At 05:21 PM 8/01/00 -0800, Hal wrote:
>BTW the online prediction game Foresight Exchange http://www.ideosphere.com/
>is much more pessimistic about a cure for cancer by 2010, giving it 38%
>odds, which is more in line with what seems reasonable to me.
*Which* cancer? Some are *already* under control, some on the verge of it.
The general understanding of what goes wrong at a genetic level is now in,
I gather (if Robert Weinberg is to be believed), and plenty of quite
diverse attacks are being trialed. But obviously an angiostatin that works
to stop a massy tumor from vascularising itself into neighboring tissues
hasn't got much bearing on prospects for an effective treatment for
leukemia, yet they're both `cancers'.
I'd expect some very high success-rate treatments by 2010 (or 2005), others
a bit later.
And decent stem-cell based replacement dentistry quite a lot later,
perhaps. But that only interests old farts like me, who've lost teeth to
decay back in the days before there was fluoride and flossing. (Oh, and to
people in ghettoes, and the 3rd world...)
Damien Broderick
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