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this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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I was being dramatic, no need for alarm. I read several articles a day, typically, but I'm usually pretty selective about it and this one didn't make the cut, though I still wanted to discuss the topic. So, here we are.
I find it interesting that for many serious diseases, the biggest determinant of outcome can be how early you detect it. It’s not something I ever really appreciated before the advent of so many inexpensive tests, and seeing all sorts of stats on just how much difference early detection can make!
Yeah, particularly for cancer. Cancer, as I understand it, is a dice game from start to finish. The two commonalities all cancers have are that they're cells that have immortalized and reproduce out of control. That is, they don't die when they get signals to die, and they pick up one or more mutations that cause them to undergo cellular division at a higher rate than normal. This is how we still have HeLa cells today. So, the first dice game is getting one cell in your tissue to roll some flavor of those mutations together. From there, the dice start piling up in Cancer's favor that it can roll more mutations to help it survive when it shouldn't. The earlier you pick it up, the fewer dice cancer has to play with. Not to mention you're not also having to fight the battle of trying to kill the cancer while it tries to kill you.
This is also one of the fronts where it's thought that mRNA vaccines are going to be huge. In fact, IIRC, the technology was specifically developed with cancer in mind and its use for creating pathogen immunity was a secondary consideration. COVID may have helped catapult that technology years ahead of schedule in terms of development pipeline. IMO, COVID is going to do for medical science what WWII did for machinery, electronics, and atomic science; we're probably going to start seeing some huge leaps forward in biomedical knowledge and technology coming from theCOVID-centered research initiatives launched all over the world.
Early detection is important for another reason. When trying to kill it you really want to be doing overkill. The less cells it is the less destructive overkill is.