[wilsonnb2]

It's also entirely possible that the cure for all forms of cancer is a diet consisting entirely of frosted flakes, and that spending $400B researching the effects of all-cereal diets would also discover the cure for cancer.

However, it's far more likely that $400B in cancer research will do more for curing cancer than hoping for side effects from $400B in other research.

[ChuckMcM]

We have already spent $500B on cancer research[1] and it hasn't cured. This also isn't an "either/or" proposition. As I mentioned, people travelling in space are subject to a lot of radiation which is known to cause cancer, so part of the research is going to be figuring out how to fix cells that are cancerous.

Cancer is a systemic problem, it isn't measles or polio or TB. You have to understand the system in order to fix it and pushing humans into new environments will give us better insights into the system we call human life.

[1] https://bigthink.com/devil-in-the-data/the-never-ending-war-...

[forapurpose]

> We have already spent $500B on cancer research[1] and it hasn't cured

That's a pretty absolutist statement. We've spent more preventing murder, but murder still happens. We have developed many treatments for cancer that have added many quality life years for millions of people.

[ChuckMcM]

I agree, both that it is absolutist and that we've spent more on preventing murder. What is the common thread to both of these absolutist comments? Both cancer and murder are systems in crisis, not 'things' in their own right. They have the same questions

1a) What causes a cell to decide live forever (metastasize)?

1b) What causes a person to decide that killing another person is the solution to some problem?

2a) How can we detect a cell that is about to metastasize? How can we stop it?

2b) How can we detect a person that is about to murder? How can we stop them?

3a) What would have to be true for cancer to never be the cause of death ever again?

3b) What would have to be true for murder to never be the cause of death ever again?

See? Both are systems where individual elements within the system have decided to work against the system rather than within its constructs.

There is no drug, no treatment, that will 'cure' cancer until we understand exactly what is going on in a cell that knocks it out of line. And there will be no end to murder until we understand exactly what is going on inside a person's head when they decide that is the correct course of action. Everything we do on these two fronts (cancer, and murder) are delaying actions to minimize their impact on the greater whole.

The other part that some people have assumed (but the GP did not) is that spending this money on Mars exploration would reduce the amount of money that is currently allocated to cancer research. It wouldn't, it was specified as 'new funds'.

[forapurpose]

> There is no drug, no treatment, that will 'cure' cancer until we understand exactly what is going on in a cell that knocks it out of line. ... Everything we do on these two fronts (cancer, and murder) are delaying actions to minimize their impact on the greater whole.

So what? Even if everything you say is true, the outcome of the research is possibly hundreds of millions of additional quality life years.

And there are many treatments that 'cure' cancer. Many people have cancer, are treated, and never have it again. Many have it, are treated, and live much longer than they otherwise would have. I'm not sure what you are saying, or why research that saves and prolongs lives has to meet some other standard (and what is that standard?).

[anticensor]

Yes, cancer and murder are duals. Do you think there may be a way to convert between measures against either?

[ChuckMcM]

Not sure how this relates to the argument. Can you be a bit more specific?

[bordercases]

I think what might be more damning is if the preventative measure for cancer is better full spectrum healthy habits

[mattigames]

Imagine giving someone 200 years ago $400B for cancer research; what do you think it would have happen? Do you think they would have found the cure? No. The same thing happens today, $400B may do nothing big for cancer research and what's needed to advance in that area its time; decades (maybe centuries) of advancements in many fields that are not directly related to cancer research but given enough time those advancements will be used together to find a cure (e.g. map the entire DNA; nanorobots, etc)

[enraged_camel]

There are about a thousand things you use and benefit from everyday that were side effects of other research and spending (primarily military). But you take them for granted and so it is easy for you to make value judgments regarding how money is spent.

[SiempreViernes]

Eh, the military invents very few things, they mostly spend money on custom development of existing tech to make it better at killing things or facilitating the killing of things.

The car, the calculating machine, the photograph, the steam engine, the radar: none where invented by military men or even those funded by the military.

[gls2ro]

I might be very wrong (as I don’t have right now time to research more) but I think _the calculating machine_ and _the radar_ are things actually created as usable products because the military needed them in the first place. I am not in favor of spending (more) money on military.

[SiempreViernes]

Not really, their further development certainly benefitted from military money, but the basics came from civilian need for navigation, in general and in mist.

[mattkrause]

I'm fairly certain this is not true. Marconi and Hülsmeyer had some early ideas about using radar to find ships, but they weren't really developed and didn't use the pulsed approach that subsequent systems used.

This wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radar) suggests a huge military involvement from the 1930s onwards

[SiempreViernes]

If you count nothing but the earliest version of military radars, then of course nothing but the military has funded it.

