[anonymouskimmer]

Therapeutics which prompt the endogenous immune system to recognize the cancer cells as something to attack. I believe this is the basis of mRNA cancer therapeutics? I believe they are targeted for individual cancers and possibly individual people, but given the speed in which they can be made this doesn't seem like a major future hurdle.

Throw one into a gene therapy vector and it could conceivably reproduce itself (though that seems like a bad idea for a cancer therapeutic anyway).

[eesmith]

"I believe" and "conceivably" do not make good evidence that something is in the pipeline.

mRNA cancer therapeutics do not target nuclear DNA. They do not enter the nucleus and they produce proteins to trigger an immune response against the targeted disease, not against the DNA of the targeted disease.

[anonymouskimmer]

You're misinterpreting my initial objection. Skunkworkers would care less about the personal ramifications of keeping technology which could be used to cure cancer secret if there are already viable full-cure treatments for all of the cancers they or their family members may plausibly come down with.

[eesmith]

Again, technology isn't in a vacuum. You really can't predict what medicine will be like in 100 years.

If there are already viable full-cure treatments for all those cancers then why aren't there viable full-cure treatments for this sort of bioweapon?

Feeling ill? Sequence all the organisms in your blood, spot the unexpected ones, develop a vaccine/phage against it, and poof - all better.

Sure, you can construct movie plot scenarios to do anything. In a movie, our hero can use a lighter to ignite the leaking fuel trail from a jet plane taking off and cause it to blow Up. That doesn't mean it's likely or even feasible.

[anonymouskimmer]

> If there are already viable full-cure treatments for all those cancers then why aren't there viable full-cure treatments for this sort of bioweapon?

Plenty of possibilities. A cancer is ultimately a mutated genome in a viable cell gone awry. Even with contagious cancers (like the one killing the Tasmanian Devils) you're still ultimately dealing with an infectious eukaryotic cell of basically the same species type as the organism, and our mammalian immune systems are already used to targeting our own cells gone awry. Viruses, satellite viruses, prokaryotes, other eukaryotes, edited out, and whatever I'm forgetting will require a diversity of approaches (unless someone invents pico-scale teleportation).

[eesmith]

The premise of this bioweapon is that it can target the specific DNA of the target person or subpopulation.

Anything which can do that can target the mutated genome of a cancer in a human.

> of basically the same species type as the organism

Which means you will not be able to target a single person or subpopulation, because they are all the same species type.

[anonymouskimmer]

I don't disagree with what you're saying I'm just saying that the skunkworkers may not care about one method of treating their family members if other methods exist and work well.