Congress voted against funding a cure for cancer just to block a win for Biden
2 years ago by vegeta to c/politics
They refuse to even let us abort cancer cells.
Conservatives are generally opposed to any healthcare they personally do not need at the moment. They distrust science, education and medicine. Given a choice, most conservatives would dissolve all scientific research in the U.S.
Conservatism is a plague of idiocy, sickness and death. This has been true throughout all recorded history.
But think of the shareholders /s
We should keep a record of the nay votes so we can remind them should any of them be diagnosed with cancer.
Doesn't matter how good your healthcare is if your cancer (or other disease) can't be treated.
That's a problem for us plebs not them.
lol, upvote
They will still do mental gymnastic to blame democrat
I don't know how accurate this is, but I know that it fits with Repubs voting against the migrant bill that they had formerly wanted because it would help Trump on the campaign. Whether this is true or not doesn't change that they openly want to stall government, therefore this could be true.
I don’t know how accurate this is
Biden made a rather cavalier claim that he was going to fund investments in medical science that would lead to a final cure for all forms of cancer within the next decade. And I think we can safely say that's bullshit.
However, ramping up blue sky medical research and public sector spending on the adoption of new medical technology would be helpful in treating a host of cancerous maladies and potentially curing or inoculating against others.
Consider that the US isn't even on the front line of cancer research anymore. Cuba's cancer research has outpaced research in the states for over a decade. That, alone, should tell you what kind of progress is possible with a little strategic public investment.
Whether this is true or not doesn’t change that they openly want to stall government, therefore this could be true.
Conservatives hate public investment, particularly when it threatens private profits. Liberals do too, abet not as fervently (see: our bipartisan obsession with the health of the domestic automotive, financial, real estate, insurance, and commercial export agricultural industries).
But this is more an issue of scoring political points. Republicans were happy enough to finance Operation Warp Speed under Trump, in order to fast track the vaccine they thought they'd get to take credit for in 2020. And they loved nothing more than giant state sponsored give-aways to Majority Leader Bill Frist's family owned Hospital Corporation of America.
So they're not strictly against government spending. They simply don't want another Liberal Democrat like Kennedy taking credit for putting a man on the moon.
While I get the point you’re trying to make, it’s just incredibly wrong about cuba. Carry on for the rest.
Source: I do lots of cancer related research.
it’s just incredibly wrong about cuba
How Cuba Became a Biopharma Juggernaut
Source: I do lots of cancer related research.
Clearly not enough.
Not to be pedantic, but an impressive pharmaceutical industry is not the same as leading cancer research. Still impressive. Not the same. Again, I get your point, but no need to exaggerate realities.
Fun fact! Cuba has a vaccine for lung cancer - yes, it works and has been independently verified. No, you can't have it because embargo.
EDIT: vaccine here isn't actually what I thought. In this case it is a treatment to be used for certain kinds of lung cancer, not a preventative measure as we are used to thinking of Vaccine. Thanks to the comment below for going through it and pushing me to do proper research.
While my initial take was a glib link to a wikipedia page and not thoroughly researched, I do sill believe that the embargo has directly caused this treatment to come to market in the west as the levels of cooperation are non-existent. It has been used for 7 years in Cuba but is only now entering Stage 3 trials in the US.
Cuba have also became the first country to have 0 mother-child transmissions of HIV.
But the US has decided that working with Cuba to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths each year (in the States alone) is less important than causing "economic dissatisfaction and hardship" to the Cuban people.
Slight correction on that vaccine, the FDA doesn't authorize any drug for sale in the US that hasn't passed it's rigorous trials and gone through its approval process. It's currently being tested and has more trials ongoing right now. FDA will be able to approve it for sale if it passes its trials.
Also the word cancer vaccine kind of implies cure to some, but it's not by any means:
"MST was 10.83 months for vaccinated vs. 8.86 months for non-vaccinated. In the Phase III trial, the 5-year survival rate was 14.4% for vaccinated subjects vs. 7.9% for controls."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...
So it might be a useful tool but just don't want to get hopes up unnecessarily. People who's immune system reacted to the vaccine the strongest did best, so current trials are focused on combining it with an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug to increase the immune response even more hopefully (and those drugs are already being used by themselves in cancer). These drugs block "checkpoints" in the immune system that would normally stop it from attacking things like yourself, which we kind of want it to do in cancer.
Not saying I support an embargo in Cuba, I don't, just don't want this comment to be inadvertently read as "Cuba has had the cure to lung cancer this whole time and you're not allowed to have it!" which isn't true.
Wow this comment really unwinds the one you replied to, so much so that the original seems in bad faith
Edit op edited, and improved their comment. You don't need to defend them, they are fine on their own
What's next, socialism has been tried and didn't quite work??
I mean, it's still true that Cuba has likely made significant advances in the cancer medicine, but it hasn't passed the standards of the FDA yet. And it's still true that the embargo between Cuba and the US is upheld to this day by politicians despite the potential good that could come from opening up trade again.
The first comment to me reads as more just overly enthusiastic, more than explicitly bad faith to me.
Definitely wasn't bad faith and I do stand by it.
Vaccine does not mean cure. We did not have a Covid cure either. And much like the covid vaccine isn't 100% effective, neither is this. However, it is proving effective, especially in combination with other drugs and at certain stages of treatment.
Stage 4 clinical trials were concluded in Cuba in 2017. Stage 2 trials were concluded in the US in 2023. I believe, strongly, that the embargo has increased the amount of time the research has taken - cooperation is impossible during an embargo.
Even if they lift the embargo tomorrow the drug wouldn't come on the market, however it is because of the embargo that the use in treatment has taken far, far longer than it would have otherwise.
