Ask a biologist

[nihilistcat]

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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. 
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There you go again, asking for money!  And what have you to show for it?  A lot of fancy equipment, and people still dying of cancer!  It is one of the oldest cons there is, saying we are really close and just need a bit more.  We believed you guys before, giving you millions, but you won't fool me anymore!

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My original post, like this one, was a joke, yet you answered it seriously.  As for the money in the first post, I meant that a lot of money has been spent to try to cure cancer, not that every researcher was getting rich.

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Cancer research has come a long way, today we can treat cancers that we were unable to treat in the past, indeed if caught soon enough, we can treat virtually all types of cancer, whereas in years past cancer was almost always a death sentence. So we have come a long way, and we do have much to show for it.

Research in all areas of medicine takes decades. Sometimes we discover awesome molecular biology tools completely by accident. And cancer biology doesn't exist in a vacuum. We depend on things like imaging technology, better molecular bio tools and techniques (like fluorescence or whatever), sequencing technology, etc. 

We recently discovered a technology called CRISPR/Cas9 (segments of bacterial DNA used for gene editing), which may enable cancer researchers to actually edit away the mutations that caused the cancer (but this technology has only been used for gene editing since 2013). 

BTW, I just realized that you were joking in both your responses, but I'm gonna leave this response because unfortunately there are many people who do feel that way (so maybe it's important for biologists to learn how to address that sort of concern). 

Is cladistics an art or a science, or is there no rhyme or reason to it?

Cladistics is just creating phylogenetic trees, and it's definitely a science (a sub-discipline within evolutionary biology). In fact, with new genetic and bioinformatic tools, cladistics has become extremely rigorous and precise.