Read a piece in Time about new cancer treatments being developed to hopefully make it possible to stop depending on chemotherapy.
The new research could provide "gentler ways of targeting cancer that could require nothing more than popping pills, and with fewer side effects."
The article also says "Cancer cells, like bacteria and viruses, can mutate to resist the targeted drugs, so it may take a cocktail of drugs to address this defense, as happened with HIV/AIDS."
When I was reading Mortality by Christopher Hitchens, it took in all the pain involved in fighting back against cancer, including the psychological pain.
He would read about new treatments or be told about them, and become hopeful. He would then contact appropriate physicians to discuss the potential. Almost invariably he would be told the research was not far enough along, or that his particular type of cancer did not qualify him for treatments that were being tested.
Some new treatments were tried but failed.
He made the comment that he was well aware that research was going on that just might beat cancer or at least increase the cure rate, and that it would probably not happen soon enough for him.
It did not.
This disease is hideous.
And it can mutate to resist targeted drugs.
Human beings are so fragile in an infinite variety of ways, excluding the threat of disease.
Hideous diseases exponentially complicate the equation.
The blueprint of life is unfathomable.
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