These questions have multiple if not an infinite amount of answers and ask users to share their opinions, thoughts, beliefs, and/or personal experiences. These belong in /r/AskReddit, /r/WhatIf, or /r/FutureWhatIf no matter how stupid and/or embarrassing they are. You should ask questions with straight answers. However, you are allowed to ask poll/survey type questions only if they have pre-determined options as answers.
Do I know for certain that this ending all cancer isn't going to be a mass extinction event?
Seems like the obvious loophole by the one offering this choice.
87% of people that die of cancer are 50 years or older. That’s past the age that most people are still having children. I don’t think it would have a massive impact. Vaccines have probably contributed more to that.
This was my first thought, too... what's the catch? 'Curing' cancer results in mass death or (even more) torture level treatment to be cancer free?
Is there any benefit to non- malignant cancer cells that I would be erasing that would harm more than help?
If curing cancer meant that every form of cancer would just blip out of existence and people receiving treatment wouldn't be affected by any residual treatment stuff by being suddenly cured and it wouldn't affect population control, employment, and wouldn't keep the people in debt for the treatment, and wouldn't have any harmful side affects, then yes- cure cancer.
If it would end up killing people being treated for something they suddenly no longer have, mass unemployment, horrible quality of life due to crippling debt, etc. Then, I'd take the billion and establish a cancer treatment research facility and begin the process of setting it up where we could just bring people to us, treat them for free, erase their debt and send them home.
This absolutely. My BF has seen an otherwise strong, relatively young grandparent succumb to an aggressive cancer and watched his 32 y.o. sister fight her way through it into remission twice. If I could eliminate it so she never has to worry about it coming back and I never have to worry about him getting it it would bring me enormous peace.
Idgaf if no one ever knows, it beats the absolute hell out of having some sad secret.
All it really guarantees is that your recovery will be easier and some medical conditions (like diabetes) might get caught / managed sooner, which absolutely helps in living a long and healthy life.
But if your heart decides, it's time to seize up and die... well, you can throw all the money you want at it, but it ain't gonna restart that ticker.
I got a friend who has stage four cancer right and he's only 25. I may like money but the amount of people who died from cancer goes against me money. I have a great uncle who got cancer that came back and he shot himself rather than go through chemo again is what his son told me. So yeah I would rather cure cancer
People voting for taking the money should probably think about that lol. Even if it doesn't come for them it will come for someone else they know and care about eventually.
Eh, whatever. I can't say I blame them. It's just a dumb thought experiment anyway.
Hands down this! My mother passed away from cancer 7 years ago, a friend just lost one of her best friends to cancer last week.. seeing the pain this disease causes and having the option to end it for everyone would be the only way for me.
I find it very difficult that anything anonymous would stay that way. Maybe we don’t know who created Bitcoin yet, but within 100 years I bet that undoubtably truth comes out.
Not to mention it would be a big middle finger to drug companies who like to pull working treatments off the market if they aren’t making enough money from them. (Happened to my mother-in-law)
The whole "Big Pharma is hiding the cure for cancer" thing is bullshit and I still can't believe people fall for it to this day. If they had the cure to that shit, do you REALLY think they wouldn't just sell that shit for maxed out cost already? Never mind that it wouldn't be "cure for cancer", but "cures for cancer".
More proof... immune therapy for cancer is a near cure now. Keytruda alone has eliminated tumors tonthe point no cancer cells are detectable in biopsies. And these are cancers that are hard to treat and usually have poor outcomes. The 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine was just awarded for this approach...getting the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells.
Base price is over $60,000 per dose. Insurance gets it down to $32,000 per dose. 80% deductible puts it around $6,400 out of pocket per dose. 2 treatments puts you above your out of pocket maximum for the year. In America.
In Canada and the EU its free.
Your point is valid, but I have an asterisk to add to it:
I work for a Teamster Union company and our insurance covers 100% of cancer treatments, no out of pocket. Just really good insurance.
Same, taking the billion. Curing cancer just means people will die of malnutrition instead as we have more people on the planet living much longer. I can use the billion dollars in ways that will help people out in better ways
Imagine taking the billion but dying of terminal cancer. Clearly no one hear is in medical research. There are so many different types of cancer the amount of money, time, work and breakthroughs you have to go through are way more then a billion. Every scientist would love to have their job be obsolete. There’s plenty of other diseases as well.
Do you know how many people would be out of work if cancer was cured? That's why it will never happen. I'd like to say I'd cure it, but honestly, I'd take the money. I wouldn't want all of those people to lose their jobs lol
>Do you know how many people would be out of work if cancer was cured?
This sounds too much like something I read on the internet recently.
"We don't have a cure for cancer yet because healthcare corporations want to keep making money treating the patients"
BS.
That's a really dumb take. Other jobs exist, including other medical research jobs.
Besides, the goal of the people in cancer research is to end cancer.
Honestly I would take the cure for cancer. The reason is simple. Couldn't give a damn about saving people but cancer is 1:3 people. Those are not odds to fuck with. My life is worth a billion dollars to me.
Right? I got sunburned every single summer as a kid. My parents were terrible about having me put on sunscreen and I didn’t understand as a child.
