Meanwhile, As The First World Drowns In Indulgence...

Treating cancer is more profitable than curing it. Ending world destitution isn't profitable. If they were considered profitable, corporations would have jumped on that band wagon decades ago.

A sad truth,but a truth nonetheless...

Awesome comment,dude

Thanks. I piss people off too often when I post things as I see them, though.

I've only seen it once here. and that was over a year ago. Funny thing with that was I was able to prove my point by using the other persons "proof". He didn't bother reading it. LOL

I would be interested in seeing the proof that a cure for cancer exists, but is being held back for profit reasons. There are some things that don't make sense to me and my experiences with human nature, and that would be one.

So would I. It runs in the family: my sis is a triple cancer survivor, thyroid, uterine, and breast, but Dad wasn't so lucky: throat and lung cancer took him back in '71, and my niece died of cervical cancer in 1998. There are some cancers that are basically a death knell, but others are treatable. But it can take a number of treatments, profitable to the medical field, that may sometimes be unnecessary. The problem with finding a "cure for cancer" is that there are so many types and how they are contracted. We may find the cure for the common cold before then.

I'm digging in because I've seen the "its not profitable to cure cancer" statement many times on here, but no one has ever offered anything that could be considered a hint of proof. Companies make meds to make money, yes some goes to profit but the lion's share goes back into research and to cover the costs of the lines of lawyers waiting to sue. .While there are some bad actors like that guy a year or two ago, but he was certainly the exception. Most I feel are like the one med developer I knew, hard working and dedicated to making lives better. I think for the most part you have to be there for the calling to be able to put up with the shit that gets thrown at them from all sides.

I'm thinking it's not the researchers that strangle advancement, but rather, the bean counters and executives that feel that King Gillette's marketing plan is better for their business than an actual cure. Create something that causes repeat business. Gillette did it with disposable razor blades. I have an artificial heart valve so rely on using blood thinners and blood tests on a regular basis. If I didn't have medicare, the generic form of my blood thinners, Coumadin, would cost about $40 for a 30 day supply, based on the one time I had to pay full price for it. Another thing that researchers have to worry about is the fact that their funding can be cut at almost any time. This includes university studies.

I'll always be cynical about any type of business: few have earned my trust.

Can you imagine the fallout if it ever got out to the public that some pharma corp was actually doing this? The vilification of cigarette companies would look like a Rotary Club awards banquet by comparison. I could be wrong obviously, but it seems to me that the risk exceeds the reward by quite a bit.

This is where my brain goes whenever people start talking conspiracies, whether it's Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassination, Roswell, 9/11, whatever. The most important ingredient in any conspiracy, is silence. The more people who know all the secret(s), the exponentially harder they are to keep. The bigger and more convoluted the conspiracy theory is, the less likely it's real.

One reason why it didn't go national, according to a project leader I worked under, was that the target market, housewives, didn't want to deal with their friends seeing them before they did up their hair and make-up in the morning. (this was the 60s, when homemakers could still be seen strolling through the grocery stores in house dresses and curlers. The real target market was the upscale women, or the upper 10%. For some reason, the business applications of the program seemed to be ignored. Still, by the time it was released in 1990, shortly after I joined the company, it wasn't a very good system. Part of that was the tech used in the phone, the other part was due to the infrastructure of the communications network. If you get a chance, there was a book by one of their former executives, called The Yellow Pages, that pointed out a lot of the company's less than sterling actions.

There are too many reasons put out that point to businesses not being trustworthy and holding the status quo. Innovations are slow in coming. I even stated though, that a "cure" for cancer would be difficult because there are so many cancers. But take the current look at medical marijuana. For decades, drug companies have fought it's legalization because they had other wonder drugs that cost a lot more. It's only in the last few decades that it's gained some headway as a method to treat glaucoma, epilepsy, Parkenson's, as well as counter the effects of chemo. One chemist that I corresponded with on another forum, that had worked for the drug companies said that they can make synthetic THC that was legal, so natural THC isn't needed. Huh? One of our club members had it prescribed to him because he was going through chemo, said outright the difference between the the synthetic THC and pot was like comparing Margarine to Butter. It ain't the same.

