The Moonshot program was the largest, organized effort by the U.S. government to find cancer cures. Congress voted it down.
  • Delusional@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Yes we all know that they fail at their jobs and fail to uphold anything that their office is supposed to stand for thereby failing the American people. Republicans are failures. That is an absolute fact.

  • neo@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    To me it seems, a rich minority is gaming the system (political theatre, Fox news, CNN… --> public opinion), hoping to secure wealth and power against “the will of the people”, up to a point where the system will eventually break and be replaced by dictatorship.

    Ironically it is much more dangerous to be a billionaire in Russia or China than in the US or Europe.

    Maybe that should be our message: it seems easier to exploit us without checks and balances, but having none can be very dangerous for you and your family.

    However, the leader who will eventually emerge, the one using AI to check this comment, will be best for all of us, I’m sure!

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    1 year ago

    We should keep a record of the nay votes so we can remind them should any of them be diagnosed with cancer.

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Conservatives are generally opposed to any healthcare they personally do not need at the moment. They distrust science, education and medicine. Given a choice, most conservatives would dissolve all scientific research in the U.S.

    Conservatism is a plague of idiocy, sickness and death. This has been true throughout all recorded history.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Tbh, a cure for cancer is a little like finding a cure for all respiratory infections. You’re talking about a pathology that encompasses hundreds of distinct diseases. Sure, maybe it is doable, but calling it a moonshot is a little generous; landing on the moon would be several orders of magnitude easier by comparison, imo.

    Just so I’m clear, it’s still shitty that they blocked this.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Read the article. It’s pretty clear that cancer is hundreds of different diseases and extremely unlikely to have a single silver bullet, but this description reads more like a coordination project

      the program has made strides in expanding access to cancer detection screenings, especially to veterans, increased support for programs aimed at preventing cancer in the first place and provided funding to groundbreaking cancer cure research

      Its goal is to cut cancer deaths in half by making diagnostics cheaper and more available, funding prevention, and funding research into treatments. No magical silver bullets here

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ouch. Not intended as that but I do think your concern was answered in the article, and we’re all sometimes guilty of skimming the article or reacting to inflammatory headlines

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I was being dramatic, no need for alarm. I read several articles a day, typically, but I’m usually pretty selective about it and this one didn’t make the cut, though I still wanted to discuss the topic. So, here we are.

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
              0·
              1 year ago

              I find it interesting that for many serious diseases, the biggest determinant of outcome can be how early you detect it. It’s not something I ever really appreciated before the advent of so many inexpensive tests, and seeing all sorts of stats on just how much difference early detection can make!

              • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
                0·
                1 year ago

                Yeah, particularly for cancer. Cancer, as I understand it, is a dice game from start to finish. The two commonalities all cancers have are that they’re cells that have immortalized and reproduce out of control. That is, they don’t die when they get signals to die, and they pick up one or more mutations that cause them to undergo cellular division at a higher rate than normal. This is how we still have HeLa cells today. So, the first dice game is getting one cell in your tissue to roll some flavor of those mutations together. From there, the dice start piling up in Cancer’s favor that it can roll more mutations to help it survive when it shouldn’t. The earlier you pick it up, the fewer dice cancer has to play with. Not to mention you’re not also having to fight the battle of trying to kill the cancer while it tries to kill you.

                This is also one of the fronts where it’s thought that mRNA vaccines are going to be huge. In fact, IIRC, the technology was specifically developed with cancer in mind and its use for creating pathogen immunity was a secondary consideration. COVID may have helped catapult that technology years ahead of schedule in terms of development pipeline. IMO, COVID is going to do for medical science what WWII did for machinery, electronics, and atomic science; we’re probably going to start seeing some huge leaps forward in biomedical knowledge and technology coming from theCOVID-centered research initiatives launched all over the world.

    • PopcornTin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nope, Joe is very, very close to finishing the cure and just needs a little help from Congress to finalize it. But noooo, those dastardly Republicans don’t want him to give us this cure. It’s all their fault.

      Oh, and remember to vote blue no matter who .

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
        0·
        1 year ago

        Look, man, it’s an election year, the hype machine is going to be running full tilt, and every little thing is going to be blown way out of proportion, like that one time Obama killed a fly on national TV or that other time he wore a beige suit. I’m going to vote for Biden, not least of all because the other guy probably will end up putting me and my family on his “official action” list (thank you, SCOTUS). There’s lots more reasons, but Trump openly represents the end of the US government as we’ve known it, and that’s not hyperbole. He’s been very open about his intent to dismantle any component that could possibly tell him no or hold him accountable in any way, which would functionally make him a king. It’s far, far, far from an ideal choice, but it’s an obvious one.

  • Stern@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You can blame Newt Gingrich for that one, he installed in the R’s hyper partisanship and the idea that they can never let the D’s get a “win”. It carried them to a majority back in the 80’s, and much like voodoo economics, they haven’t changed the playbook since, since it still works.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    0·
    1 year ago

    Sounds philosophically consistent. What could be more pro-life, pro-business and pro-freedom than being in favour of endless cell growth unchecked by cell apoptosis? Come to think of it, not only does curing cancer sound like a socialist anti-prosperity regulatory agenda, killing off cells that would naturally grow is a little too close to abortion.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know how accurate this is, but I know that it fits with Repubs voting against the migrant bill that they had formerly wanted because it would help Trump on the campaign. Whether this is true or not doesn’t change that they openly want to stall government, therefore this could be true.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      I don’t know how accurate this is

      Biden made a rather cavalier claim that he was going to fund investments in medical science that would lead to a final cure for all forms of cancer within the next decade. And I think we can safely say that’s bullshit.

      However, ramping up blue sky medical research and public sector spending on the adoption of new medical technology would be helpful in treating a host of cancerous maladies and potentially curing or inoculating against others.

      Consider that the US isn’t even on the front line of cancer research anymore. Cuba’s cancer research has outpaced research in the states for over a decade. That, alone, should tell you what kind of progress is possible with a little strategic public investment.

      Whether this is true or not doesn’t change that they openly want to stall government, therefore this could be true.

      Conservatives hate public investment, particularly when it threatens private profits. Liberals do too, abet not as fervently (see: our bipartisan obsession with the health of the domestic automotive, financial, real estate, insurance, and commercial export agricultural industries).

      But this is more an issue of scoring political points. Republicans were happy enough to finance Operation Warp Speed under Trump, in order to fast track the vaccine they thought they’d get to take credit for in 2020. And they loved nothing more than giant state sponsored give-aways to Majority Leader Bill Frist’s family owned Hospital Corporation of America.

      So they’re not strictly against government spending. They simply don’t want another Liberal Democrat like Kennedy taking credit for putting a man on the moon.