You should probably differentiate more between curing and preventing. Most of the infection gains were in preventive measures—both in avoiding infections and boosting the body’s systems. And this is where massive anticancer gains have been possible (e.g. banning asbestos and dissuading smoking).
The low hanging gains in actual curing were generally mechanisms that make use of differences between different kingdoms, e.g. antibiotics targeting bacteria cell walls, since they have a different structure than eukaryotic cells. The problem with cancers is that they’re your own cells that are going wild, for a whole host of reasons. This means that any successful anti-cancer thingy will either have to specifically target cancer cells (which is generally hard) or be area spells, that will also kill off healthy cells. Pretty much what DirectedEvolution wrote.
Good point, I say “cure” here but yes I really mean any combination of prevention + cure that solves the problem. You’re right that prevention was the majority of the success against infection (and this may be true for cancer as well).
You should probably differentiate more between curing and preventing. Most of the infection gains were in preventive measures—both in avoiding infections and boosting the body’s systems. And this is where massive anticancer gains have been possible (e.g. banning asbestos and dissuading smoking).
The low hanging gains in actual curing were generally mechanisms that make use of differences between different kingdoms, e.g. antibiotics targeting bacteria cell walls, since they have a different structure than eukaryotic cells. The problem with cancers is that they’re your own cells that are going wild, for a whole host of reasons. This means that any successful anti-cancer thingy will either have to specifically target cancer cells (which is generally hard) or be area spells, that will also kill off healthy cells. Pretty much what DirectedEvolution wrote.
Good point, I say “cure” here but yes I really mean any combination of prevention + cure that solves the problem. You’re right that prevention was the majority of the success against infection (and this may be true for cancer as well).