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Two things are critical to any medical laboratory tests for presence of diseases in a person.
1) One is specificity, or how specific a test is.
Some tests are not very specific to one disease but can potentially show indications of more than one type of disease, therefore, a person can falsely test positive for something like HIV. That is why it is recommended by laboratory scientists that if you test positive for a disease you ask how specific and sensitive the test is you took, and then request a second test by other means.
2) The other is sensitivity, or how sensitive a test is.
Some tests are very specific to one disease, will provide indications of the presence or absence for only one disease, but the test may not be very sensitive in picking up the presence of the disease. Ergo, as has happened, and can happen a person can test negative for a disease--like HIV--but really have HIV even though they received a false negative result.
As I was taught, the dilemma in battling HIV, is that in a single individual the virus mutates so rapidly, therefore the immune system can't keep up with recognizing the mutated viruses and sending cells out to quarantine or destroy them.
A similar--but not exactly the same--dilemma occurs with battling cancer. Many of us lay people of science speak of cancer as if it is one thing, one type, whereas in reality their are a multiple biological types of cancers. Finding a cure for one kind of cancer does not de facto mean the cure would work for every other kind of cancer.
Also, the PrEP drug does not prevent a person from contracting HIV. In the studies done x percentage of people taking PrEP still contracted HIV. The study found that those that took the drug were x percentage wise likely not to contract HIV comparative to those that did not take the drug.
One can live a "full life" being obese or being an IV heroin addict. I would not suggest becoming IV heroin addicted or contracting HIV as being on par in health as those that are not drug addicted and those that have no viral disease at all in their body.
But that's just me. One can dance with the devil if they like.
That said... I hate all forms of diseases period and would hope every single disease on earth could be cured--including HIV which terrifies me. But herpes, cancer, neurological diseases, and a slew of other diseases frightens me.
Interesting... You'd think there'd be an avenue there to explore for vaccine development.
The documentary I watched did state that they were going to see about using the genetic components of the people who were immune to HIV to create a vaccine.
The 20/20 show, I remember it spoke about the issues in regards to if a vaccine was "owned" by the producer or the people who gave genetic material. A man who was on that program had lost a lot of friends to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s/1990s and he was gay man who decided he wanted to just die too due to being depressed over losing so many loved ones, but he never got the disease even though he had been a lover of men who died of AIDS. He and his genetic information were discussed on the program and who "owned" that material if medicines or vaccines were created.
I'll have to see if I can find the program. It was a long time ago, but I remember it because it was fascinating to me. I'm "into" genealogy and this made me more interested in it at the time.
The PBS program was called "Mystery of the Black Death" and was featured on the PBS series "Secrets of the Dead" (one of my favorite shows to this day!).
Arguably, all the time and money spent on Aids would have been better spent on those conditions to begin with. Once we learned to test donated blood and to not reuse needles, Aids became an entirely preventable disease.
Totally Agree - perhaps we can now revert more resources to eliminating other conditions, Cancer and Alzheimers being awful conditions that effect a lot of people, whilst conditions such as muscle wasting diseases such as MS and ALS are really awful and most people would like to see more research directed towards these conditions and indeed many others.
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
Viruses. I'd like to see a lot more cures/preventatives for viruses.
Viral encephalitis, pneumonia, etc., that kill so many? Boom. Done. Gone.
I agree, there needs to be a global effort, and we need to develop new more powerful antibiotics.
Totally Agree - perhaps we can now revert more resources to eliminating other conditions, Cancer and Alzheimers being awful conditions that effect a lot of people, whilst conditions such as muscle wasting diseases such as MS and ALS are really awful and most people would like to see more research directed towards these conditions and indeed many others.
Not all cancers are the same. Some cancers are way easier to treat than others. A few years ago I got a HPV shot, which causes almost all cervical cancer cases... I actually got diagnosed with cancer in my thyroid, if it comes back I'll have the option to do chemo--which is radioactive iodine treatment--and some of you may know thyroid cells are the ONLY cells in the whole body that are able to process iodine. Chemo for the thyroid is roughly a 99% success rate because of this, and therefore the most easily treatable of all cancers. BUT it also depends on the way the cancer spreads, even if it's on the same organ/body part:
You can see there is one thyroid cancer that is damn near impossible to survive from and is insanely aggressive. But some of the others have a 90%+ cure rate. These different thyroid cancer types spread to different areas, the most common spreading to the lymphatic system, the second one mostly spreading to the lungs and bones, etc. and will require different treatments. The way the cancers behave do play a significant role in how they are treated and watched.
So when I hear a "cure for cancer" I sort of brush it off in my mind. Not that it's not possible, but will require a huge amount of different cures for each type of cancer and maybe even further branching into different types of the same cancer of an organ (like the thyroid has four as I stated earlier). Assuming that one gets the cure for the cancer they were diagnosed, it's most likely not going to stop cancer from happening in another part of the body. Cervical cancer can mostly be prevented because MOST cases are caused by HPV, which is an STI, otherwise most cancers would have to be treated after diagnosis and that particular "cure" probably won't work in other areas of the body.
IN SUM, cancer will never completely go away. The way cancers are created are not only insanely diverse, but they have many different behaviors and require different treatments. There will never a primary prevention method (like a vaccine) that will ever prevent cancer from happening EXCEPT the ones that can come from infectious disease (like cervical cancer). Of course, this doesn't mean we should be aiming for a cure, but it will never be a one-stop cure, cancer itself is an umbrella term for multiple diseases of the same foundation (since all cancers come from abnormal cell growth).
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