Stupid question? What/when was the last major cancer/illness that was cured?

[mymessageboardid]

Was having a conversation with a friend today about healthcare. It's obvious that "treating" illness is much more profitable than curing it. Is my tinfoil hat too tight?

[DainBramaged]

1. There hasn't been one that was generally 'cured' in my lifetime.

we can't even cure the common cold or flu. Athletes foot, maybe. Nothing else though.

[underseasurveyor]

2. Polio maybe?

I think.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. That one is on the way back in some places of the world

now Smallpox is fully contained, for the moment

[mymessageboardid]

5. Yea

And that was over 50 years ago. Geeez!

[JJ]

4. Stupidity

No wait... Nevermind.

[XemaSab]

6. Ulcers

Ulcers have been cured in my lifetime.

[silverojo]

15. I call BS on that one

Ulcers are very difficult to treat. I've had peptic ulcer disease that hasn't responded to any of the bullshit "treatments" they've given me.

[tabatha]

7. There may not have been a cure - but they have developed

treatments that have increased survivability.

I know several people who have had cancer,and after treatment are still living - apparently cancer-free. I don't know anyone who has died from cancer, yet.

[Cleita]

8. My mother died of multiple myeloma in 1977 after a two year struggle with it.

At the time, it was incurable. Martha Mitchell also died of it. Bone marrow transplants can give it a good chance of remission and cure since then. I forget the year that this became possible, but it was after 1977.

[norepubsin08]

9. McCainitis November 4, 2008

[underseasurveyor]

10. HA!

;-) Good one

[ColbertWatcher]

11. I don't know what the answer is, but this conversation deserves more attention. n/t

[Hanse]

12. Well, there's restless leg syndrome.

A lot of people will think I'm joking. But if you look it up, you'll find out it's an actual problem, suffered by thousands, and now there's treatment.

Statin drugs are big deal if you know anybody with heart problems.

Gardasil will save thousands of lives due to cervical cancer. HPV is certainly a major disease, regardless of what various cranks will have to say about it.

HIV was a death sentence just a few years ago. Now people have at least a hope thanks to certain drug cocktails. HIV infections can actually be prevented in emergencies if a patient is exposed to the virus using the same cocktails.

Not sure when cis-platin came on the market, but you can treat testicular cancer with 100% efficacy, if you catch it early enough.

Paclitaxel's been studied for decades, but it's application is pretty new.

There are a number of new anti-malarials saving thousands of lives.

There are even some new anti-leprosy drugs while we're on the third-world tangent.

I'm pretty sure Parkinsons and Alzheimers life expectency after diagnoses has been extended, as well as healthspan. Certainly a number of cancer patients are better off then they were twenty years ago.

Just yesterday they announced that for the first time cancer rates are going down. Certainly due to anti-smoking measures, but there's been solid advances in medicine.

Shall I continue? Or is that good?

[mymessageboardid]

13. Thx for replying....

Glad I caught this post before I head off for bed.

That is my point though. Everything you listed is "treating" the illness/cancer. I am not discounting discoveries that extend life or make people more comfortable. But if a doctor or scientist discovered an ACTUAL cure for Alzheimers tomorrow (a pill you could take that CURED it), would we ever find out about it? Given the millions and millions of boomers that are expected to develop that disease, therefore needed treatment for many years, a cure would destroy the profits of that "treatment." Maybe I'm just being too cynical?

[Hanse]

14. Hey, if you've got a cure for Alzheimers or cancer, let's see it.

"Maybe I'm just being too cynical?"

You're not being cynical, you're just being, to put it politely, silly.

If some doctor cured Alzheimers then he wouldn't keep it secret. Even the cynic would realize it would make that doctor, or drug company, the richest bastard on the planet. Or, alternatively if he sat on a cure, libel for the biggest negligence lawsuit in judicial history, if not a criminal case. Then, of course, there's the practical problem with keeping hundreds of mad scientists' mouths shut.

So are you too cynical? Nope. Not too cynical.

[mymessageboardid]

16. OK, you mentioned the HIV/AIDS cocktail

I just did a quick search and those drugs cost between $10-15K per year, per patient in the US. So if someone at Merck stumbled upon an actual CURE for HIV/AIDS....a pill that would actually CURE, not treat - they would make that information known to the public? Merck is about making MONEY. Why sell one pill that cures HIV/AIDS, when you can sell a cocktail for $10-15K per month to treat it?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

17. Check this out.

http://www.infusionclinic.com/infusions-ascorbic.html

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I have never undergone these therapies. I do not know if they work.

Doctors who cure cancer with simple treatments such as IV vitamin C, IV baking soda are generally hounded and have their medical licenses revoked.

http://www.bamboo-delight.com/download/Cure_Cancer_with_Baking_Soda.htm

http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/therapy-simoncini.html

[truedelphi]

19. I think that for some cancers the treatments may end up being simple, but

The problem is at this stage of the game, someone says "A doctor treated me with Vitamin C to cure my cancer and it worked, so it should work for you too."

We are all deficient differently in the minerals and vitamins that we have in our systems. For instance, I have chronic shortage of iron, my husband has an overload of iron. He craves oatmeal, which depletes iron from your system, while I abhor it. (Sort of an inner resposnse to what we should be eating.)

Doctors know nowadays that some prostate cancer is fast acting, and some slow acting. They no longer encourage men over a certain age to undergo surgery, if it is the slowly developping type of cancer, knowing that they will be dead of old age before the cancer woul ddo them in.

I imagine they will find out that more cancers are like those.

[azurnoir]

18. Not cured as such but a revolution in treatment

for CML chronic myeliod leukemia a drug called Gleevec it stops the production cancerous white blood cells before they start. I worked in one of clinics were the trials for this drug were done back then it was known as STI 538 and have seen the results for patients.

http://www.gleevec.com/info/ag/index.jsp

[LeftishBrit]

20. Abolished, or cured in most cases?

There are many diseases now that were incurable in the past, that are now usually cured.

Childhood leukemia, for example, was virtually always fatal in the 1960s. Nowadays, about 80% of patients are cured. Hodgkins disease, which was fatal in the past, is also usually cured nowadays. Many other cancers, including breast and colon cancer, also have much higher cure rates than in the past.

Abolition or near-abolition of diseases is more likely to involve prevention than cure. So far as I know, the only disease that has been absolutely abolished is smallpox, in the 1970s. But many other diseases such as polio and diphtheria are much rarer than in the past, and are abolished in some places.