I'm so sorry for the loss of your wife and of your mother. I can't imagine the pain from that. I have yet to be married but being a good husband and father are my two biggest life dreams over anything else.

I followed a similar path starting distributed computing in the late 1990s. I think 1997 I started distributed.net RC5-64 project instead of SETI, since I was biased against the search for non-human intelligence then (I'm of the complete opposite belief now, believing they do exist), then moving to United Devices then finally into IBM WCG as well as Stanford (now Wash U) Folding@home.

Scientific research is abysmally slow and methodical. It takes decades to secure funding for an idea, investigate the idea, gather good data, peer review, publish, have peers replicate findings, and rinse and repeat.

I'm excited for immunotherapy and harnessing our body's secondary immune system to train against cancer cells (once recognized). I'm excited for traditional new cancer drugs despite my anger towards the mega-corporatization of American health care industry and its greed. (I'm in a multi-year struggle right now with zero access to the health care I need just to get better and back to work again. I'm American and had to leave work for health reasons and have seen first-hand the struggle and bureaucracy and lack of safety net, especially for adults. And the lack of price transparency which leads to healthy market competition for lower price. I fantasize about running for Lt. Governor and then Governor to fix health care, but I resent office politics so would resent going into a field where that is literally what it's about.)

I'm excited about the explosion in Artificial Intelligence, including Machine Learning. I briefly majored in biomedical engineering at my first school and focused on imaging/computing and scratched the surface into things like MRI (but only barely). Even now, computers and AI/ML are being trained on thousands/millions of medical images and taught to recognize what is normal vs. abnormal and is giving human radiologists a run for their money, being faster and better than humans in some cases. This will only get more accurate and more trustworthy. I recently read that computers are finding tiny patterns in mammograms that lead to breast cancer in 5 years that a human radiologist would NOT be able to notice, and this alone can save so many lives.

I'm also excited about AI/ML's approach to drug discovery as well as protein folding. We've been doing both of these things with distributed computing projects for 20+ years now, including many such projects on the World Community Grid and other projects like Folding@home, Rosetta@home, Find-a-drug, etc. This is exciting and can shave off literal decades of just us volunteers burning electricity and doing it the traditional way. This is a good thing to be replaced!

We're human and operate on a linear human perception of time. We are lucky to live to our 70s or 80s or more, since bad things happen and humans are not promised tomorrow despite making plans for tomorrow and next week and next month. Major scientific breakthroughs absolutely happen, but they occur only several times per decade so it barely registers on our radar. That's why many of us lose hope that cures for cancer and other diseases will ever occur -- because they take decades to emerge. I think AI/ML and other technologies should exponentially increase this in the next 1-2 decades to the point where we may see more exciting breakthroughs at a faster rate than we are used to as humans. I'm not losing hope.

These in silico simulations are useful, but I think the pessimistic reality is they have very low chance of major breakthroughs in the short-term. Take our beloved Mapping Cancer Markers and Smash Childhood Cancer projects. Very, very cool stuff, but the data takes 10 years before it's even analyzed and published -- we're still getting news articles on preliminary lung cancer data. Humans are limited and slow. (And heck, even with traditional projects, maybe AI/ML can help speed up analysis to find trends and new things.)

As someone in my backup career of IT (until I pay off student loan debt, get married, etc.) but always wanting to finish what I started 20 years ago in biomedical engineering, I fantasize (maybe a delusion of grandeur? ha!) of going into some fancy biotech research with one of my stupid silly ideas and finding a breakthrough for cancer and other diseases. Maybe inject people with a swarm of nanobots that are programmed to seek and destroy tumors or seek out plaques in coronary arteries (heart), carotid arteries (neck), or cerebral arteries (brain) and clean them out, preventing deaths from heart disease and strokes. I don't see a limit to silly ideas, and maybe some of them show promise.

I know doctors scoff at the idea of getting a full body scan as a preventive measure because of expense and false positives, but I'm not willing to discard the idea. I think as MRI become better, higher resolution, faster, cheaper, and everywhere, we'll be able to more affordably get a yearly full body MRI to look for early cancers. And with early detection there is higher chance of full cure, especially before the cancer metastasizes.