So, yes, the drug companies have not earned my trust.

I would normally agree, but take a look at what corporate America has done to earn trust in the last 40 years: Not much.

As you point to the tobacco industry and their lack of ethics, let us also look to other industries.

In finance, banks have gotten away with crippling the economy. Over the last decade, they've been fined over $3 Billion, and very few of the execs have been imprisoned for that. Wells-Fargo was just fined a billion for charging people for insurance they did not request or authorize. They just got in trouble again for closing fraud victims accounts without investigating the fraud.

Ralph Nader wrote a book called Unsafe At Any Speed about US automakers and their knowledge of producing unsafe vehicles. It caused the Corvair production to cease. about a decade or so later, it showed that Ford ignored the book producing the Pinto. It came out in court that they also knew about the gas tank flaw, running a risk benefit analysis, determining that the to upgrade the car would cost $11/unit. Total cost to let the unsafe gas tank stay as it was would cost Ford nearly $50 million, while upgrading to the safer design, would cost the company $137 million. In the first case against Ford, besides damages awarded to the families that was over $3 million, an additional $125 million in punitive damages was awarded. That was later reduced to $3.5 million, without Ford being responsible to fix the problem. It went on like that for a few more years, until three local teens got rear-ended. Suddenly, Ford decided that they needed to retrofit the gas tanks. The bad publicity cost them too many sales (something the risk benefit analysis seemed to miss)

Keeping innovations from the market? Let's look to Ma Bell about that. Have you ever used 3-way calling? it was a "new" feature offered in the late 80's/early 90's to their subscribers. It had been around since WWII, but only available to company execs and their families. Not something well known outside of the company. Before my time, but there were enough folks still around that used it when I went to work for AT&T.

While the video phone was far from secret, AT&T held off on it for 3 decades after it's initial launch. By the time they did the wide spread release in 1990, the internet was already looming in the background to steal it's thunder. It was test marketed in DC, New York, and Chicago after it's public debut at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

I still say the lawyers and regulation are more responsible than corporate greed. Googling coumadin lawyers gave way too many results.

“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer."

"If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

C.S Lewis

C.S. Lewis is the best!

Awesome quote!

Same administration

Oh, there are no poor people in the US?

Compared to Africa, China, uses, n Korea, etc? No we don’t. Many poor people in the us are able to climb out in their lives. You can often exchange “poor” for “young”. Those who can’t are often addicts or mentally ill in some way.

Also, to be poor in a capitalist country, esp the United States puts you in the top 1% of the world. You are rich simply by being born here. In most of the world, having a car, tv, iPhone, and plenty of food makes you Uber rich.

We don’t need to work on how to fix poverty in other countries- we already know how. It’s called capitalism. But those countries need to want it too.

All those countries you mentioned with worse poverty than the US are not socialist. Social democracies give their citizens a better quality of life than the US, and poverty is not as crushing.

China, for instance, practices "State Capitalism".

I notice you did not give a single fact to back up your claims.

I stated facts that refuted your claims.
"We know how to fix poverty. It's called capitalism." is not a fact; it's propaganda.

Horse hockey. All you did was say I was wrong. You claim that none of those countries are socialist because you want to split hairs between socialism, social democracies, democratic socialism, autocratic socialism, pink socialism, butterfly socialism, etc.

I have news for you. It's all the same thing in a different wrapper. And don't talk to me defending China. They finally realized that communism/socialism doesn't frigging work and opened up their economy. They are still committing genocide, killing people who disagree, making warlike moves against their neighbors....

Social democracies are just remnants of failed socialism. They do not provide a better standard of living. Socialists just claim they do.

Who ever said transgenderism is progress in the field of medicine? Why are destitutions and cancer in the same argument?