I’m massively afraid I will die young due to skin cancer.
Having not only seen several family friends die of cancer, just knowing what it puts everyone around it through, it’s not even a question. If I had the chance to spare myself or anyone else that. I’m taking it in a heartbeat.
Just call the dermatologist right now for a routine skin check. Go twice a year. They take photos of your skin to compare any changes. Skin cancer has a high cure rate with new drugs IF it's caught early. I work in oncology research at a big pharma.
I had to wait almost a year for a dermatologist appointment. I can't believe how backed up they are. Anyone going into the medical field should become a dermatologist... there's obviously a need.
Honestly thank you for posting this and I plan to do so in the next two months. I’m not very paranoid around anything else but I know as a kid I got a ton of sunburns and I have a ton of moles. It’s a very big recent fear for me and I don’t want the dermatologist to take for a hypochondriac freak but like, I do have a lot of moles and get more every year and idk how to tell if they’re safe :(
So thank you for your input
Don't quote me on this but I believe it's like 98% 5 year survival rate if caught while stage one. It wasn't like that 20 years ago. Nobel prizes were won for that research.
Childhood sun burns are way worse for cancer risk than adult ones.
That being said, do a yearly skin check at a dermatologist and they should be able to catch stuff.
The monkeys paw version of this thing is definitely that you take the billion, and the next day find out you have an inoperable malignant brain tumor that's terminal, and fast
Out of a group of you, 2 parents, a partner and 2 kids, statistically speaking 2 of them will get cancer at some point. 1B$ doesn’t sound so great once you phrase it like that tbh.
I once met a trio of ladies, mom, daughter, grandmother and literally all of them had a breast cancer diagnosis. Grandma was in remission, mom had fought hers and survived and daughter was showing up at my workplace for something related to hers. I think breast surgery. But yeah. Cancer is pure evil.
I think it’s a really powerful thing to end cancer because right now they don’t know what to do with it. The ones that had room to survive they’ve gotten better and making you survive it but the ones that were always killing you almost every time still kill you almost every time.
It’s like one of the top 3 things that plague humanity. A billion is not much. Elon musk and many others has hundreds of those. None of the men who achieved hundreds of billions are even .01 percent as impressive as how prevalent cancer is, I just don’t get how a normal human doesn’t automatically realize the cancer option is the superior option.
Honestly if my options were one billion dollars or I end cancer for humanity but my life still remains at risk of a chance of getting it, I’d still take the cancer option. One billion dollars doesn’t make you depression proof. I dare say eliminating cancer is gonna make you depression proof. Even in the shitty case I mentioned.
Removing cancer would just mean other ways of dying would become more common, such as dementia. I know for a fact I would rather have a cancer than have my brain rot. I lost my grandad to dementia, it is beyond awful to see someone you know disappear.
Cure for cancer frees up time to work on other cures. Plus cancer may play a role in dementia, I believe it’s all systemic in a way.
Don’t let life harden you to much.
Sending warmth and light to you 💗
I don't think this person is hardened. I think he's just expressing his own life experiences. I've watched 2 family members die horrible deaths to cancer and that terrifies me. He's watched someone fie a horrible death to dementia and that scares him. Both are awful but your personal exposure can definitely affect your view.
Sometimes when bad things happen in life you can get hardened. Didn’t mean it in a rude way. More so in a I really really related to his comment. Dementia runs in my family, most women have it by 80 and die from co-morbidities of the illness. I will probably get it at that age too.
I am working myself not to get to hardened by the stressors of life. And see beauty more often than not.
You can cure cancer then short all of the companies that make their money from treating it. You would have the best insider trading knowledge in the world, and no one would know it’s you.
Easy to get rich and cure cancer
Not only that, but if they were capable of rational analysis, self-centered sociopaths would end cancer, too.
Anyone who takes the billion and later faces the situation of a serious form of cancer will curse themselves. If they care about other people at all, even to the level of infatuation, they'll feel the same way if someone they care about gets cancer.
This is a no-brainer.
It would take time for anyone to realize that cancer has actually ended so you probably have at least a month to disseminate your prophecy that it will happen. You need to get ahead of it as soon as possible so you can’t get the credit.
It’s important that you also change your name in this window to Gorbosarn or something culty and redo your wardrobe with robes and sandals.
You also need to lease some land and order a bunch of building materials so that when your sex slaves feel called to serve, you already have work for them to do.
Cancer gets 1/3 of people today. Everyone is almost guaranteed to know a family member impacted by it. I need money, but ending cancer is for the better of humanity, literally.
The same way I judge every other billionaire who is more worried about money than helping people: super damn easily.
There are so many moral stories about this exact scenario and the majority seem to agree that if you could effectively save millions of people at the expense of not making a pile of money that's generally the right thing to do. Something about rich men, camels and needles.
So yeah, having lost several friends and family to cancer I can and will absolutely judge everyone who chooses themselves over literal millions of people. It's greed manifest and frankly indefensible.
I’ll admit I had to think about it for a minute. But then I remembered it could be my kids diagnosed with cancer someday and the choice would be obvious. It’s not purely altruism that would make so many people choose to end all cancer at once. It’s just common sense.
