2024-04-02 07:32:41
Oncologists, clinicians or researchers, have a profession that is fascinating in many aspects. They are able to differentiate the cells of a tumor and check whether their development is under the influence of the environment, a hormone or blood flow. They design targeted therapies whose results are sometimes spectacular and visible in images that encourage the patient to fight. Their understanding of the relationships between the immune system and tumor development makes it possible to envisage immune therapies, or even theoretically perfect vaccines.
In addition to these victories, they often have relationships rich in empathy with patients who show them admiration and affection.
With all this in mind, they are favorites of the media, often making the headlines to unveil a new theory that might lead to a treatment from which we always expect the best. They are sometimes accompanied by a miraculous patient who comes to provide their exciting testimony. These media allow them to raise considerable funds for increasingly expensive research. Donating once morest cancer means giving for life. The oldest and most fortunate give with the legitimate hope of possible future personal benefit.
Unfortunately, adult oncology is far from experiencing the success of pediatric oncology. I, who have never been able to resign myself to seeing a child die of leukemia or other cancer, am delighted to note that progress is prodigious in this area with almost 70% cures. In addition to the strength of their immune systems, children have “monoclonal” type cancers. Which means that only one stem cell is affected, a bit like in a rare disease where only one gene is abnormal.
Conversely, in adult oncology, treatments are uncertain, because tumors contain a wide variety of tumor cells, resulting from the inevitable mutations that have occurred during each of the thousands of cell divisions in the past. Longer exposure to environmental toxins aggravates these mutations and the aging immune system is no longer able to eliminate all the mutants. Do we even need an explanation to know that no cell line escapes senescence?
Have all the efforts of researchers changed the clinical reality of adult cancers? The only health indicator allowing us to know this is the average age at death for each type of cancer. Curiously, this indicator is almost always replaced by others, such as survival following diagnosis or duration of remission, which certainly have value for patient morale, but which are of no relevance in terms of public health. What a pity ! This would allow us to discuss the cost that society can bear per week or month gained on this indicator.
In the meantime, the cost of therapies remains exclusively proportional to the empathy that cancer arouses.
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#Cancer #researchers #health #reasons