Anti-progressive philosophy seems to me to be defined by its opposition. It expresses concern towards any non-standard gender/sexuality stuff, multiculturalism, or basically anything that could be described as liberal things. It jumps from topic to topic mid-sentence because the narrative comes back to blaming leftist philosophy for the many problems we face in society today, rather than specific solutions for specific problems. It also uses fear a lot, promising the end of everything if "things keep going as they are..". Anti-progressives accuse "leftists" of making the types of logical leaps that they seem to frequently make, themselves. They can define their perceived enemy, and society's ills, and try to connect them. They cannot make effective single arguments that stay on the same train of thought from start to finish. Some of the problems they discuss are real problems that should be discussed, unabashed, but the anti-progressive movement online is a confusing fear machine that appears to be populated with young males that are frustrated with one thing or another and older males that are frustrated with one thing or another.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I see that sort of thing on this site all of the time, sadly...

Exceedingly well put.

I just upvoted a bunch of your stuff, you're over 1000 and can meme comment now.

Regardless of whatever you feel about transgenderism, they have a 41% attempted suicide rate, which is far higher than the general population, even in the worst parts of the world.

It shows that it's clearly a mental illness. Transgender people in the West have an attempted suicide rate far higher than the general population, even in the absolute worst parts of the world, as well as any other demographic group in the West, many of which are objectively more disadvantaged (e.g. disabled people). Transgender people have it ASTRONOMICALLY better in the West than people in, say, North Korea or Somalia, and to try to argue otherwise is asinine. Yet, we see a suicide rate that is sky high in a group of people whom the media glamorizes all the time (with all their TV shows and magazines, etc.).

My point is that this suicide rate is not reduced by sex reassignment surgery, therefore, I believe genetic engineering (with the highly promising technology of CRISPR/Cas9) would be the much better treatment.

The suicide rate for transgenders does not fit that of other persecuted groups. I would argue that black Americans were persecuted at far greater levels during the civil rights movement than transgender people are today, and yet the suicide rate for transgender people is far higher than the rate for black Americans was.

I understand that correlation and causation are different, but I still think that comparing the rates of transgender people with those of persecuted people and those of mentally ill people can still give useful (if incomplete) information.

I don't know what all the factors are. The point I was trying to make was that we can't draw the simplistic line of "suicide because persecution". I agree with you that transgender people are definitely misunderstood in general. My opinion is that they are both persecuted and mentally ill, and need and deserve our sympathy and support (and I could be wrong, but I think they might be happier if they learned to accept their natural physical body, instead of reject it)

I don't know honestly, which is why I think that proper therapy and a kind of gentleness are needed in helping people who suffer from dysphoria. I think that at least is something we can agree on.
I think the real point of the disagreement in this matter can be summed up in a simple question: is their body wrong, or is their mind wrong? Changing the body has not proven successful, so I think changing the mind might be a better way of solving dysphoria. (this is not to say I think it would be easy or simple, but it might be more effective than changing the body). I've heard some people theorize giving hormone supplements to match the person's biological gender, but I don't know enough about that to know if it would work or not.

For most, it has not (the suicide rate post-surgery is not much different)

I would probably guess that the vast majority of trans people are much happier shortly following the surgery, but long-term, the statistics show that the suicide rate for those who get surgery is not better by any significant margin (a few percent or part of a percent lower, if I'm not mistaken). This worries me deeply, and I think is a good reason to change tactics

Octavia, the fact that not even the world's hellholes, nor any other group of people who've faced objectively far worse persecution, discrimination, disadvantage, or debilitation, exhibit a suicide rate as high as transgender people in the West suggests that there is a very real mental illness going on, probably directly linked to the neurological cause of why people develop gender dysphoria to begin with.

8% of transgender people are on the autistic spectrum. (Just Google "transgender and autism") That may not seem like much, but that's 7 times higher than the general population. As Young_Grasshopper stated, the sky high suicide rate exhibited by transgender people cannot be explained by persecution/discrimination alone.

I believe that using genetic engineering to cure their dysphoria would be the much better treatment than irreversible surgery to create artificial genitalia which look and function nothing like their real counterparts and rendering them permanently infertile.