A.F.L.M, this isn't directed at you, you were just the last in line.

1. "a cure for cancer" is the biggest medical misnomer around. Cancer is not a single disease, it is not an outside agent attacking your body, it is not something in your body failing. It is MUCH more complex than that. There are many, many types of cancer and the causes can change from person to person. Because of this there is no one cure for cancer. The best scientists can do towards developing a "cure for cancer" a to develop a set of protocols for determining what tests will best ascertain what is the best drug for EACH patient at whatever stage the cancer is currently in. Scientists aren't looking for a "cure for cancer", they are looking for a million cures for a million types of cancer.

Cancer does not arise from a single mutation but rather a whole bunch of independent mutations that eventually allow a cell to:
a. prevent mechanisms from spotting and fixing damaged DNA
b. deactivate preprogrammed lifespans and how many times the cell's DNA can be replicated
c. causes the cell to produce its own growth hormones and ignore growth inhibitors
d. cause a surge in the number of blood vessels bringing nutrients to the cells allowing excessive growth
e. allow the cells to detach themselves from their current location and allow them to migrate to other spots in the body.

There are thousands of different ways these abilities can occur which makes correcting the problem nigh impossible. The most effective treatment is to just kill off the cancer cells. The trick there is limiting cell death to just the cancer cells.

2. When anyone talks about how medical research should not make money what they are saying is scientists working on medicines should work as slaves. You may not realize this, but that is the only way such a system could work. Medicinal science is the hardest, most frustrating career path one can take and requires true geniuses. If such effort is not rewarded these scientists will jump ship to something that does pay them for the work they do (like oilfield chemistry!). The only way to keep them working in medicine would be to make them slaves...but I suspect the results from these slaves would not be to your satisfaction. If you want "the government" to pay for it then the government has to take your money and give it to the scientists. How can this be any more efficient than you giving your money to the scientists through paying for your medicines?

3. Medicines from plants aren't avoided because there's no way to make money from them, medicines aren't made from plants because we have a much better way of doing it rather than separating every single compound from a plant and testing it in every single dosage on every single disease. The current way to treat diseases medicinally is to isolate the biochemical processes of the disease which lead to the symptom/effects of the disease. We use molecular modeling to determine the shape, isoelectric surface, and binding characteristics of a molecule that can "screw up" this aforementioned biochemical process. We then synthetically create this molecule in real life and test its ability to screw up the biochemical process, thereby eliminating the symptom of the disease. "Curing" a disease is much like curing a cancer in that you would have to completely reprogram a persons genetic code. Removing the symptom is all we are currently capable of doing. To think it's just a money thing shows you don't understand the process. if you don't understand the process then any opinion you have on the subject isn't worth spit.

-Blast