[maxander]

I was about to post the same- the article has such a "nothing is worth doing" level of pessimism about medicine that halfway through I was wondering if the author was suffering from depression.

He's right that an ever-older population will bring about more cancers- so we'd better have ways to treat them. And he's right that the "cancer moonshot" likely won't provide the singular, all-out cure, but no one outside of politicians claims it would; instead it will help provide partial cures that can reclaim thousands of healthy human-life-years, a worthy use of the money. That a professor of medicine draws such a poor picture of these issues sounds downright pathological.

[pc2g4d]

The author acknowledged significant advances in cancer treatment, including one he called a moon landing in its own right (immunotherapy). No need to cast aspersions on his mental state---I think he's clear-eyed yet not despairing, facing the difficulties of cancer treatment (it's like stopping evolution from happening, if you think about it) but still recognizing the progress.

[maxander]

True enough that I shouldn't bandy about accusations of depression. But the author derides a billion-dollar cancer research effort as "pointless" in the title. He may recognize the progress, but he's bizarrely adamant that people won't cure cancer.