I'm appalled to learn of how the American (and Western, although Europe is ahead of us) food supply has become so corrupt with corporate greed over the past 30-50 years such that we have horrifically processed foods with less whole foods, less nutritional value and more filler, and it's leading to more cancers, obesity, diabetes and other metabolic diseases, and shorter lifespans. We have PFAS and other forever chemicals that are in ALL our bodies, our brains, our heart tissue, our ovaries and testes (contributing to issues with fertility), etc. We are poisoning ourselves, and I hope to God we can undo all this damned corporate greed and "food" and return to a more nutritious food supply. And healthier water supply free of microplastics and PFAS and forever chemicals. And cooking supplies free of that too (I'm throwing out all my non-stick cookware and replacing with stainless steel and cast iron. I follow Dr. Yvonne Burkart on YouTube who is a toxicologist and talks at length about this stuff.)

Cancer is a winning war. Heart disease is a winning war. It's just at our current slow rate of discovery and breakthroughs, we may succumb to cancer, heart disease, etc. before cures can occur and be implemented and available. I hope AI/ML can exponentially accelerate this, and I hope the trend will continue over the next 10 years. I can't even imagine 20 years how good things will be at this explosive rate. I fantasize about getting access to the neurologists/sleep medicine/physical therapy I need and becoming healthy enough again to work again and live out my dreams, so maybe I can be a silly scientist-engineer who finds something really cool. I don't know.

In the meantime, I'll continue to dabble with World Community Grid and other projects, running computers and burning electricity to heat my home, but I won't get my hopes up with these projects coming out with cures within 20 years, but I do think they are still valuable.

Don't lose hope.


------------------------------------

Edited to Add: I forgot to mention my father is fighting a losing battle with esophageal cancer as we speak. The initial tumor was in the gastro-esophageal area (right before food enters the stomach) and had spread to the mesenteric area behind his stomach and was inoperable. Radiation (which he hated most) and chemo shrunk tumors, but they discontinued chemo and he's only on immunotherapy. He won't give me details and lies a lot (but I think he also is a malignant narcissist and that explains a lifetime of violence and abuse and rage from him...but I digress) My dad is 81 and has been hospitalized the past week. Need to call him in a few minutes and hope he answers.

It's unlikely he'll live much longer. I'm planning a road-trip to see him despite my poor health and falling asleep behind the wheel and sleep/breathing disorder. I'm trying my best. I think his cancer was a result of decades of him being an alcoholic, and it just takes decades to form.

I lost my step-brother a couple years ago (he was about 45) to the exact same adenocarcinoma of the esophagus, likely from abusing alcohol too. He passed away despite completely clearing the cancer with chemo and radiation and immunotherapy. He celebrated, stopped chemo so he could travel Europe with his wife, and drank a little bit more. The cancer came back quickly and strongly and he succumbed. My dad is 81 and his oncology team stopped the chemo for God knows what reason, so he isn't even clearing the initial tumors. I lost my maternal grandfather to prostate cancer in his 80s. My paternal aunt has battled lung cancer for 20 years but I believe has cleared it, but she was a heavy smoker.

I have to watch for lung cancers in myself (I've never smoked) because I lived in an apartment where the radon levels were in the 30s

US EPA website:

So I lived for over 4 years in a townhouse where I measured the basement level at like 31 pCi/L when the action level is 2-4 and especially 4. My doctor then told me that cancer can take 20+ years to develop, so... welp. I also never got a refund of my deposit from my landlord, and he never responded when I moved out. There was also a natural gas leak (with red warning tag) prior to me moving in. They never replied to any of that when I wrote a detailed letter with pictures. I think (in hindsight) that the silence is from his lawyers advising him to shush because I may sue? I didn't know I could sue but I lived with that for years.

Anyway.

Don't lose hope. The cures will come, and they will come slightly faster. The question is whether they will come fast enough to help us and our nearest loved ones and people we care about. Because for many of our loved ones, it's already too late and there's nothing we can do to bring them back or prevent their deaths if they are currently suffering.

i agree with that ! Destruction of nature ,air and water pollution, industrial agriculture and junk food. the whole add multiple combined causes of cancers.
The struggle is on all fronts of life.
Lets crunch to give some hope to the childre.... if any