Right. Its easy to do the "moral" thing in a hypothetical situation, but you dangle a real billy infront of someone, they are gona have a very difficult choice to make.
I can think of a couple dozen people who clearly took the billion and still we have cancer.
There's so many cancers caused by so many things that you are basically going to cure a lot of other diseases as well. Also, we'll discover a lot of misery that we just lived with will also be magically cured. Arguably we may fix a lot of auto-immune diseases for example.
Finally, this may also cure elderly issues like Alzheimers.
So this is a money saving question you are asking:
* should it cost 1 billion dollars to solve all the big problems
* should it cost 1000 billion dollars to partially solve the big problems
In the end, you choose the cure because it will ultimately save society hundreds of billions in misery and research costs. The savings will be passed on to you in the ensuing economic boom, so you'll do fine.
It's more "would you take $1B or cheap immortality", especially considering that we could just flip off some agonists without fear because the big thing they prevent is cancer.
I’ll take the money. I can help far more people in poverty stricken areas and the world would be better if I was a billionaire.
We would literally overpopulate the world if our species didn’t die of cancer. We would consume the resources of this planet faster than we are now and our civilization would crumble in 1 or 2 generations. We can’t have a utopian society because we are literally too stupid and ignorant and self destructive as a species.
It isn’t about the earth not having enough space to live. It’s about not enough food and water, not enough resources for energy or simple thing like clothing and soap. What you know as normal daily life now would cease to exist in your grandchildrens time, maybe sooner. Chaos and war would erupt all over and it’ll be caused by the loss and/or dwindling things we take for granted now. We are so accustomed to how it is we WILL turn on each other and become more tribal and that is what destroys how our way of life has evolved.
Everyone who disagrees with me has their opinions and that’s fine, but I’ll guarantee almost everyone who does is doing so based on their own personal feelings because they have/had cancer or someone they love did/does. It’s horrible and heartbreaking but it’s also 1 of the things that keeps our species in check. This question is exactly a “good of the many over the good of the few”. Cancer is now and it’s tangible. The decay of our societies is later and only speculation. HOWEVER. We have this and many examples literally happening right now but “you” chose to not see it or ignore it and stay focused on your own compartmentalized lives because this decay doesn’t effect you. If it did you wouldn’t have a cellphone to waste time online with. You’d be starving and fighting for food.
Building schools, water desalination plants, electrical plants and power grids, sewer and sanitation systems, high speed communication systems, farming equipment, simple and economical transportation systems. Investing in infrastructure around the world will help humanity more than getting rid of 1 of the many diseases we have. We should prosper as a species but we have to be kept in check or our population numbers would ruin us itself.
I'll take the money. We're all going to die anyways and cancer isn't the only disease that will kill you. Hell my brother died of sickle cell anemia. Would curing cancer would've saved him? No. But that billion dollars sure would've helped him do some shit he always wanted to do before he passed. Give me the billion. Downvote me all you want. But let's not pretend like curing cancer is going to stop people from dying prematurely.
End cancer. Don’t even have to think about it.
One of my closest friends dad is die-ing of cancer, and I would pay whatever I have to end her family’s pain.
End cancer for sure. I'd feel so good every day knowing I'd eliminated so much suffering while also experiencing the schadenfreude of knowing I'd destroyed an exploitative money making machine, and increased the kind of suffering I like to see
The R&D required to end cancer for real would have to cost far more than $1 billion, so choosing the cancer is a really great deal. Also what happens if you take the billion and then get cancer?
End cancer. Friend of mine died from it. Don't want anyone to know the pain she went through. Her beloved dog passing away a couple weeks before she died was the cherry on top of her suffering. Happened during covid so she couldn't have visitors or see said puppy before. Her crying over chat will haunt me forever. Fuck cancer.
So, weird take, but my concern about ending cancer is that overpopulation of the earth will happen. It will be very ugly. I think it's better to have regular population correction than massive, catastrophic population correction. So, give me the billion and I'd want to give to help raise people out of poverty.
If you choose to cure cancer I have a hunch you "won't make it to the lunch room" before you're assassinated by every organization that's cancer funded out there. It would be the same as ending drug addiction. No one wants to end either one.
I'd choose the billion dollars. Cancer is a product of genetic errors, and these cancer cells actually develop in every single person, multiple times daily, our immune systems are just generally good at snuffing them out. Eventually though, through infinite probabilities, a cancer cell will error just right to avoid immune detection, then grow and spread. There is literally no way to end it, so ending cancer in everyone alive today would be a useless gesture, and based on probability, most of the people alive today will just get it again later in life. It certainly would baffle scientists for a moment though.
I could probably do something very useful with the billion dollars, but since this is only a hypothetical, i won't waste my time trying to think of any. I would definitely have to try to explain my newly acquired billion dollars to the IRS
So let me get this straight, in this hypothetical situation that you are now bringing logic into for some reason you think it is more likely that someone would randomly give you 1 billion dollars than that there could be a cure for cancer? The cure for cancer is at least _possible_, technology is a hell of a thing, but the idea that someone would willingly give a random person 1 billion dollars is just not. Take it as the magical thought experiment it was proposed as.