Edit: I admit I knew less about the vaccine than I thought I did (edited my comment to reflect what I have learnt)
I agree it may have presented barriers for coordination the FDA and access to US markets. I haven't been able to dig deep into the Cuban studies, but just because something is labeled a phase 3 or phase 4 by the investigators doesn't necessarily mean it was done to the standards necessary for fda approval or in the correct context of current standard of care treatments in the US or who knows how many other issues. If it was fully ready for all markets as is and required no further investigations, and it was only the US FDA causing problems, I would expect it to have already been widely available in many other countries that don't have embargos with Cuba, like all of Europe. Currently it's only available in Cuba, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru, and Paraguay.
Mostly though I didn't want someone to accidentally misread this and think it meant cure. I realize you did not say that, but it's just a common misreading I've noticed people make of the term cancer vaccines when they've been mentioned in popular media. Didn't want someone to drag their poor dying relative off to Paraguay thinking they're getting cured.
I agree the Cuban embargo is ridiculous, should be stopped, and is hurting both countries with no benefit to anyone (other than keeping a certain segment of voters in Florida happy).
Reuters is bad faith?
The incomplete characterization that the drug was READY for us markets.
It is not fda approved.
Edit After discussion, the op elected to make the seen edits in their comment. I'd refer you to them.
It's also not a vaccine in the sense it's preventing cancer, it's for the treatment of cancer that is already there, specifically non small cell lung cancers (though it's being tested in other cancers that use the signaling mechanism being targeted). Not saying it's impossible that it could prevent cancer, just that it hasn't been tested in that way to the best of my knowledge.
There is some precedence for a vaccine like that though. The HPV vaccine for instance prevents HPV (and therefore hpv related cancers), but is also used as a treatment if an HPV related cancer develops.
That long text only has two typos? That's impressive!
They aren't. But if one side could grow a pair instead of pretending that the other side is still willing to debate and act rationally like it's still the 90s, that would be great.
This is the downside to choosing politicians that are so wealthy and therefore disconnected that the entire USA could fall and they would barely notice. Example: Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan was practically "everything is totally fine here, no need for like, changes or anything".
Tbh, a cure for cancer is a little like finding a cure for all respiratory infections. You're talking about a pathology that encompasses hundreds of distinct diseases. Sure, maybe it is doable, but calling it a moonshot is a little generous; landing on the moon would be several orders of magnitude easier by comparison, imo.
Just so I'm clear, it's still shitty that they blocked this.
Read the article. It’s pretty clear that cancer is hundreds of different diseases and extremely unlikely to have a single silver bullet, but this description reads more like a coordination project
the program has made strides in expanding access to cancer detection screenings, especially to veterans, increased support for programs aimed at preventing cancer in the first place and provided funding to groundbreaking cancer cure research
Its goal is to cut cancer deaths in half by making diagnostics cheaper and more available, funding prevention, and funding research into treatments. No magical silver bullets here
When you type out the words "read the article", it forms a verbal missile of hate aimed right at my heart
I was being dramatic, no need for alarm. I read several articles a day, typically, but I'm usually pretty selective about it and this one didn't make the cut, though I still wanted to discuss the topic. So, here we are.
Nope, Joe is very, very close to finishing the cure and just needs a little help from Congress to finalize it. But noooo, those dastardly Republicans don't want him to give us this cure. It's all their fault.
Oh, and remember to vote blue no matter who .
Did you click the Post button and think to yourself, "yeah, fucking nailed it"?
They chortled for sure
Look, man, it's an election year, the hype machine is going to be running full tilt, and every little thing is going to be blown way out of proportion, like that one time Obama killed a fly on national TV or that other time he wore a beige suit. I'm going to vote for Biden, not least of all because the other guy probably will end up putting me and my family on his "official action" list (thank you, SCOTUS). There's lots more reasons, but Trump openly represents the end of the US government as we've known it, and that's not hyperbole. He's been very open about his intent to dismantle any component that could possibly tell him no or hold him accountable in any way, which would functionally make him a king. It's far, far, far from an ideal choice, but it's an obvious one.
I was going to say "inb4 someone says that it's Biden's fault that congress did something" but I guess it's too late for that.
Why doesn't he just stick a lightbulb up the patient's ass?
Vote red because blue has blue hair.
Pro Life!
ALL cells matter!
You can blame Newt Gingrich for that one, he installed in the R's hyper partisanship and the idea that they can never let the D's get a "win". It carried them to a majority back in the 80's, and much like voodoo economics, they haven't changed the playbook since, since it still works.
To me it seems, a rich minority is gaming the system (political theatre, Fox news, CNN... --> public opinion), hoping to secure wealth and power against "the will of the people", up to a point where the system will eventually break and be replaced by dictatorship.
Ironically it is much more dangerous to be a billionaire in Russia or China than in the US or Europe.
Maybe that should be our message: it seems easier to exploit us without checks and balances, but having none can be very dangerous for you and your family.
However, the leader who will eventually emerge, the one using AI to check this comment, will be best for all of us, I'm sure!
Yes we all know that they fail at their jobs and fail to uphold anything that their office is supposed to stand for thereby failing the American people. Republicans are failures. That is an absolute fact.
> claims to be pro-life
> isn't
GOP.jpg
As someone who works in oncology data science, this is fucking infuriating. But also, politically, it’s 100% expected.
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Sounds philosophically consistent. What could be more pro-life, pro-business and pro-freedom than being in favour of endless cell growth unchecked by cell apoptosis? Come to think of it, not only does curing cancer sound like a socialist anti-prosperity regulatory agenda, killing off cells that would naturally grow is a little too close to abortion.
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