You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space

where science and society collide. We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters.

There's more than what we see.

A couple of months ago, I lost a beloved aunt to cancer. It was very fast, unexpectedly so. And a few months before that,

I lost another friend who had spent five years battling cancer, and she was only 39 when she passed.

In both of these cases, I was surprised at how virulent the disease was, at how little we

seem to be able to do, and yet how many treatment options there were, how expensive

they were, and ultimately, how ineffective. And of course, I'm not alone in terms of experiencing

a loss of someone to cancer, and I'm also not alone abomining the high costs of treatment.

But when is it time for us to actually do something about it? We trust that the

entire medical profession is moving forward as best they can. And we trust that the fight to

cure cancer is one that is on the minds of some very, very, very smart people. But is even the

whole idea of finding a cure for cancer now misguided? I mean, when I was growing up, it was one of the things

that people said they wanted to do when they grew up. It was like, I'm going to be an astronaut,

or I want to cure cancer, or I want to be a race car driver. It wasn't like, I want to find another

treatment for anxiety disorders, or I'd like to extend the life of a cancer patient by an extra two months.

And yet it seems that in all of these years, we just haven't gotten that far in terms of

extending the lives of people who have incurable cancers. There's also a woman who is

actually calling for a complete rethink of how we approach the study and treatment of cancer.

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