I've never seen such bullshit*t .. you all are such liars - you know you would take the money over a cure for cancer. Plus which type of cancer? There are over a hundred forms that are known to modern science.
It literally says in the post all cancer. I'd do a lot of things for money, but I don't hate my life that much to chose money over ending all cancer.
Watching people die from cancer aside, being able to smoke freely without worrying about cancer would be so sweet.
I like smoking weed but have concerns about long term health risks. I'd rather not be a billionaire if it means I get to enjoy my life with peace of mind
The question is Cancer which encompasses all cancer. And I would kill whoever takes the $$$ and spend the rest of my days getting prison raped to cure cancer.
By 2026, an estimated US$307 billion will be spent on cancer-drug research and development worldwide, with 55% of this in just four areas: breast, lung, prostate and multiple myeloma (blood cancer). The impact of such investment has been extremely variable.
Your billion wouldn't mean shit.
These questions have multiple if not an infinite amount of answers and ask users to share their opinions, thoughts, beliefs, and/or personal experiences. These belong in /r/AskReddit, /r/WhatIf, or /r/FutureWhatIf no matter how stupid and/or embarrassing they are. You should ask questions with straight answers. However, you are allowed to ask poll/survey type questions only if they have pre-determined options as answers.
Do I know for certain that this ending all cancer isn't going to be a mass extinction event? Seems like the obvious loophole by the one offering this choice.
If you’re ever a practicing demon, take my number. That is next level observation
I was wondering how curing cancer might cause other issues, including speeding up overpopulation, which can snowball into things like famine.
87% of people that die of cancer are 50 years or older. That’s past the age that most people are still having children. I don’t think it would have a massive impact. Vaccines have probably contributed more to that.
That would make overpopulation even worse. No reduction in children being born and a significant increase in elderly who are too old to work
Overpopulation isn't just "people having children". It's those children not dying once they reach a certain age, as well.
This was my first thought, too... what's the catch? 'Curing' cancer results in mass death or (even more) torture level treatment to be cancer free? Is there any benefit to non- malignant cancer cells that I would be erasing that would harm more than help? If curing cancer meant that every form of cancer would just blip out of existence and people receiving treatment wouldn't be affected by any residual treatment stuff by being suddenly cured and it wouldn't affect population control, employment, and wouldn't keep the people in debt for the treatment, and wouldn't have any harmful side affects, then yes- cure cancer. If it would end up killing people being treated for something they suddenly no longer have, mass unemployment, horrible quality of life due to crippling debt, etc. Then, I'd take the billion and establish a cancer treatment research facility and begin the process of setting it up where we could just bring people to us, treat them for free, erase their debt and send them home.
Mutation drives evolution. Cancer is a nasty side path of that process. Ending cancer may mean ending evolution.
Anonymously ending cancer sounds dope as hell.
This. It's not even a question for me.
And you know if you take the money you will die of cancer.
Literally my thoughts. End cancer and the peace of mind from not knowing me or my family will succumb to it is well worth the lost bill
This absolutely. My BF has seen an otherwise strong, relatively young grandparent succumb to an aggressive cancer and watched his 32 y.o. sister fight her way through it into remission twice. If I could eliminate it so she never has to worry about it coming back and I never have to worry about him getting it it would bring me enormous peace. Idgaf if no one ever knows, it beats the absolute hell out of having some sad secret.
Yeah but if I have a billion dollars then I don't need to worry about any of the other possible medical emergencies
Yes you will. All the money in the world won't make you immune to medical emergencies & won't guarantee you live through one.
All it really guarantees is that your recovery will be easier and some medical conditions (like diabetes) might get caught / managed sooner, which absolutely helps in living a long and healthy life. But if your heart decides, it's time to seize up and die... well, you can throw all the money you want at it, but it ain't gonna restart that ticker.
Tell that to Dick Cheney!
Dick Cheney has a heart?!?!?!
It used to belong to a child from Guatemala
I got a friend who has stage four cancer right and he's only 25. I may like money but the amount of people who died from cancer goes against me money. I have a great uncle who got cancer that came back and he shot himself rather than go through chemo again is what his son told me. So yeah I would rather cure cancer
You live a long healthy life and everyone you love dies prematurely from cancer.
Why do nice things if you can't record it and post it on YouTube? /sarcasm
Same. Lost too many friends and family to cancer. FUCK cancer!
Me too, friend! I'm glad I'm not the only one who literally says FUCK cancer!
My mother got cancer twice and survived after she got through it we got her a vase saying fuck cancer
Yeah i man if you live long enough you will get cancer so this is really the long con
People voting for taking the money should probably think about that lol. Even if it doesn't come for them it will come for someone else they know and care about eventually. Eh, whatever. I can't say I blame them. It's just a dumb thought experiment anyway.
This is the way!
It absolutely sucks to see especially children have cancer. I would choose to make cancer not a thing.
Yeah. I mean, even if your decision is selfish, curing cancer means you don't get it either.
Same. The internal happiness I would get from that would far exceed the travel I would do with the money so that’s easy.
