I think you have every right to be cynical and suspicious, especially with how the world has changed over the past few decades however I don't think there is a secret cure out there hiding in someone's file drawer simply because while certain elements of the medical community do make a great deal of money off of people being sick there are other elements that would make a great deal by finding a cure.

For example, while surgeons make a fortune on surgeries related to breast, lung, cervical and colon cancers, health insurance companies spend billions paying out claims to cover cancer related expenses under their health plans. If there was a cure available the profit margins for the health insurance companies would go up significantly through the cost savings related to not having to pay out the treatment expenses. In addition every drug company out there would love the opportunity to be the first company to patent a drug that cures cancer.

So while I join you in being cynical I think in the medical industry there are opposing forces that work to make it very unlikely that a conspiracy to conceal a cure would last long.

My mother has been an oncology nurse specializing in chemotherapy for most of my life, I grew up hearing about a first person view of cancer treatment. Her patients typically lack insurance, come from the lower classes. Nonetheless, my mother goes out of her way every day to make everyone she meets as comfortable and at ease as possible. I know how expensive the drugs used in cancer care are, and how chemo cycles without insurance can be devastating financially.

Recently, I asked my mother how she'd feel if they did just cure the entire zoo of cancers and she'd be out of the job.
She said she wouldn't care if all she could do was greet at Wal-Mart if it meant that the people she sees every day didn't need these treatments.

I also have to comment, that the survival rates for most cancers are on the uprise. There are some types of cancer that I don't make much of a deal about after growing up hearing the survival rates for each kind. Others, though...
An aunt of mine had Hodgekins twenty years ago, recently they found tumors taking up most of her digestive track. All together, these tumors would be the size of a volleyball, this is in a five foot hundred twenty pound woman mind you.
...As of last week, she's in remission and was barely halfway through chemo.
Do you think the medical industry is going to be ticked that we only paid for half a chemo cycle? Was the chemotherapy nurse smiling through her teeth when she told us?

I'll say it right now, the medical industry isn't all in the right with what they charge and their testing procedures. But when it comes to cancer, I'm unfortunately born into that kind of world.

Please don't take offense at this, I've really tried to put the following as politely as I can. I won't kiss your butt, but I won't lie to you either:

Sue, that's the paranoia or a lack of knowledge talking. I really hope the latter.

The "common" cold is caused by a collection of viruses that get lumped together becuase they all cause the same symptoms. You'd need a vaccine that would work against every possible virus for that to work, and that's just flat out impossible.

As for cancer, uhmmmm.... We are developing vaccines for it. Maybe you've not heard about the new one for certain forms of cervical cancer? A large part (but by no means all) of developing cancer is having genetic markers- screening will tell you if you've got the gene, but that involves modifying the human genome pre-birth and gene therapy which no one wants to put money into for fear that it might offend some luddite. And even if we could beat that (and maybe cure baldness in a similar manner), you can't rule out exposure to various triggers which we still don't understand.

Let's be honest with ourselves. We've only known what a virus IS for about a hundred and thirty years. About the same time, people generally started living long enough that they could develop cancer. And it's only been about 80 years that most people have been able to say that they've been to a doctor PERIOD over the course of thier lives.

By comparison, we've known about birds since the first primates, but it still took Homo sapiens until the 1850s to understand how an wing works and another 50 years to figure out how to apply it. Even if we want to start with the Greeks and their Chinese counterparts as the "start" of science, that's still a little over two thousand years just to figure out the basics, 50 to apply them, and 30 for it to become common place.

Keep in mind, we still don't understand all the causes of cancer and what viruses cause the "common cold"- we are between where Euler observed what lift was and where Bernoulli determined how lift works. We can't even entirely explain why aspirin works the way it does and we've been using that, in commercial form, for over a century!

This reminds me of people [censored] at me becuase the computer doesn't do what they want it to, even when they admit that it did what they told it to. But it wasn't what they wanted it to do. What? You think you can wish techology into being? I really wish we could, so I could take a pill and get my hairline back. The lack of understanding about science, and the general fear/worship of it, in this culture is frightful. That a veterinarian, supposedly a man of science, would have this view point is disappointing.

Yes it's cynicism... but I don;t think it's being too cynical. Like someone else said, you're suspicious and that's smart.

But....it's hard to argue with Ironraven's logic. I believe we keep forgetting that it takes alot of gall and a lack of historical research to think we've actually advanced farther than we have. I'm guilty too: we start to think "we travel in space, have microwave ovens and cellphones, computers than can almost think on their own, etc." Why can't (we) cure cancer? This is very egotistical in my opinion.

