----- Original Message ----- From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 1:11 PM Subject: Re: Privately funded medical research is evil,why it must be eradicated
> --- Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ... I claim that has _already_ been oriented to them > > in the past 50 or so years, where _no_ significant > > disease has found a final _cure_. > > > > Alberto Monteiro > > The problem, Alberto, is that the antibiotics were > discovered a little bit before that. Anti-viral > research is hard. No one has ever succeeded at that. Yes and no. It is possible to come up with vacines to prevent viral diseases. The polio vacine is a great example of this. When the virus mutates on a regular basis, (e.g. the flu), the vacine is not as effective against the mutated form. The greater the mutation, the less immuity that a previous exposure/vacine gives. We now have a hepititus B vacine (IIRC), as well as German measles, measles, and mumps. They have all been developed during the last 30-40 years. > Also, btw, you're completely ignoring the enormous > progress that has been made against (for example) > cancer. A generation ago (I don't remember the exact > numbers, but these will be roughly correct) the > majority of pediatric cancer patients died. Now it's > under a quarter. Almost all of that improvement is > due to the work of the pharmaceutical companies, and > that's just a beginning. And there are subsets of pediatric cancer that have even higher sucess rates. With cancer, its never called a cure, but remissions that last 20 years and counting are a first order approximation to a cure. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
