Terry Blanton <[email protected]> wrote:
> MILLIONS of cancer -sufferers have been given fresh hope of a cure > after ground-breaking research. . . . > > The discovery by an Israeli specialist was last night hailed as > "radical and potentially life-changing". > > In a world first, Professor Aaron Avivi and his team found that cells > from the blind mole rat and its cousin the naked mole rat secrete a > substance that destroys cancer cells in mammals - including humans. > This may be a comprehensive cure for cancer. It might cure many types of cancer. This is the kind of thing researchers are hoping to find by doing basic research. The people I quoted criticize this approach. They say it has not worked, and we should put more emphasis on prevention, for example by reducing pollution and obesity. Both approaches have merit. Both should be pursued. The question is balance. How much money do you devote to one or the other? That is a judgement call. You might compare this discovery to cold fusion. It is a long-shot, radical new solution that might effectively do away with the need for other solutions and methods of ameliorating the problem. By the same token, reducing pollution to combat cancer can be compared to steps such as making hybrid automobiles or increasing insulation to reduce energy consumption. Again, we need both approaches. We need both cold fusion research and conventional, incremental engineering-based improvements to energy generation and conservation. For now we need both. If cold fusion succeeds, wind turbines, solar energy, and energy conservation will quickly be abandoned. Coal mining will soon follow. When polio was common there were thousands of skilled people working to deal with the effects of it. They operated iron lungs and trained patients to walk with crutches. The therapy that FDR underwent in the 1920s was remarkably effective in many ways. In an initiative he started, experts went to Warm Springs, Georgia and observed the effects of therapy on the patients there over several months. They found that many of the patients improved measurably in many ways. They had better mobility, fewer health problems, and better lives. The experts concluded that water therapy was "not a miracle" but that it had therapeutic value for many reasons, which they listed. Some of the reasons were obvious. Partially paralyzed people were able to do vigorous exercise in the water more effectively than they could on dry land. They could keep it up for hours, greatly strengthening the muscles that were not atrophied by disease. They improved coordination and balance, lung capacity, and so on. It helped teach them ways to cope with the disease more effectively. See the book, "The Man He Became" for details. In 1952, a vaccine to prevent polio was developed. The disease was quickly eliminated in the first world. The techniques and skills developed to deal with the onset of polio were made obsolete overnight. They have gradually been forgotten. Not completely, of course. People still suffered from the long term effects, and from similar diseases. But the journals devoted to polio therapy, the meetings, special training at medical school and the like quickly faded away. The same thing will happen to the field of energy after cold fusion succeeds. It will become a small, specialized engineering field useful for some purposes, but generally unknown to the public, and funded at a tiny fraction of what it is today. Energy efficiency will still be needed for some devices, to keep them compact and to reduce waste heat. We will not need an entire government agency and administrations such as DoE, NREL, or the EIA devoted to it. It will be about as important as something like fire safety regulation. - Jed