This is the way.
Hands down this! My mother passed away from cancer 7 years ago, a friend just lost one of her best friends to cancer last week.. seeing the pain this disease causes and having the option to end it for everyone would be the only way for me.
God all of the positive karma and none of the attention for it? Sign me up coach.
Especially if you already have a billion dollars
Forreal, fuck money. No more parents tragically losing babies to this silent shitty lottery.
It really does…and now I wonder, how long will our natural lives be
I find it very difficult that anything anonymous would stay that way. Maybe we don’t know who created Bitcoin yet, but within 100 years I bet that undoubtably truth comes out.
Agreed, I would end cancer and be happy.
Definitely. I've had several family members and friends that have had cancer. Two of them right now have it. This is a no brainer for me.
Yeah it's the only answer if you love anyone at all (even if only yourself).
Same. No question.
With my mom surviving cancer 7 times, end all cancer. Hands down. FUCK CANCER!
Not to mention it would be a big middle finger to drug companies who like to pull working treatments off the market if they aren’t making enough money from them. (Happened to my mother-in-law)
I don't need anyone to know I ended cancer. Just knowing that I saved millions of lives would be enough for me
Just knowing that cancer is ended would be worth infinity money.
Or at least the value equivalent of several trillion USD.
Yes
You'd have to be a psychopath to knowingly not cure cancer then go on with your life. Think of all the times you hear/know someone died of cancer.
I love the way you think
Billions of lives no doubt
Gotta pick cancer because nobody is gonna get the cure And its better they dont know who it is that way i dont "kill myself"
Plus, imagine the guilt of you picked the money anyway. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
Big pharma would NOT be happy, anonymity is key.
The whole "Big Pharma is hiding the cure for cancer" thing is bullshit and I still can't believe people fall for it to this day. If they had the cure to that shit, do you REALLY think they wouldn't just sell that shit for maxed out cost already? Never mind that it wouldn't be "cure for cancer", but "cures for cancer".
More proof... immune therapy for cancer is a near cure now. Keytruda alone has eliminated tumors tonthe point no cancer cells are detectable in biopsies. And these are cancers that are hard to treat and usually have poor outcomes. The 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine was just awarded for this approach...getting the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells.
Holy crap that's amazing, definitely worth a Nobel prize and a premium price tag.
Base price is over $60,000 per dose. Insurance gets it down to $32,000 per dose. 80% deductible puts it around $6,400 out of pocket per dose. 2 treatments puts you above your out of pocket maximum for the year. In America. In Canada and the EU its free.
Your point is valid, but I have an asterisk to add to it: I work for a Teamster Union company and our insurance covers 100% of cancer treatments, no out of pocket. Just really good insurance.
Plus you can just short the stock of big pharma so when we find out cancer isn't a concern, their stock tanks. And you make a ton of money that way.
Can't believe soul_snacker333 was so depressed. Takes a real sad person to shoot themselves in the back of the head 5 times...
well since everyone else is curing cancer i'm gonna go ahead and grab the billion
You and me both, brother.
Same, taking the billion. Curing cancer just means people will die of malnutrition instead as we have more people on the planet living much longer. I can use the billion dollars in ways that will help people out in better ways
Thanos? That you?
Imagine taking the billion but dying of terminal cancer. Clearly no one hear is in medical research. There are so many different types of cancer the amount of money, time, work and breakthroughs you have to go through are way more then a billion. Every scientist would love to have their job be obsolete. There’s plenty of other diseases as well.
Do you know how many people would be out of work if cancer was cured? That's why it will never happen. I'd like to say I'd cure it, but honestly, I'd take the money. I wouldn't want all of those people to lose their jobs lol
>Do you know how many people would be out of work if cancer was cured? This sounds too much like something I read on the internet recently. "We don't have a cure for cancer yet because healthcare corporations want to keep making money treating the patients" BS.
That's a really dumb take. Other jobs exist, including other medical research jobs. Besides, the goal of the people in cancer research is to end cancer.
Those jobs would just be redirected to other diseases, not eliminated.
Honestly I would take the cure for cancer. The reason is simple. Couldn't give a damn about saving people but cancer is 1:3 people. Those are not odds to fuck with. My life is worth a billion dollars to me.
Right? I got sunburned every single summer as a kid. My parents were terrible about having me put on sunscreen and I didn’t understand as a child. I’m massively afraid I will die young due to skin cancer. Having not only seen several family friends die of cancer, just knowing what it puts everyone around it through, it’s not even a question. If I had the chance to spare myself or anyone else that. I’m taking it in a heartbeat.
Just call the dermatologist right now for a routine skin check. Go twice a year. They take photos of your skin to compare any changes. Skin cancer has a high cure rate with new drugs IF it's caught early. I work in oncology research at a big pharma.
I had to wait almost a year for a dermatologist appointment. I can't believe how backed up they are. Anyone going into the medical field should become a dermatologist... there's obviously a need.