We forget that WE (people today) didn;t do all this, we're just part of an ongoing solution that started long ago....we're just another cog.

The $millions and $billions spent have gone into someone's pocket and he thanks us. A small percentage of that $$ actually paid off, but considering that we are all going to die anyway, I'd just as soon die on my terms.

As for cancer research being a business, check out this letter to the Commissioner of Patent and Trademarks from the Nat'l Breast Cancer Coalition. All that research isn't being conducted for the betterment of all mankind, it's for the betterment of the bottom line. To make that big money you need to patent something and in this case it's small pieces of DNA. Some of those big research dollars have gone toward laying claim to the DNA that makes us tick. As another example from the USPTO files, Piper Rudnick LLP seems to be in this for the big bucks. Yeah, I'm cynical.

While I firmly believe the health care workers (doctors and nurses) are doing all they can to help cancer patients, they are only the tip of the industry iceberg. The rest of the industry is in this for the money. Cancer will never be "cured". That would be the end of the industry. $.02

I eat well, exercise regularly, don't smoke and drink very little alcohol. If I come down with a form of cancer, it just may be the cause of my eventual death. But I won't be dying in a hospital bed. A good canine friend of mine died last year. Walked down to the river and died on the path coming home. If only I can be so fortunate.

Hmm, well, some points I'd like to emphasize. Lessee how this plays out for y'all:

The industry establishes that there's this big problem with some illness, be it a cold virus, some antibiotic resistant bacteria, or cancer. They say they want to study it so they can maybe find a way to protect us from it, so we agree to pay more taxes to the government to fund these studies. Wanting to improve our quality of life, we gladly agree to put for the money, after all, it is only a little bit more than we are already paying for our government to waste on other things we don't really need but think we have to have. Also, look at all the wonderful advances medical science has made in the past hundred years because our civilization collectively supported these studies (or so they would have us believe).

So years go by, and we keep getting told that progress is being made, that we are learning more and more about how the diseases work and that it is only a matter of time, but that they need more money to continue their research. So we pay, because everyone wants to live to be 200 years old. Hmm, sounds to me like a pretty good setup. Well, so much for my conspiracy theory of the day.

I am also reminded of the Whitman tragedy. Apparently the native americans, at least some of them, would hold the medicine man of their tribe responsible for the welfare of the tribe. If a disease started killing the members off and the medicine man couldn't stop it, he could end up being sacrificed.

I am against one dime of anyone's tax money being spent for research on medical issues. If medical associations and pharmaceutical companys spend the money on their own research, I'm happy. In the end, they'll prosper and we'll be better off.

So if there's more money to be made in the medical field on sick people how much is there to be made on dead people? Wouldn't they want people to surive terminal cancer so they could go on to live a long life and continue to spend money on other ailments that aren't terminal.

Do conspiricy theorists even think through the logic of their obsurd claims before they make them?

If there are any bad guys in the medical field, I think that it is the drug companies, with the huge prices they charge for meds, many of which I'll bet don't cost all that much to produce. I understand that they have research costs, etc., but come on; and hospitals, charging you $7.95 for a simple aspirin. Sure, nurses cost them money, but those nurses are being paid whether they are sitting drinking coffee, doing paperwork, or passing pills. Maybe they should buy their aspirin at Costco or something, and put 'em out on the counter, like the military used to do with APC's. Then there are the drug stores. If you have insurance, having a prescription filled costs, let's say, $75. But if you don't have insurance, that same prescription is $100. Why? They know how much the insurance companies will pay, and only charge that much. But no insurance, they can pretty much charge what they want.

Doctors, on the other hand, are for the most part hard working folks who really want to help. But some of them become complacient, lazy, un-informed, whatever. Example: A friend of ours in Central CA was having trouble breathing. She goes to a dr, he says it is just the lousy air. Goes to another, it is because she is overweight. Goes to another, he shrugs his shoulders and says he doesn't know. Goes to a fourth, he says "let's take an x-ray," which seems like med101 to me. Guess what the x-ray shows? Cancerous tumor on the back side of her sternum, which is preventing her lungs from inflating fully. Good news is, that after chemo, radiation, etc, she is cancer free. One doctor saved her life, three would have killed her. Lousy odds...

If there's a conspiracy out there, it sure has a lot of folks keeping quiet. They'd be smarter to point the finger and sign a book and movie deal.

I suspect most, if not all, of us know people who have passed away as a result of cancer. Two that immediately come to my mind were long-time smokers.

A cancer cure being covered up and swept under the rug? Doubt it.

But mismanagement of finances, some research, and potential treatments? I bet so. Look at how hard it is for the FDA to put the rubber stamp on some treatments, or revoke those that go awry.