But basically you’re right. If someone were to come up with a cancer treatment that even cured a few dozen cancers reliably and for a long period of time (cancer does tend to come back), rich only begins to describe what they’d get. There’s undoubtedly a Nobel prize in it as well.

In just the last two years we’re starting to see some very promising treatments come out with the use of chemical based gene therapy and genetically engineered T-cells. Basically in the latter case they take T-cells from a person, then genetically alter them to attack cancerous cells very specifically and the putting them back in the body. In some lab trials (we’re talking not even clinical use, just testing to see if it works slightly in the lab) it’s exterminated several cancers that were essentially death sentences. However, given that this has been done in the lab, mostly on mice as little as 1-2 years ago, it’s a long way from being demonstrated safe, or effective to actually use. Let alone inexpensive enough that there’s enough money in the world to do it on more than a thousand people or so.

But the lab data looks awesomely promising. So perhaps in about 5-10 years we’ll start seeing the above being used as an actual treatment.

Besides, conspiracy theories are so blah. Keep in mind that when doing this research it’s not one guy at a company. It’s usually between 2-30 doctors, god knows how many grad students, possibly hundreds of lab techs and support staff. And yet they’re somehow -all- not mentioning this? Find me a grad student who doesn’t like to talk about his research, and I’ll go find el chupacabra.