What if there was a cure for cancer?

Friday, July 24, 2009

By cure, I mean an herb or medicine that attacks only the cancer and causes no ill side effects.

What would happen?
1. Entire wings of hospitals would have to be put to different uses. Oncologists would have to learn a different specialty.
2. The American Cancer Society, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Cancer Association, the state-based cancer associations, and the International Kidney Cancer Association, among others, would fizzle out.
3. Everything pink would need a new color...there'd be no need for all of the money-raising campaigns for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
4. Fewer hospice patients because there would be none on their death-bed from terminal cancer.
5. The life expectancy age would probably increase since chances of cancer typical increase with age. So maybe curing cancer wouldn't produce less hospice patients, just older ones who die from some other ailment.
6. Insurance companies couldn't raise premiums on people who have had cancer in the past.
7. Smoking cigarettes wouldn't be quite such a big deal since lung cancer wouldn't scare anyone. (though there'd still be heart disease)
8 Companies could start using any number of chemicals and compenents labled as "carcinogenic" because they would no longer be deadly...they'd just cause an inconvenience. Sure, people could still sue because they got sick, but the amount of money the person could get would most likely be less than it would be today.
9. The health industry (namely pharmacuetical companies, but doctors as well) would make less money off of cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation are much more expensive than an herb or medicine. According to a 2007 article from USA Today, roughly 1 in every 26 people in America have or have had cancer. In 2005, that meant 11.7 million people. By 2020, it's estimated that 1 in 19 people will have cancer at some point. Those kind of numbers equal a very lucrative business for the ones selling the treatment.

Can you think of other ways that things would change?

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