Talk:Cure

Tasks

• Some examples of cures would be nice.
• The politics of cures - is "the establishment" focused on finding cures or ongoing treatments?
• The role of the CDC in finding cures
• Elaborate on the difference between a treatment and a cure
• Where cures are reported - that is, where is the effectiveness of treatments reported? How do you know a cure is a cure?

The Transhumanist 21:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying. Let's see how to do this...--Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 21:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that all of these questions are very pointful. Consider:

• Is an "ongoing treatment" that costs US$5 a year for fifty years somehow worse than a $1,000,000 "permanent cure" from the patient's perspective? Is it somehow better from the drug manufacturer's perspective? Do you really think that a permanent cure for various cancers and AIDS couldn't make an enormous amount of money for its inventor, much more than the inventor could make for another me-too ongoing treatment? Could any rational person believe the conspiracy theories that say every single pharma company on the planet will reliably hush up any therapeutic that could simultaneously make them enormously wealthy and destroy their competitors?
• Is an ongoing treatment with relatively few side effects necessarily worse than a permanent cure that kills 10% of the people treated and leaves the rest at risk from fatal complications and neurological damage? (That's reality in bone marrow transplants for some kinds of chronic leukemia.) Perhaps a more interesting question is this: Why are the people who most loudly denounce "the establishment" for providing non-curative life-extending treatments those HIV+ people in developed countries who are mad because "the establishment" has "only" tripled their post-infection lifespan -- so far? Just how inflated does your sense of entitlement have to have to think that "the establishment" owes you a permanent cure -- right this minute -- just because you happen to want it? In a less grumpy line of inquiry, who says that research into treatments isn't also research into cures? A lot of "disease management" treatments began with the hope that they would prove curative. AZT is just one example of a "treatment" that was once hoped to be a permanent virus-eradicating cure.
• The CDC is probably the wrong agency. The NIH and its grantees do most of the relevant research work in the US. Additionally, there's a whole world outside of the US; the US does not have a monopoly on medical research.
• Cures are reported in multiple places, but a sensible person would look for a report in a reasonably high-impact medical journal in the specific specialty several-to-many years after the introduction of a given treatment. I doubt, however, that we could find a published reliable source that tells you to read the medical literature to find out medical information. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we could probably find a reliable source that tells you not to trust websites run by Mexican cancer clinics, or to believe everything that a stranger sends to you in e-mail.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• Quoting this item "Could any rational person believe the conspiracy theories that say every single pharma company on the planet will reliably hush up any therapeutic that could simultaneously make them enormously wealthy and destroy their competitors?"

The problem from this conspiracy as most state is the accusation that if a company had a cure for large diseases such as cancer and heart disease, would they withhold it? The theory is that they would withhold the cure since they make vast amounts of money from treating these diseases. The theory is that if they cured it, they would not profit as much from it in the short term. This makes logical sense; someone taking medicines that would cure a disease in a short period of time versus someone taking medicine for the rest of their life. In the end, the theory is all about the profits they make. There is no doubt that there would be those who would, in the name of profit, prevent the release of a cure in order to keep their profits flowing. In the end, there isn't a current way to prove nor disprove this theory, because history clearly shows that lots of evil things have been done in the name of profits. Just something to think about. And with this, I leave this quote: "the love of money is the root of all evil" Radix malorum est cupiditas. Cringer (talk) 08:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

What links here

At the moment, there are six or eight redirects that point to this article, in default of a proper article of their own. I've tried to provide one bold-faced "clue" to anyone that happens to have searched for one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering if there is a place for a page on remission from cancer - the information on this page is quite vague and not always accurate. For example this definition could be a good place to start: 'If a cancer is in remission, there is no sign of it in examinations or tests. The word 'remission' is often used instead of 'cure' because doctors usually cannot be absolutely sure that all cancer cells are gone and the disease will not return. Generally, the longer the remission, the less likely it is that the cancer will come back.' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peachnellba (talk • contribs) 12:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

disease free survival

Disease free survival is a common end-point in clinical trials - it is a very important concept in oncology and should have its own page - not redirected to "cure".

I agree. The challenge is finding the time to create that page. I'd be happy to help, if you'd like to collaborate. JoeSperrazza (talk) 14:53, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Started as a good article

Quite good explanations of cure and similar concepts and then WHAM, there is an unintelligible section labelled 'Statistical Model' complete with obligatory Wikipedia formula which no-one will understand except those who already know and don't need that section anyway.

One day contributors will realise that if an article needs a formula (unlikely) then it is useless for a general audience. If I had the nerve I would delete that section

Cannonmc (talk) 02:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Author

Hello. My name is Tracy Kolenchuk, author of The Elements of Cure. I have studied the word cure diligently over the past three years and have many references. I can see that the content here is quite weak, and often simply incorrect.

I am not a Wikipedia editor and not certain of how to go about making changes to content. However, I am able to offer, to start, a clear and complete definition of cure which includes both NOUN, VERB, and modifier (adverb and adjective) uses of the word cure. It also covers cures, curing, and cured. This material is copyrighted from the book, but I would be happy to see it used to clarify the Wikipedia entry.

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Cure (verb): to bring about the end of an illness. cure: a process that brings about the end of an illness. cures: performs the act of curing an illness. curing: removing or ending an illness. cured: The past tense of the verb cure. Examples: • The patient wants to cure their scurvy. • The psychologist cures mental diseases. • A healthy diet is credited with curing the scurvy. • The dietary change cured the patient’s scurvy.

Cure (noun): cure: an action that brings about the end of an illness. cures: the plural of cure. curing: the act of ending an illness. cured: those patients who found cures for their illnesses. Examples: • The cure for scurvy is a change to the patient’s diet. • Scurvy’s cures are many, depending on the cause of the illness. • The curing of a patient’s scurvy took many days. • The cured returned to their homes.

Cure (adverb or adjective): cure: a defining a process or action that cures. cured: the state of having been cured.

Example: • The cure process was long and involved • The cured patients danced and sang.

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I also see a note suggesting the need for examples. There are two clear medical examples of cure and both are documented in Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Treatment for specific cases. Many infectious illnesses are cured when the infecting agent is killed by an anti-infection medicine. Some infectious illnesses can only be cured by surgery which removes the infecting agent.

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NOTE:

Illnesses are cured. An illness is what the patient has. A case of disease (but not a disease) might be cured. However,a disease requires a diagnosis, and a diagnosis is not requried for a cure.

Tracychess (talk) 00:03, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

"Cures"

There is a move discussion at Talk:Cures#Requested move 7 February 2020 proposing that there is no primary topic for the plural which is currently about a place in Italy. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:24, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

"there is no cure for AIDS"

yet "HIV became curable (through a very dangerous procedure) when a bone marrow transplant (using a donor with a rare variant of a cell surface receptor) was performed on Timothy Ray Brown..." Drsruli (talk) 11:36, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Case studies do not prove anything, frankly. The above paragraph has to be removed. — kashmīrī ^TALK 13:59, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

That's a shame. Drsruli (talk) 22:24, 2 August 2020 (UTC)