RE: Ask a biologist
May 22, 2015 at 5:19 pm
(This post was last modified: May 22, 2015 at 5:25 pm by nihilistcat.)
(May 21, 2015 at 9:25 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Why haven't you guys cured cancer already? You have been going at it for years, with millions of dollars, and people still die from cancer. If the government gave me millions of dollars, I could not cure cancer, too. In fact, I would be willing to not cure cancer for less money than you guys are taking.
In fact researchers are probably the lowest paid highly educated group of people in America. The PhD track is not designed for people who are looking for fame and fortune. If you don't truly love biology and science, find another profession, because chances are you won't stick it out anyway.
First, you sweat through an undergraduate degree, then if your grades are good enough, your GRE score high enough, you get into a PhD program. You're given a meager stipend of somewhere between $20,000 and 30,000 per year, to work as a full time researcher (we calculated that we were working for something like $12 per hour doing extremely advanced research that requires a shit load of education). Then you go on to the post-doc track, where you maybe earn around $40K to start, inch your way up to $50 or 60K, while our peers in other disciplines (like MBAs or really easy majors like public relations or whatever, are earning double what we're earning).
But the truth is, cancer is complicated. We've only recently learned that there's a such thing as cancer stem cells, cancer cells actually evolve (natural selection occurs within the tumor microenvironment), and it's really difficult to target cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. So for example while chemotherapy does a great job of killing cancer cells, it also targets other rapidly dividing cells (like hair and immune cells). If we give to much, patient dies from the chemo itself, too little, not enough to treat the cancer. Sometimes the cancer has metastasized to the point where you would need too much chemo drug (and it will kill the patient), so it's untreatable.
Cancer is also notoriously difficult to diagnose. Sometimes tumors are hidden deep in our organs, where conventional imaging just cannot detect the tumor. Sometimes it doesn't become symptomatic until it spreads (when it's much more difficult to treat).
It's not a conspiracy, cancer is just really complex. But the good news is, we're really close to having the ability to treat cancer at any stage, so now is the time that this country needs to urgently increase our investments in research.
(May 22, 2015 at 4:11 am)Neimenovic Wrote: Why did you become a biologist?
For many reasons. I view biology as the science with the most powerful near term potential. I've lost many good friends and family members to things like cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, etc. I've seen many people I care about suffer from things like alcoholism. And as a skeptic, I've always believed that science is our only hope to cure disease, live longer and better lives, solve intractable problems like global warming, etc., so I just can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.