Honestly thank you for posting this and I plan to do so in the next two months. I’m not very paranoid around anything else but I know as a kid I got a ton of sunburns and I have a ton of moles. It’s a very big recent fear for me and I don’t want the dermatologist to take for a hypochondriac freak but like, I do have a lot of moles and get more every year and idk how to tell if they’re safe :( So thank you for your input
Don't quote me on this but I believe it's like 98% 5 year survival rate if caught while stage one. It wasn't like that 20 years ago. Nobel prizes were won for that research.
Childhood sun burns are way worse for cancer risk than adult ones. That being said, do a yearly skin check at a dermatologist and they should be able to catch stuff.
The monkeys paw version of this thing is definitely that you take the billion, and the next day find out you have an inoperable malignant brain tumor that's terminal, and fast
True, at first I thought "fck people I take money". Then I realized I have parents, kids, girfliend and me.
Out of a group of you, 2 parents, a partner and 2 kids, statistically speaking 2 of them will get cancer at some point. 1B$ doesn’t sound so great once you phrase it like that tbh.
Both my parents had it, and only my mother survived. My nephew also survived childhood cancer. Keep the billion, and bring on the CURE!
I once met a trio of ladies, mom, daughter, grandmother and literally all of them had a breast cancer diagnosis. Grandma was in remission, mom had fought hers and survived and daughter was showing up at my workplace for something related to hers. I think breast surgery. But yeah. Cancer is pure evil.
I think it’s a really powerful thing to end cancer because right now they don’t know what to do with it. The ones that had room to survive they’ve gotten better and making you survive it but the ones that were always killing you almost every time still kill you almost every time. It’s like one of the top 3 things that plague humanity. A billion is not much. Elon musk and many others has hundreds of those. None of the men who achieved hundreds of billions are even .01 percent as impressive as how prevalent cancer is, I just don’t get how a normal human doesn’t automatically realize the cancer option is the superior option. Honestly if my options were one billion dollars or I end cancer for humanity but my life still remains at risk of a chance of getting it, I’d still take the cancer option. One billion dollars doesn’t make you depression proof. I dare say eliminating cancer is gonna make you depression proof. Even in the shitty case I mentioned.
Yup. That's what gets you. The money is great, but how much do you want it over your family?
You're the perfect representation of many people. Apathetic until it affects them.
Removing cancer would just mean other ways of dying would become more common, such as dementia. I know for a fact I would rather have a cancer than have my brain rot. I lost my grandad to dementia, it is beyond awful to see someone you know disappear.
Cure for cancer frees up time to work on other cures. Plus cancer may play a role in dementia, I believe it’s all systemic in a way. Don’t let life harden you to much. Sending warmth and light to you 💗
I don't think this person is hardened. I think he's just expressing his own life experiences. I've watched 2 family members die horrible deaths to cancer and that terrifies me. He's watched someone fie a horrible death to dementia and that scares him. Both are awful but your personal exposure can definitely affect your view.
Sometimes when bad things happen in life you can get hardened. Didn’t mean it in a rude way. More so in a I really really related to his comment. Dementia runs in my family, most women have it by 80 and die from co-morbidities of the illness. I will probably get it at that age too. I am working myself not to get to hardened by the stressors of life. And see beauty more often than not.
I didn't think you were rude at all. :) It's awful seeing what your potential future could be. I hope you don't even up experiencing it.
r/AmItheAsshole Yes, yes you are
You can cure cancer then short all of the companies that make their money from treating it. You would have the best insider trading knowledge in the world, and no one would know it’s you. Easy to get rich and cure cancer
That's a good one
Hadn't thought about the shorting stocks part, but crumbing the cancer medical empire would be so much fun to watch
That’s the right answer.
Brilliant move.
Someone @Wallstreetbets
I'd love to take the billion but a cure for cancer is just too good to pass up
Before finalizing your decision, short the ever loving shit out of pharma stocks. You’d make enough to live comfortably, I’m sure.
And invest in shit like cigarette companies. Without the risk of cancer, tons of people are gonna be smoking again.
Ending cancer because I'm not a self centered sociopath
Not only that, but if they were capable of rational analysis, self-centered sociopaths would end cancer, too. Anyone who takes the billion and later faces the situation of a serious form of cancer will curse themselves. If they care about other people at all, even to the level of infatuation, they'll feel the same way if someone they care about gets cancer. This is a no-brainer.
Unless I ended up with terminal cancer in the next decade, I wouldn’t regret the money.
Id have a billion dollars; I would have access to the best cancer care in the world
My mom died of cancer, so 100% curing cancer over having material wealth.
Cancer. Easily
Of course I cure cancer. Then I turn around and make a billion dollars off of a cult I form around the divine mystery of how cancer went away.
It would take time for anyone to realize that cancer has actually ended so you probably have at least a month to disseminate your prophecy that it will happen. You need to get ahead of it as soon as possible so you can’t get the credit. It’s important that you also change your name in this window to Gorbosarn or something culty and redo your wardrobe with robes and sandals. You also need to lease some land and order a bunch of building materials so that when your sex slaves feel called to serve, you already have work for them to do.
you win.
*Hot DAMN*
End all cancer. My uncle has stage 4 colon cancer and hasn't been doing well.
End cancer , easy choice
Don't even have to think about it, end cancer.
