why medical research is so important
Cancer
Cancer is one of the most widespread diseases there is and as a result one that gets a great deal of research funding. Because of this there are many different research projects into cancer that are currently going on. There is some debate about how effective this research has been but it is pretty clear that people are surviving longer than they used to with cancer.
At the most basic level research into cancer puts a lot of effort into determining what causes cancer. Work in this field has been slow for a variety of reasons. Part of the problem is that there are several different types of cancer which may have different causes. In all likelihood there are several different causes of cancer which can make things confusing. However work in this area needs to continue since understanding what causes cancer is critical to being able to prevent it in the future.
There are two different methods that are used to determine what causes cancer and who is likely to get it. The first is at the biochemical level, researchers are trying to determine the actual mechanism by which cancer forms. If they are able to do this it may be possible to develop a vaccine that makes people immune to the disease. The other approach that is used the epidemiological approach in which statistics are collected about who gets cancer and then trying to draw connections between those with the disease to look for any common factors. This is largely where most of our beliefs about the causes of cancer come from.
Of course preventing cancer is a long term solution to the problem, there is also a pressing need for research into how to cure the disease. Over the years many different treatments have been developed with varying degrees of success. The research involves developing new medications or treatments that may be able to cure or at least control the disease. This involves everything from basic research on how cancer develops up through clinical trials to determine just how effective the treatment may be. Most of the research on cancer that is currently being done is in the area of curing the disease.
One thing that researchers have determined is that the earlier that cancer is detected the better the chances of treating it. Therefore a great deal of effort has gone into coming up with ways to diagnose cancer earlier. In this respect the research has been very effective with cancer now being indentified at a much earlier stage. This is a major factor in why more and more people are surviving with cancer than ever before. Of course there are those who will point out that the increased survival times are nothing more than the fact that people find out they have cancer earlier. However there is clear evidence that people are in fact surviving longer than they used to with cancer.
