[TZubiri]

No one talked about a general cure for cancer here. What I meant is a general cure for the specific disease. Specifically, it's easier to cure a patient with Biliary Duct Cancer than to find a cure for Biliary Duct Cancer.

"Cancer isn’t one disease, it’s a catch-all term for a bunch of vaguely related ones"

Also that's a pretty common misconception, cancer is pretty well defined, abnormal cell growth. I agree that there will be no single cure, but it's like a viral infection, or a system intrusion. There may be many causes and cures will be different, but there's no disagreement over what is an isn't a cancer or a viral infection.

[ejstronge]

> Also that's a pretty common misconception, cancer is pretty well defined, abnormal cell growth

I don't think cancer biologists would subscribe to this simple definition (and it's not hard to find cases of 'abnormal cell growth' that do not ultimately constitute cancer). There have been, and continue to be, publications that pose the question of what it means for a patient to have cancer (cf https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(11)00127-9 )

Cancers quite clearly cause different diseases - it's even the case that cancerous cells can yield distinct clinical presentations simply based on whether they are primarily found in the blood or in solid organs.

I don't think anyone would disagree that 'viral infection' is also an unhelpful description. Viruses may transiently infect host cells and die out (the common cold, for example) or permanently become part of the host genome (consider the various herpesviridae).

[tsimionescu]

The term "vaguely-related" is perhaps wrong, but the "it's not one disease" is clearly correct. Just like "viral infection" is not a single disease, going by your own example, but a series of completely different diseases that have one particular mechanism in common.