It is illuminating to think back to the 1920’s when very many were still dying from the effects of bacterial infections – tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhoea, blood poisoning.
If you had told people back then that these diseases would be virtually wiped out within a decade, you would have been greeted with ridicule. But, penicillin was discovered – and they were wiped out.
James Watson is one of the giants of 20th century biology. Along with Francis Crick, he predicted accurately the structure of DNA to be a double helix.
Well, Watson is still active in research at the age of 83. His interesting prediction is that the back of most cancers will be broken within 5 to 10 years.
There is still a lot of fear around cancer. But just think that most cancers could, according to Watson, be curable by 2022.
The thing is, there are pathways through which cancer is able to multiply itself indefinitely – at least, it can now. But once these are found, then blocking these pathways will clobber any cancer easily.
Today, it’s hard to accept that. But it was equally hard for people in the 1920’s to imagine the effects of penicillin on bugs which had been killing a large proportion of the population for generations.
Hard as it is to accept, cancer is now on the run.
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