I will, however, not count pulsing as more than an improvement to the basic invention of distant object detection with radio waves.

As you can read on the page you linked Hülsmeyer made a working system, clunky as it was, for detecting ships in mist. Taking a system from prototype to mass produced, worthy as this investment might be, is not inventing it.

[wilsonnb2]

> But you take them for granted and so it is easy for you to make value judgments regarding how money is spent.

It's rude to make such assumptions about me. I do not take the positive side effects from research for granted.

You simply haven't made a case showing why $400B in space research will generate more or better positive side effects than $400B in cancer research.

All research will have side effects that can't be anticipated. It's stupid to perform research with "random, unknowable" side positive side effects as a primary justification.

[enraged_camel]

>>You simply haven't made a case showing why $400B in space research will generate more or better positive side effects than $400B in cancer research.

You made the original claim that spending that money on cancer research would be more beneficial. The burden of proof is on you, not me.

[pc86]

Eventually the Earth is going to be hit by an asteroid or cooked by the sun. It's an eventuality that on cosmic timescales is going to happen sooner rather than later.

Getting mankind off of Earth and spread across multiple planets and solar system will yield untold positive side effects, and one or more of those may impact cancer research.

More cancer research is not going to stop an asteroid.

[xvector]

> Getting mankind off of Earth and spread across multiple planets and solar system will yield untold positive side effects, and one or more of those may impact cancer research.

And yet perhaps one of the blocks with modern science is people hitting the grave before they can finish innovative research. It takes at least 26 years to train a human from scratch to advance to basic research level in a field. You can add another 10, 20 years before proficiency. At least half the human life until total proficiency (as it stands) is reached and perhaps a quarter of the human life for which researchers can make meaningful contributions.

Arguably, focusing on problems on Earth - like eliminating mortality, solving longevity, curing cancer and dealing with death - will do more for our species long-term than exploring space right now. When your scientists live longer, more discoveries, contributions, and innovations can be made.

Spending $400B on dealing with the greatest tragedies and sources of sorrow known to mankind today - death, disease, illness - would be far preferable to most people than investing in space.

[pixelbash]

So far our legacy as a species on earth is one of destruction. Only by taking on the challenge a place that is already dead can we be certain of creating something new. Maybe we will learn some perspective in the process.

Going to Mars will have myriad discoveries & side effects, if we knew what they were what would be the point of going?

Also, what if curing cancer is harder than going to mars? One is by now a fairly quantifiable objective, the other is debugging a mind bogglingly complex system with no version control.

[ptero]

I think it is the other way around. Somewhere up the thread someone made the that instead of spending 400B on space travel we should have spent it on cancer research.

There was little, if any, explanation of why this should be done; and the posters arguing the opposite are, in my view, suggesting some of the "why not" arguments. The burden of proof is still on the fellow who made that "we should" claim. My 2c.

[gamblor956]

Cancer isn't one disease, it's dozens, each with different causes.

For example, almost all cases of cervical cancer are traced to HPV infections...so the research into the HPV vaccine arguably did more to reduce future cancer cases than research into cancer has. Further research showed that HPV can also cause a number of cancers in men (though at lower rates), which is part of the justification for offering the HPV vaccine to boys.

[robotrout]

Cancer is often caused when tissue is damaged and needs to heal or try to heal itself repeatedly (inflammation).

Sunburn, smoking, chewing tobacco, HPV, acid reflux, can all cause cancer. Saying those are all different cancers that require different cures is a good way to waste a lot of effort and money. It is more accurate to say that inflammation is a cause for cancer, and focus on that.

[TeMPOraL]

Point is, this is one of but many causes of diseases jointly classified as "cancer". Cancers share similarities in their (visible) method of action, but they have very different causes. There isn't going to be a single cure for "cancer".

[robotrout]

Yes, there are many causes. We are in violent agreement. If you focus on the causes, you are preventing cancer, not curing it. You are playing whack-a-mole.

[bordercases]

LOL Seems more cost efficient long run to address lifestyle than deal with proximal consequence

[fucking_tragedy]

The thing about cancer is that you can live a perfect lifestyle and still have it ravage your body.

[newnewpdro]

The reality is there's no escaping the causes for cancer, many of which are environmental and increasing. No amount of lifestyle change is going to eliminate the growing number of carcinogens present throughout our air, food, and water.

[robotrout]

OK. You tell your mom that, after she's gotten cancer, asshole. How did her lifestyle cause her cancer in her ovaries (another inflammation caused cancer), I wonder?

While you're chastising your mom for her lifestyle, the rest of us will be looking/hoping for a cure.

You should know that even you will experience increased and chronic inflammation as you age, no matter how much better than your mom, your lifestyle is. Increased chronic inflammation and aging are linked and we're still trying to understand why.