• Pearl@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 days ago

    What happens when we can solve the cancer problem? Asbestos going back into everything again?

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 days ago

      Cancer is not the only thing asbestos can cause. There’s even a name for it: asbestosis.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 days ago

      the “cancer problem” wrt asbestos is that when it breaks it forms microscopic airborne needles that travel into your lungs and turn them into scar tissue. i don’t really see a solution to that. it’s like radon; it’s always a risk having it around.

      • logicbomb@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 days ago

        It may be possible to solve in spite of that.

        It’s the old blue whale question. As animals get larger, they have more cells, so they should get more cancer, so an animal as large as a blue whale shouldn’t exist. There is something, or possibly many things, about blue whales and other megafauna that seems to reduce the incidence or mitigate the effects of all cancers.

        I actually think it’s unlikely that we will find some single miracle cure for all cancers, but there are some reasons to think it might be possible.

        • despoticruin@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          8 days ago

          Again, the issue is the scar tissue. Even if it didn’t develop into a cancer it will give you nasty COPD, gas exchange doesn’t happen with scarred lung tissue. Look at silicosis, potters lung, popcorn lung, and the plethora of other occupational diseases that are caused by particulate matter damaging lung tissue for examples of what asbestos would do without the cancer

          • logicbomb@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            8 days ago

            Again,

            You say “again”, but you’re arguing something different from the other person.

            They were saying that the scar tissue will forever be a cancer risk, and that is the thing that I was discussing, how it is possible that it may not matter what the source of cancer is.

            You are saying that the scar tissue is bad enough by itself.

            It’s just a completely different topic.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          8 days ago

          Doesn’t they have several cancer supressing p53 genes? That was a theory a while ago IIRC and I guess their immune system is better at detecting and eating cancer.

          Sharks does like not have cancer at all too which is interesting.