This gentleman is a cancer biologist -- with a an interesting Twitter feed -- who rightly cautions against descriptives such as "miracle" and "cure" because these treatments don't yet cure everyone, and thus raise patients' hopes unduly.
But I think otherwise we agree: An amazing achievement, one of the most uplifting in years. We're a lot closer than ever to a time when cancer is seen as a horror of the past, like smallpox or cholera.
(Unless, of course, anti-vaccine lunatics succeed in reversing the greatest triumph of medicine--the conquest of epidemic disease--and we all learn to live in terror of these diseases again.)
(Though frankly, I reckon the moment some vaxophobic community in California reminds us what an outbreak of polio or cholera *really* looks like, our polite libertarian debates will be over fast as you an say, "Jenny McCarthy's now a pro-vaccine zealot."
(Any remaining lunatics will be quarantined, or tried for child abuse. It will only take one serious outbreak of a truly terrifying disease for people to to grasp why we once lived in terror of them. Then we'll have mass panic,
and the first thing to go in mass panics is civil liberties.)
But in the case of these diseases, we will, for a change, be *right* to panic, and *right* to say "You're insane" to anyone who thinks the Constitution gives her the right to share her cholera in a crowded theater.
But in the case of these diseases, we will, for a change, be *right* to panic, and *right* to say "You're insane" to anyone who thinks the Constitution gives her the right to share her cholera in a crowded theater.
