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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Someone's about to fall out of window after shooting himself in the face three times.
Sorry, I whooshed. Does this imply a conspiracy to keep cancer research secret?
If anyone wants to know the actual reason, it's usually just the difference between in vitro and in vivo research. Classically illustrated by the humorous (and useless) factoid that listerine kills the HIV viroid.
This sounds more reasonable.
I mean, I can imagine why a conspiracy might develop. According to headlines, we’ve cured cancer hundreds of times now! So why do people still die from cancer? Maybe because big-_____ is stopping it. And maybe there are some one-off case examples that fit the theory.
But we know for a fact that there’s a long tradition in science journalism of misrepresenting and overhyping the results of cancer research especially. And the typical omissions are IIRC: in vitro vs in vivo > rats vs humans > treatments targeting specific cancers that may not be generalizable.
ITs because we all know how money corrupts. For example, theres no money in cures. But theres endless money in treatments. The only shining light, if you want to look at it like that, is that theres no money in your dying. So... theres that. But theyd still rather you died than cure you. But they will be desperate to get us all on pills and injections that we need the rest of your lives.
There is HUGE money in developing a cure for cancer. You could literally sell that for a million dollars a dose, and insurance companies would STILL be happy to pay it because it's cheaper than the alternative.
Right, I suspect that, even if we ignore just how singularly unifying cancer has become as an enemy to every echelon of society, there’s simply no way any individual or group of conspirators could or would keep a cure under wraps for very long.
Like you said, profit is one good reason. As profitable as the cancer industry may be overall, any capitalist agent within the space with the sudden power to “sweep the board” and make an unforetold fortune in the process has little incentive to cooperate with their competitors.
Another reason is the irrepressible selfishness and entitlement of the wealthy. There’s no way wealthy decision makers would choose their own death if a potential cure was near at hand. Assuming the cure was developed in secret, exclusively for the wealthy (which might actually happen at some point) it wouldn’t be possible to maintain such a secret for very long.
Finally, if there is any truth to the speculation that a true general cure would, in effect, amount to a cure to aging itself, then in addition to the reasons above, any supposed conspiracy would face the impossible task of containing perhaps THE most catchy idea of human history. If that was actually possible, we might as well also believe in ancient myths like the Tree of Life, the Fountain of Youth, and the Holy Grail.