only now entering Stage 3 trials in the US.

    Cuba have also became the first country to have 0 mother-child transmissions of HIV.

    But the US has decided that working with Cuba to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths each year (in the States alone) is less important than causing “economic dissatisfaction and hardship” to the Cuban people.

    • Ranvier@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      Slight correction on that vaccine, the FDA doesn’t authorize any drug for sale in the US that hasn’t passed it’s rigorous trials and gone through its approval process. It’s currently being tested and has more trials ongoing right now. FDA will be able to approve it for sale if it passes its trials.

      https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.9135

      Also the word cancer vaccine kind of implies cure to some, but it’s not by any means:

      “MST was 10.83 months for vaccinated vs. 8.86 months for non-vaccinated. In the Phase III trial, the 5-year survival rate was 14.4% for vaccinated subjects vs. 7.9% for controls.”

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5346887/

      So it might be a useful tool but just don’t want to get hopes up unnecessarily. People who’s immune system reacted to the vaccine the strongest did best, so current trials are focused on combining it with an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug to increase the immune response even more hopefully (and those drugs are already being used by themselves in cancer). These drugs block “checkpoints” in the immune system that would normally stop it from attacking things like yourself, which we kind of want it to do in cancer.

      Not saying I support an embargo in Cuba, I don’t, just don’t want this comment to be inadvertently read as “Cuba has had the cure to lung cancer this whole time and you’re not allowed to have it!” which isn’t true.

      • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        Wow this comment really unwinds the one you replied to, so much so that the original seems in bad faith

        Edit op edited, and improved their comment. You don’t need to defend them, they are fine on their own

          • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            6 months ago

            The incomplete characterization that the drug was READY for us markets.

            It is not fda approved.

            Edit After discussion, the op elected to make the seen edits in their comment. I’d refer you to them.

            • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
              0·
              6 months ago

              @astreus never made that claim.

              It is currently available in Cuba, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru and Paraguay.[

              • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
                0·
                6 months ago

                This has already been discussed and op met my edit request. You aren’t part of this.

                • astreus@lemmy.ml
                  0·
                  6 months ago

                  For the sake of transparency, I edited before you suggested I did - hence my comment “I had not done the research and have edited my comment above.” 😉

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    6 months ago

    I don’t know how accurate this is, but I know that it fits with Repubs voting against the migrant bill that they had formerly wanted because it would help Trump on the campaign. Whether this is true or not doesn’t change that they openly want to stall government, therefore this could be true.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      I don’t know how accurate this is

      Biden made a rather cavalier claim that he was going to fund investments in medical science that would lead to a final cure for all forms of cancer within the next decade. And I think we can safely say that’s bullshit.

      However, ramping up blue sky medical research and public sector spending on the adoption of new medical technology would be helpful in treating a host of cancerous maladies and potentially curing or inoculating against others.

      Consider that the US isn’t even on the front line of cancer research anymore. Cuba’s cancer research has outpaced research in the states for over a decade. That, alone, should tell you what kind of progress is possible with a little strategic public investment.

      Whether this is true or not doesn’t change that they openly want to stall government, therefore this could be true.

      Conservatives hate public investment, particularly when it threatens private profits. Liberals do too, abet not as fervently (see: our bipartisan obsession with the health of the domestic automotive, financial, real estate, insurance, and commercial export agricultural industries).

      But this is more an issue of scoring political points. Republicans were happy enough to finance Operation Warp Speed under Trump, in order to fast track the vaccine they thought they’d get to take credit for in 2020. And they loved nothing more than giant state sponsored give-aways to Majority Leader Bill Frist’s family owned Hospital Corporation of America.

      So they’re not strictly against government spending. They simply don’t want another Liberal Democrat like Kennedy taking credit for putting a man on the moon.