• Question: Do you think one day, we'll be able to cure all dease. Or do you think that dease will keep adapting and we'll never be able to beat it completely?

    Asked by foggydave to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 19 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by pratyushjain, joelelezaj123, samuelorl247.
    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      organisms that cause disease, such as bacteria and viruses, have an amazing ability to evolve and adapt rapidly to suit their needs. A good example of this is antibiotic resistance- it seems that whatever we throw at them, they will always come up with news ways of resisting our attempts to get rid of them, particularly if we do not use antibiotics properly- this is often the case.
      In the case of something like cancer, I hope that we will eventually be able to learn enough about it to cure it

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      I think it will keep adapting – viruses especially can change incredibly fast. Some viruses evolve 100000 times faster than we do! This means whatever treatment we come up with, they might be able to find a way around it.

      I think we will live longer and longer though as we find more ways to prevent or treat disease.

    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Yes and no. I think in time almost all infectious disease will be brought under control. Indeed 95% of them already are (diptheria anyone?).
      However non-infectious disease (cancer, heart failure, diabetes) will be much harder to eliminate.

    • Photo: Ruth Mitchell

      Ruth Mitchell answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      I think that there will always be things we won’t understand. Curing disease is not really about disease adapting but about how much we understand about that disease.
      Viruses and bacteria evolve very rapidly and so in the future we will probably be able to come up with treatments rapidly.
      Diseases not caused by infectious organisms like autoimmunity and heart failure – in the future we will understand more about this diseases so be able to treat them better.

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Difficult! Disease is something going wrong with our body…there’s a million ways that there could happen, so how do you beat that? It’s like trying to fix a leaking dam – you can patch up ten holes, but new cracks will keep appearing!

      Even if, somehow, we managed to find a method to permanently fix our cells in a healthy state – if it got damaged, or infected, it would repair itself quickly and perfectly – something would definitely go wrong with that method itself, and we’d have a whole NEW set of diseases to deal with!

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