Reference no: EM132797135

In January 2016 President Obama announced a $1 billion "moonshot" to cure cancer, putting Vice President Joe Biden - whose son Beau died of brain cancer last year - in charge of "mission control." Biden believes a major breakthrough is possible. "We're not looking at incremental change," the vice president said. "What we're trying to do is end up with a quantum leap on the path to a cure." This is but the latest in a long history of declarations of a War On Cancer.

The underlying assumption of most approaches contained within the War On Cancer is that we can find one cure for all cancers. Consider just two types of cancer: basal cell carcinoma (a skin cancer described in your textbook) and colon cancer. These are both caused by a combination of what particular alleles of certain genes a person is born with, and mutations that accumulate due to environmental exposure and the process of aging. Some of the genes are shared, and some differ between the diseases. How likely do you think it is that there is a single approach that can either prevent or cure both of these? How likely do you think it is that there is a single approach that can cure or prevent many cancers?