If you had the opportunity to cure one disease...

[Luxian]

Cancer. We have some pretty neat fixes to other diseases, but the treatment for cancer is incredibly primitive right now. I mean, seriously folks. Who wants to take poison (radiation/chemotherapy/etc) for as long as you can take it hoping the cancer dies before the rest of your tissues. We have a long way to go before we have anything even remotely humane.

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[Lieutenant Dan]

Heart disease has a cure but nobody is educated/willing enough to use it. By the way, if an all-out miracle cure for cancer is developed, it will only be affordable for the wealthy. Even if it's a cheap substance, drug companies won't market it that way.

 

[Luxian]

Heart disease has a cure but nobody is educated/willing enough to use it. By the way, if an all-out miracle cure for cancer is developed, it will only be affordable for the wealthy. Even if it's a cheap substance, drug companies won't market it that way.

You're right, but curing greed is gonna be a lot trickier than curing cancer. Besides, why patent a cure when they could patent a drug treatment which you'll have to take for the rest of your life? Once a customer, always a customer!

 

[45408]

Pesticide treated nets don't eradicate, they just cut down # of infections by half. So, instead, only 150 million-250 million will be infected. A cure is needed.

Nets nothing. Hose the place down with DDT and the rates go down by a whole lot more than half. The World Health Organization actually endorses the use of DDT in malaria prevention because they realized how many deaths could have been prevented if it had never been pulled. You would also think that 130 years after DDT was discovered, we might be able to discover a better alternative, but since it's happening in third world countries, who cares?

In the period from 1934-1955 there were 1.5 million cases of malaria in Sri Lanka, resulting in 80,000 deaths. After the country invested in an extensive anti-mosquito program with DDT, there were only 17 cases reported in 1963. Thereafter the program was halted, and malaria in Sri Lanka rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first quarter of 1969.

Close enough to a cure for me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Overall_effectiveness_of_DDT_against_malaria

 

[Bacchus]

Multiple sclerosis. You'll have to trust my reason is good enough.

 

[BlitzSleep]

For me it's a tie between:

Alzheimer's

and

HIV

 

[ufgrad00]

Alzheimer's and Dementia

 

[Didmybest]

Whatever Hillary Clinton has that keeps her in the race.

lmao, I'm with you

 

[RySerr21]

Good luck convincing a nation of fast-food-lovers (myself included, that stuff is amazing!) to stop eating. Clearly it DOESN'T WORK!!


The reality is that exponentially more people die from preventable diseases (ie heart disease, cancer caused by tobacco) than they do from unpreventable diseases (ie genetic diseases like Huntington's, aneurysms, stomach cancer, etc.).

If you want to save more people, cure a diseases like heart disease or lung cancer. I'd rather be able to eat what I want (especially when I'm older and no longer looking quite as sexy) and not have to worry about heart diseases.

I guess you really can't go wrong either way, it would be nice to prevent aneurysms (randomly dropping dead would suck) or prostate cancer though.

searching for a "cure" for something like heart disease is a complete waste of time and money. we already know how to prevent it and reverse it. just b/c the the american population (including yourself) is unwilling to give up **** food like mcdonalds and jack in the box does not mean we should waste energy trying to find another "cure". the fact that you choose to ignore the dietary guidlines that will keep you heart disease free is your own problem.

that time could be better spent trying to find a cure for something we don't already know the answer to.....

 

[Mayday]

Fibromyalgia. I know that there are a lot of people out there who don't think it exists, but I've seen someone I love that was very active with a great love of life turn into someone who can't walk without pain, can't drive a stick shift because shifting hurts to much, and who as the pain worsened has withdrawn and become extremely depressed.

Currently, the ONLY thing that can be done for these people is to give them pain killers, and there are a lot of doctors out there who do not believe it exists and think that these people are only drug seeking.

 

[TheRealMD]

HIV. Everything else is semi-curable, preventable, or doesn't spread like wildfire. HIV is just that silly beast that won't DIEEEEEEEE.

 

[closer23]

I'd also go for HIV. But I already cured over half the diseases people get in America--> Stop eating junk food

 

[Lokhtar]

I second obesity.

 

[Lawliet2008]

But isn't the reason why there are so many cases because of poor environmental sanitation and lack of public awareness? Just sounds like the cure would be more of a socio-economic one than then a pill of some sort. I'm no an expert on this though...

Yeah, they had the same problem with smallpox. But after a vaccine was found, then the disease was completely eradicated, no matter the socioeconomic conditions of a region. They're working on a malaria vaccine now with limited success. This would be a good one to cure.

 

[Lieutenant Dan]

I second obesity.

Yeah, that one really has researchers stumped. Something about caloric intake, expenditure and laziness. Very complicated disease.

 

[closer23]

Yeah, that one really has researchers stumped. Something about caloric intake, expenditure and laziness. Very complicated disease.

I heard eating has something to do with it.

 

[EpiPEN]

Yeah, they had the same problem with smallpox. But after a vaccine was found, then the disease was completely eradicated, no matter the socioeconomic conditions of a region. They're working on a malaria vaccine now with limited success. This would be a good one to cure.

I remember sitting through a bioengineer talk once with a guy who was working on using mass amounts of genetically modified yeast culture to mass produce meds for treating malaria. I vaguely recall him saying that the cure lies in economics and not the technology.

 

[45408]

HIV. Everything else is semi-curable, preventable, or doesn't spread like wildfire. HIV is just that silly beast that won't DIEEEEEEEE.

Um, HIV is preventable, and it doesn't spread like wildfire either. Sexual contact is pretty preventable. I realize it's causing terrible problems in Africa, but most of that could be resolved in ways other than a magical cure. Other diseases...not so much. I would've picked cancer, but that one was too broad according to the OP. Most other diseases are somewhat preventable or don't affect that large of the population.

 

[45408]

Yeah, they had the same problem with smallpox. But after a vaccine was found, then the disease was completely eradicated, no matter the socioeconomic conditions of a region. They're working on a malaria vaccine now with limited success. This would be a good one to cure.

Biggest difference though is that smallpox has no other reservoir in nature. It's only capable of infecting humans. Throw in a vector, and you make it much more complicated. I'm not sure if a female mosquito can pass it along to her offspring. If she can, then you can say goodbye to the smallpox strategy. For smallpox, they first tried vaccinating the whole world, but that was too much work. Instead, they chased down outbreaks and vaccinated everyone who contacted that person. It worked.

 

[DeadCactus]

Herpes.

It's like HIV, but without the cool ribbon.