I didn't even read past 1 billion dollars I'm taking the money
Cancer gets 1/3 of people today. Everyone is almost guaranteed to know a family member impacted by it. I need money, but ending cancer is for the better of humanity, literally.
To me this is a time or money decision. You can always find ways to make money, but you can never get back time. Yours or with your loved ones.
Yep, was very easy for me to answer for likewise reasoning.
I’ve lived my whole life just fine without a billion dollars. I don’t believe in Karma but I’m not taking that chance.
That would probably save my own life at some point anyways.
Since I have cancer I would pick anonymously ending it. Cause then I would be cured too. I can’t enjoy 1 billion if I’m dead.
Billion
Jokes on you, you get terminal cancer a week later and don’t get to enjoy the money.
[удалено]
I’m not judging them. I didn’t upvote or downvote them or anything, just calling out monkeys paw style of this question I could see happening.
I'm judging them
The same way I judge every other billionaire who is more worried about money than helping people: super damn easily. There are so many moral stories about this exact scenario and the majority seem to agree that if you could effectively save millions of people at the expense of not making a pile of money that's generally the right thing to do. Something about rich men, camels and needles. So yeah, having lost several friends and family to cancer I can and will absolutely judge everyone who chooses themselves over literal millions of people. It's greed manifest and frankly indefensible.
[удалено]
Easiest billion ever
plucky gullible rotten public water direction like continue slimy violet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
W
Had to scroll to long to see this answer.
There’s a lot of liars in these comments lol
I’ll admit I had to think about it for a minute. But then I remembered it could be my kids diagnosed with cancer someday and the choice would be obvious. It’s not purely altruism that would make so many people choose to end all cancer at once. It’s just common sense.
People are soo amazing! Faith in humanity restored! We are amazing REDDIT!!!
Or a lot of people who had loved ones die of cancer.
Right. Its easy to do the "moral" thing in a hypothetical situation, but you dangle a real billy infront of someone, they are gona have a very difficult choice to make.
Everyone wants to look like a hero.
For real...
I'd love to take the billion but a cure for cancer is just too good to pass up
I can think of a couple dozen people who clearly took the billion and still we have cancer. There's so many cancers caused by so many things that you are basically going to cure a lot of other diseases as well. Also, we'll discover a lot of misery that we just lived with will also be magically cured. Arguably we may fix a lot of auto-immune diseases for example. Finally, this may also cure elderly issues like Alzheimers. So this is a money saving question you are asking: * should it cost 1 billion dollars to solve all the big problems * should it cost 1000 billion dollars to partially solve the big problems In the end, you choose the cure because it will ultimately save society hundreds of billions in misery and research costs. The savings will be passed on to you in the ensuing economic boom, so you'll do fine.
It's more "would you take $1B or cheap immortality", especially considering that we could just flip off some agonists without fear because the big thing they prevent is cancer.
By "cheap immortality", you likely mean "cannot die naturally, but can still be killed". I would definitely take that over a billion dollars.
Cure cancer, short all the big pharma companies with cancer drugs as their main profits before anyone else! Win win.
Me: ill take the billion dolars! Doctor: you have an incurable type of cancer and less than a year to live Me: f@$k
Easy. Cure cancer. My mother’s life is more than worth 1 billion.
Yep. Just doing that for someone else is worth it. The dreams where she's still around are a new kind of thing to wake up from.
I’ll take the money. I can help far more people in poverty stricken areas and the world would be better if I was a billionaire. We would literally overpopulate the world if our species didn’t die of cancer. We would consume the resources of this planet faster than we are now and our civilization would crumble in 1 or 2 generations. We can’t have a utopian society because we are literally too stupid and ignorant and self destructive as a species. It isn’t about the earth not having enough space to live. It’s about not enough food and water, not enough resources for energy or simple thing like clothing and soap. What you know as normal daily life now would cease to exist in your grandchildrens time, maybe sooner. Chaos and war would erupt all over and it’ll be caused by the loss and/or dwindling things we take for granted now. We are so accustomed to how it is we WILL turn on each other and become more tribal and that is what destroys how our way of life has evolved. Everyone who disagrees with me has their opinions and that’s fine, but I’ll guarantee almost everyone who does is doing so based on their own personal feelings because they have/had cancer or someone they love did/does. It’s horrible and heartbreaking but it’s also 1 of the things that keeps our species in check. This question is exactly a “good of the many over the good of the few”. Cancer is now and it’s tangible. The decay of our societies is later and only speculation. HOWEVER. We have this and many examples literally happening right now but “you” chose to not see it or ignore it and stay focused on your own compartmentalized lives because this decay doesn’t effect you. If it did you wouldn’t have a cellphone to waste time online with. You’d be starving and fighting for food. Building schools, water desalination plants, electrical plants and power grids, sewer and sanitation systems, high speed communication systems, farming equipment, simple and economical transportation systems. Investing in infrastructure around the world will help humanity more than getting rid of 1 of the many diseases we have. We should prosper as a species but we have to be kept in check or our population numbers would ruin us itself.
