The scientific method of Curing Cancer?
The normal way these things work is that we give a scientist or researcher some money and resources and let them loose to find out what they can. The problem with this is that the aims of the majority of scientists does not always match the expectations of the people who supply the money and resources.
Most scientists survive from grant to grant. They are always looking for the next batch of money they can get to put food on their families table. They get paid from the grant normally, so it is in their interests to keep getting grants. Second to that is their requirement to produce scientific papers that get published in peer-reviewed journals. The reason they do that is to get noticed and get more grant awards. It really is a vicious circle where the majority of the scientist or researchers time is spent filling out grant applications or writing scientific papers. When they run out of money, normally because of the wasted time pursuing more money, then the project just stops. Any information discovered up to that time remains the property of or in the control of the scientist because they can use it as a basis for the next grant application.
Is it really any wonder that in the last 60 years and with hundreds of billions of dollars spent (wasted), the World is no closer to finding a cure for cancer?
While most drugs produced in the laboratory and patented by the Pharmaceutical companies were originally from plants, no one is looking for a natural cure because Big Pharma cannot get a patent and thereby gouge the consumer.
Did you know that most drug inventions come out of University laboratories where they are funded by the taxpayer? When these inventions look as though they might be useful, Big Pharma gets a license from the University (unless the University sets up its own manufacturing plant or company) and takes all the profit. This is your tax dollar at work!
When describing the light bulb to reporters Thomas Edison in the 1930’s said “I know one way to make a light bulb, and 10,000 ways how not to make one”. He also went on to say that there were no discoveries, but inventions that came from experimental deductions.
Imagine how quickly we can quickly run through the options if we had 10,000 participants who were testing 50 different things at the same time. Having 200 people testing a specific substance or herb or combination of these at the same time would enable a statistical analysis to be done to determine if that particular recipe was worth pursuing or not.
Present clinical studies require hand selected participants (normally no more than 20) who are split into 2 groups – one get a placebo (a useless piece of stuff), and the other gets the substance being tested. Then the results are compared and the better one is refined and moves ahead. If the results are the same, then the research is terminated and something else dreamed up, and the whole sorry exercise repeated. Is it no wonder that nothing happens?
Most scientists and researchers do not experiment much any more. They spend their time in front of computers developing a “model” for the experiment. So the trained scientist now becomes a typist, data entry person, spreadsheet analyst, computer software developer, and paper shuffler. We need to get back to the point where they are in the lab all day, every day, writing their experiments and results in hard covered record books. I suspect they would achieve more by using their hands and minds on doing physical experimentation rather than relying on computers to tell them if something was going to work or not.
Computers seem to be regarded as infallible, and yet they are more like “idiot savants” – they do what you tell them in a literal manner. If the software engineer who wrote and developed the computer program makes one tiny error in their coding, then the results are nonsense. Look at how often our home computers freeze up, go blank screen and need restarting. If all the experimental material is developed and stored in computer systems then we cannot be sure that any displayed results are accurate.
The empirical (experimental) method is the only one that has any part of our reality. It comes down to the fact that whatever we come up with to solve the Cancer problem must work in the real world and not just in laboratories or closely controlled clinical studies.
The solution can be found, but it can only be done if we use a massive amount of resources to do it.
Throwing money at the problem over the last sixty years has not proved to be the solution, all that has spawned is an industry whose interest is NOT solving the cancer problem, but maintaining the cash flow into their bank accounts.
Massive experimentation out in the real world using what we already know is likely to produce faster and more beneficial results than all the lab experiments and clinical studies put together.
It is time for a new scientific method to be implemented.