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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
Relevant: Randall did a unique comic for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for his 2012.11.4 Umwelt (April Fool's) comic (it wasn't discovered/reported for a few days because it presumably only came up for people browsing from those two buildings):
(DFCI is near where he lives, so I'm guessing this is where he and his wife have been.)
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Apr 27 '12
Thanks for posting it. I followed all the Umwelt scavenging pretty closely, but never saw this one! Doubt I'm alone...
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
Sure :) I've been meaning to post it... I'm pretty sure most people haven't seen it... it wasn't even in the first-48-hours list.
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u/calinet6 Apr 27 '12
Very cool! My girlfriend works at MGH and has been to that garden, she says it's beautiful. Have been meaning to check it out (respectfully and quietly of course).
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u/efischerSC2 Apr 27 '12
This may be the most powerful/moving/meaningful xkcd yet.
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Apr 27 '12
[deleted]
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u/sonics_fan Apr 27 '12
efischerSC2 didn't say it was deep, just that it was powerful/moving/meaningful - which has to do with an individual's perception of the comic. so, you know, stop being a dick.
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Apr 27 '12
[deleted]
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Apr 27 '12
HOW DARE I SHOW EMOTIONS ON THE INTERNET
No but seriously go fuck off and troll somewhere else. Yeah you can always state your opinion but you're an asshole.
I just saved you from making 5 posts to this reply.
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u/armchairnixon Apr 27 '12
It's funny that "People being wrong on the internet" still had a small presence during the cancer worries.
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
They were probably wrong about cancer.
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Apr 27 '12
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
Gasp, are you saying they're wrong? Well, okay, I wouldn't agree with that statement to that degree, no. But we can bring up plenty of cases of the pharmaceutical industry lobbying congress, manipulating scientific study setups, and discriminatively ignoring bad results they paid for, to invest in leverage/clout.
I don't believe they could suppress an outright miracle cure for cancer, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were at least avoiding funding research toward that goal, where they have an investment in current treatments.While individuals may exercise humanity (as employees), a corporation on the macroscopic scale is a sort of beast that seeks to survive and grow - moreso the larger. (Yeah?) In a way, you can't blame them - we set up the environment for this to happen.
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u/MrBound Apr 27 '12
Yeah, I'm not really sure this is the right place to have this argument, man.
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
I dunno, I think this is incredibly relevant. Why haven't we made much headway in cancer? Why hasn't more funding been put into it, proportional to how many people it affects and how long it's been around? I'm sure Randall is very concerned about this (as shown by this graph) and he's also generally very aware of the political undercurrents of any topic (as shown by this same graph, actually).
I don't mind people disagreeing, but I'm curious if people are downvoting because they think this isn't highly relevant to the comic or because they believe the pharmaceutical industry is transparent and philanthropic when it comes to cancer research. What do you think?
(Of course, all I was suggesting - not really arguing - was that that "conspiracy" perhaps wasn't a prime example of someone being "wrong about cancer". Of course, I know squigs was making a lighthearted comment, like mine before, and I took it further because I thought it was interesting.)
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Apr 27 '12
"Cancer" is not a disease. It's a collection of diseases.
For example, I had thyroid cancer. Except not really, because there isn't really "thyroid cancer": there are 4 main types. One, papillary thyroid cancer (which I had), is actually curable, as in, you can actually get rid of all the cancer cells, permanently, fairly easily. It has a ten year survival rate of around 93%. Treatment involves removing the thyroid, and radioactive iodine (which you take in pill form, and has minimal side effects: some temporary loss of taste and salivary gland pain; slight increase in risk for salivary gland cancer).
Another, anaplastic thyroid cancer, has a very high fatality rate (7 to 14% survival rate after 10 years; it can kill in 4-5 months), and a very different treatment plan: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment, with all the nasty side effects that those entail.
That's just one organ: 4 different types of cancers, all called "thyroid cancer" with very different treatments and prognoses.
Multiply that by all of the different organs and subtypes of cancers and you'll understand why it doesn't look like we've made much headway. We don't need "Big Pharma's hiding the cure!!!111!" to explain it.
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u/SomePostMan Apr 28 '12
Thanks so much for responding.
I definitely agree with all of this (never said cancer was a single disease, or that there was (or necessarily could be) a single cure... or that lack of funding from pharmaceutical companies was a necessary explanation or the only possible explanation).
· Wouldn't you agree that funding is an important part of the process though? We make more headway with more funding in general, right? Otherwise, there'd be no reason to do research in the first place.
· And wouldn't you say that the pharmaceutical corporations (or health care corporations in general) have a large financial investment in current treatments? In other words, if a cure for even one of the many types of cancer was developed, removing the need for chemo or any number of other treatments, they would inevitably lose a significant amount of money.
· And wouldn't you agree that, based on all past evidence, corporations, especially in health care, tend to seek the options to survive and grow financially rather than be philanthropically self-sacrificial?
• If you agree with all of that, isn't a reasonable conclusion that lack of corporate health care funding is a nonnegligible slow to the potential rate of cancer research?That's all I was saying really. (I thought this was a pretty non-extreme, commonly-held understanding, but now I'm not sure.) Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again for responding - good discussion is really what I'm after.
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u/neon_overload Apr 27 '12
If you read the alt text, the fact that there are still people wrong on the internet actually helps give him hope for the future, in a strange way.
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
I also find it extremely interesting that, ever since the cancer, there's something that has been causing him emotions increasingly that is not cancer, and not romance, and not any of those other things and he doesn't know what it is.
Also, for the curious, the spike in Romance correlates very closely to when he married her.
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Apr 27 '12
what does it say about me as a person that i find the saddest part of the comic being Joss Whedon declining to zero in mid 2007?
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
That you don't have cancer.
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
(or a loved one with cancer.) (And that you have good taste.)
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u/bluepepper Apr 27 '12 edited Apr 27 '12
I have two parents with cancer (one in remission) and I just made this comment :p
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u/visarga Apr 27 '12
This moved me to tears. I have been in his shoes. My wife of 31yo was diagnosed in 2008. I was reading cancer literature too, like crazy...
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Apr 27 '12
I'm sorry can someone explain the story behind this? Does the writer have cancer or someone in his life? II'm not an avid XKCD reader but I've noticed a few posts about cancer on here.
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u/SomePostMan Apr 27 '12
Click on the comic to read the context (as the alt-text suggests). (His now-wife got breast cancer totally out of the blue without any significant risk factors.)
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u/the-axis Apr 27 '12
His wife has cancer. Check the mouse over text. Clicking the image links to an update from 2011 where he mentions things are getting better. I don't think he has given out much more than that. Things are going pretty well right now is my understanding.
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u/abu_el_banat Apr 27 '12
I'm glad to hear she is doing well. It's funny how I feel connected with someone I do not know and will likely never know. Good luck.
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u/bithead Apr 28 '12
If Randal is reading, please know that many here care, sympathize, and which you and your fiancée the best.
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u/JOHNREDCORN Apr 27 '12
Wow. This isn't funny at all. Hope everything goes better than expected.