Hypothetical question: who would benefit from cancer cure ?

[kimba]

I know it sounds a stupid question and I would like to first apologies to anyone to anyone who has had a bad experience with the disease and take exception to me asking it.

 

What I mean, to elaborate on the question, is with all the money that goes into anything associated with it like cancer research ect, what would they do after they had found a cure ?

 

It has to be a big industry anything to do with cancer and once they find a cure and its passed onto the chemical companies to rip us off with it, they will effectively have to shut up shop wouldn't they ?

So although I know they are actually trying to cure it they will be shooting themselves and everyone who works in the care of people with it in the foot if say tomorrow they made a drug that just cured you. I am struggling to see where the incentive is to actually say 'here we invented this and no more cancer'.

 

I bet its a billion £ industry and over night they would be closing the doors while passing the biggest cash cow to a corporate company since tobacco.

 

Plus with the mortality rate dropping, we would soon be in a real problem trying to adjust. Immigration would have nothing on the year on year expansion of the population.

 

Like I said I am not trying to cause any offence, if this looks like I am being insensitive, but it would be more logical to me that if they ever did find a cure for them to sit on it until we could adjust. The power of whoever was to market it would over night make them probably the most powerful company ever and that sort of power would have to be thoroughly thought through before being handed over.

 

So who would benefit if they said here is now a pill and who would the losers be I guess is the real question.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

Well, cancer victims would benefit. The NHS would benefit. Cancer charities, however...

[kimba]

Yes I know that ordinary people with the illness would benefit, but the people looking for the cure would find themselves doing what ?

Those people would have to stop taking peoples money and pass on the baton to the drug company/companies. And as they are the people looking for the cure I ask as a hypothetical question why would they want to find one ?

 

Im not trying to start of any conspiracy theory or anything but it was just a thought I had and found it interesting enough to want others to think of it.

[HeadingNorth]

Perhaps the question should be phrased to clarify that you're talking about financial benefits. That would prevent offended parties from thinking you meant anything heartless.

 

And, frankly, I don't know the answer. It must partly depend on who discovers the cure and what decision they make; if it's a chemical formula for a drug that can be manufactured, they could either patent it, or deliberately place it into the public domain so that any and all companies, profit-making or not, could start to produce it.

[shefshef]

We all would because the NHS would have to spend less on subsidising drugs and treatments.

[Arguendo]

History has shown that getting rid of one illness doesn't necessarily mean others don't need help. There's brain conditions, dementia, neurological diseases such MS, limb & organ regeneration, heart disease, the list goes on, and even when we discovered a cure for all the worlds known illness, a new one or two will appear, it's never-ending evolution. Remember small pox, rickets etc.

 

As for the financial aspects that will never change, until large organisations focussed on profit are removed from the equation, take a look at the Cuban healthcare system & drug manufacturing, it's outstanding, in fact they have certain drugs we can only dream of having, why is this, because it's goverment controlled.

[kimba]

I think there is a lot invested in the search for a cure world wide and over night a whole lot could be lost economically. I was talking about here but in the US cancer research must be into the billions.

While I understand that who ever found and actual cure it would reap a huge reward financially, it would no doubt be a one off payment unless they got shares in the actually company that would get rights to that cure but that would not go for the many thousands of people who work in the care, charity collecting and research of cancer because they are just paid employees or volunteers and not shareholders.

 

I assume that some of the scientists ect that are at the top of the research would probably move onto other areas of research but they must make up a small minority of people actually involved in the bigger picture of things.

 

Then how would Governments deal with the prospect that a large proportion of people would now live on and need provision for ?

It would throw all predictions of population growth out of the window and just about everything else would have to have some sort of re assessment I imagine.

 

I wonder what if any contingency plan Governments have for the mortality rates changing so rapidly ? We can't even cope with immigration never mind if the death to birth ratio was to change.

[kimba]

History has shown that getting rid of one illness doesn't necessarily mean others don't need help. There's brain conditions, dementia, neurological diseases such MS, limb & organ regeneration, heart disease, the list goes on, and even when we discovered a cure for all the worlds known illness, a new one or two will appear, it's never-ending evolution. Remember small pox, rickets etc.

 

As for the financial aspects that will never change, until large organisations focussed on profit are removed from the equation, take a look at the Cuban healthcare system & drug manufacturing, it's outstanding, in fact they have certain drugs we can only dream of having, why is this, because it's goverment controlled.

Even if nature was to catch up and the added over population was to take its toll and other diseases became rife, it would take some time for this to happen. What Im talking of is a cure that create a population boom.

 

I note what your saying about Cuba and that world wide the health system there is envied, I assume that the population ratio has had time to adapt and imagine people have less children as a result ? I have no knowledge if this is the case or not but I know there health service would have been progressive and been able to be adjusted to if it is as good as they say.

[Agent Orange]

Surely, there would not be the one cure for cancer, given that cancers vary depending on the type. I am no medical expert, but wouldn't that be the case?

[HeadingNorth]

Surely, there would not be the one cure for cancer, given that cancers vary depending on the type. I am no medical expert, but wouldn't that be the case?

 

Very probably yes. It was once assumed that "cancer" was a single disease with a single cause, but we know much more about it than we used to.

 

It's still theoretically possible that we might one day find something that will kill any and all cancerous growths, but everything we know suggests that it won't happen in practice.