[commandar]

I'm not talking about across different people; I'm talking about different types of cancer.

The causes and treatments for lymphatic cancers are different from lung cancers are different from breast cancers are different from prostate cancers are different from brain cancers are different from liver cancers, ad infinitum.

[nonbel]

Just as one example of a commonality, aneuploidy is reported for nearly all cancers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917070/

That is clearly something that can be targeted in principle (and not the only thing). Whether the "causes" are different is irrelevant. Whether the treatments are different is a choice made by people, and also irrelevant.

[dualogy]

Well there must be some things they all have in common. Anaerobic environment I thought, is that still the case? No transport of oxygen via iron possible, in my layman's memory?

[Natanael_L]

Like saying suffocating in vacuum and suffocating from oxygen substitution in an enclosed space (like by inert gasses) is equal. The causes are different enough that different solutions are necessary.

[nonbel]

I don't see how this analogy works at all? In either case a space suit works doesn't it?

Anyway, this whole "cancer isn't one disease" meme is best depicted by the bottom right panel of the second section of this comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162

It looks just like the "string theory landscape", next you will be told that we need to stop worrying about comparing predictions to evidence when it comes to cancer research. Just wait a few years/decades.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philo...

[Natanael_L]

Can you fit the space suit? (maybe I should have said something about small spaces).

Just because there's a shared behavior there's no guarantee there's a shared cause or mechanism. And even when there are, the environment can make any given solution unusable.

[nonbel]

I can't think of any disease where we can't come up with such examples (indicating that the same treatment can't be used in all cases).

[Natanael_L]

Yep. For example, there's people so strongly allergic to medicines that normally would be the default choice for curing a variety of diseases, making them unusable for these people.

Then there are even more "fun" special cases of simultaneously occurring diseases where the cure for one makes the other disease more dangerous.

But the point regarding cancer is that it just really ISN'T a single disease. That's like calling rockets, hot-air balloons, airplanes and helicopters the same thing. Sure, they all fly, but the mechanisms for them all are drastically different.

Cancers are the collection of diseases which causes cells to replicate uncontrollably.