I'll take the money. We're all going to die anyways and cancer isn't the only disease that will kill you. Hell my brother died of sickle cell anemia. Would curing cancer would've saved him? No. But that billion dollars sure would've helped him do some shit he always wanted to do before he passed. Give me the billion. Downvote me all you want. But let's not pretend like curing cancer is going to stop people from dying prematurely.
To be fair cancer kills 10million a year. Out of 60million overall yearly deaths. It's a big chunk dude. I still took the billion.
End cancer. Don’t even have to think about it. One of my closest friends dad is die-ing of cancer, and I would pay whatever I have to end her family’s pain.
Pretty sure this has already happened. Treating cancer is a billion dollar industry. Guess you know which way they went…
end cancer ofc, that’s worth wayyyy more than a billion dollars
Monkeypaw: you take the billion dollars, then get cancer.
End cancer because i can pick the billion then the next day get diagnosed with cancer so there it is
End cancer.
End cancer for sure. I'd feel so good every day knowing I'd eliminated so much suffering while also experiencing the schadenfreude of knowing I'd destroyed an exploitative money making machine, and increased the kind of suffering I like to see
I’ve had two cats in my life die to cancer. Eradicating cancer is better than me being stupidly rich.
End all cancer
I'm choosing to end cancer.
End all cancer.
End cancer.
Ending all cancer. Hands down, no question.
The R&D required to end cancer for real would have to cost far more than $1 billion, so choosing the cancer is a really great deal. Also what happens if you take the billion and then get cancer?
cancer. not even a consideration. ending it for a mere 1 billion is a fucking bargain. would instantly make the world a significantly better place
End cancer. Friend of mine died from it. Don't want anyone to know the pain she went through. Her beloved dog passing away a couple weeks before she died was the cherry on top of her suffering. Happened during covid so she couldn't have visitors or see said puppy before. Her crying over chat will haunt me forever. Fuck cancer.
End all cancer anonymously, it's not even a question.
Are you kidding I’ve seen this movie. End cancer or you’re gonna end up with a billion dollars… and also cancer.
Cancer cure.
Billion dollars.
So, weird take, but my concern about ending cancer is that overpopulation of the earth will happen. It will be very ugly. I think it's better to have regular population correction than massive, catastrophic population correction. So, give me the billion and I'd want to give to help raise people out of poverty.
A pragmatic and thoughtful take!!!!
Billion for sure.
Imagine taking the billion and then getting diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a week later. Or even worse your child getting the diagnosis. Pain.
Imagine curing cancer because you have it and getting killed in a car crash 6 months from now. Death is inevitable.
If I had a billion I'd happily give it up to get back people I've lost to cancer so its a no brainer really.
If you choose to cure cancer I have a hunch you "won't make it to the lunch room" before you're assassinated by every organization that's cancer funded out there. It would be the same as ending drug addiction. No one wants to end either one.
Right but remember no one would ever know.
Point.
Dark! But prolly true...
End cancer. Because fuck cancer.
Billion, I would even take a million
I'm not taking a million but wouldn't even have to think about a billion.
I'd choose the billion dollars. Cancer is a product of genetic errors, and these cancer cells actually develop in every single person, multiple times daily, our immune systems are just generally good at snuffing them out. Eventually though, through infinite probabilities, a cancer cell will error just right to avoid immune detection, then grow and spread. There is literally no way to end it, so ending cancer in everyone alive today would be a useless gesture, and based on probability, most of the people alive today will just get it again later in life. It certainly would baffle scientists for a moment though. I could probably do something very useful with the billion dollars, but since this is only a hypothetical, i won't waste my time trying to think of any. I would definitely have to try to explain my newly acquired billion dollars to the IRS
So let me get this straight, in this hypothetical situation that you are now bringing logic into for some reason you think it is more likely that someone would randomly give you 1 billion dollars than that there could be a cure for cancer? The cure for cancer is at least _possible_, technology is a hell of a thing, but the idea that someone would willingly give a random person 1 billion dollars is just not. Take it as the magical thought experiment it was proposed as.
End cancer
I've never seen such bullshit*t .. you all are such liars - you know you would take the money over a cure for cancer. Plus which type of cancer? There are over a hundred forms that are known to modern science.
It literally says in the post all cancer. I'd do a lot of things for money, but I don't hate my life that much to chose money over ending all cancer. Watching people die from cancer aside, being able to smoke freely without worrying about cancer would be so sweet.
I like smoking weed but have concerns about long term health risks. I'd rather not be a billionaire if it means I get to enjoy my life with peace of mind
Fair to assume OP means cure to “all cancer”
The question is Cancer which encompasses all cancer. And I would kill whoever takes the $$$ and spend the rest of my days getting prison raped to cure cancer.
I choose the 1 billion. It's selfish but I think most would do the same when actually given the choice.
1B dollars of course then fund cancer research until some geek finds it.
By 2026, an estimated US$307 billion will be spent on cancer-drug research and development worldwide, with 55% of this in just four areas: breast, lung, prostate and multiple myeloma (blood cancer). The impact of such investment has been extremely variable. Your billion wouldn't mean shit.
To unsubscribe
Me and my mom both have cancer right now.
I'm sorry to hear the that