I suppose because our way of looking at the Problem and the ways of solving it are too much fixed in conservative Patterns of thought.

Only if the solution is involving a big financial effort so that the industry and institutions can earn a lot of Money, then they are interested in this branch of Research - even when they already know before, that benefits will be limited. And another danger is the jealousy, loosing face etc. if you would dare to take an unusual path...

So it is a paradigmatic question: we must try to cross this bad shadow for a better Dimension of ideas.

I hope you do not mind if i share your important question with our RG-friends.

Thank you Thomas for the valuable contribution .. sure i don't mind 

Cervical cancer prevention programs have failed in many developing countries for a variety of reasons that include health care system deficiencies, limited funding of preventive health, and a lack of trained human resources.

These issues have resulted in low coverage levels, poor quality of cytology services, lack of follow-up and treatment of women with abnormal lesions, and the subsequent lack of impact on incidence and mortality

http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?pid=S1020-49892010001000003&script=sci_arttext

Dear Thomas Sir, Thank you so much to give me the chance to express my view. the most important truth we are not doing so bad as the question says--- the battle of fight against cancer is going to be for few centuries because of its nature --- but the battle shall be WON and that is for sure -- Mankind have faced much worse situation like bad famines when people died out of hunger and still we  did thrive till today.

As a practising Doctor, I see very clearly three most important sectors in which we are weak.

1. Early detection is a task and human do not consider their physical health seriously and their parental history seriously and habit which involves carcinogens seriously and occupation which are to be considered for safety from cancer seriously.

2. The whole world at research on all types of cancer with all kinds of treatment have yet not understood the very pattern of every cancer when the stages advances because all cancer behave according to the constitutional set up of that body varying from individual to individual. For Example -- two male individual of same race and community and age and gender developing carcinoma of stomach due to high carbon barbeque food ---- did not advance their stages in the same time and did not respond to the treatment at the same manner and one lived quite longer to die and the other died very fast   ------ cancer pattern and behavior differs from individual to individual.

3. Socioeconomic status ------this is the most important sector we fail the most is human with low socioeconomic status succumb fast to thier cancer as the affordability to treatment is difficult and awareness to the disease are minimum and most uneducated get prepared to die.

The world has to really look in to making quite important decisions with cooperative policy to stand together as mighty support and work on the above said three sectors and I think "ITS NOT US TO LOOSE" and the battle shall be WON. Thanks again. 

As the world cancer implies it denotes for cancellation of the life in well many patient demanding a long & painful treatment for the patient with the use expensive for the treatment placing a family & under a burning tears for their remaining life .

Any part of disease is the outcome of our destiny .What has made me to express regarding the breast cancer which ladies are suffering & their life is not a line with male members who are suffering from brain tumor,Throat cancer,Liver cancer,& such other related areas due to their bad habits of their living style .This is also a part of destiny but they have invented them .

Since last quite few years cancer has taken a mounting place .With any kind of serious  disease which human beings has to under go apart from the medical treatment which is the must for the patient but at the same time patients have to train & control their mind that we are now visited on this earth for a limited period of time & as such they have to change their thinking ,temperament ,behavior for creating utmost faith with the will power ,so that they can recourse to go for good & healthy reading,Religious pursuits, power of prayer,meditation & such other way for the life line .

It is not ease but not difficult also as it is in our hand .With this one can make the life more comfortable ,easier ,& healthy for the family .

This is my personal opinion 

If a person is unfortunate to get cancer, the most important thing is to maintain a positive attitude. Further, he or she should identify people from family or friends who will be standing with him or her throughout the procedures.

http://dailyworld.in/diagnosed-with-cancer-dont-take-it-lying-down/

Due to  the frequent wars in Iraq that there was slow in the conflict against cancer.  Depleted uranium is one of the main causes of cancer in Iraq and insufficient attention to support cancer treatment research. In my opinion, we must not to stop to fight cancer.

Please, kindly see the following report::

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html

Hello. I think we are doing OK and with time, we will be able to fight it completely and we must not stop. 

But sadly .... there are more people in this world who die because of wars and violence rather than cancer and we dont think too much about it.

The greatest problem about fighting cancer resides in its own definition: a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body.

So,  there isn't a linear approach to cancer,  due to the variety of possible causes,  as well how does it manifest itself.  It can be genetically predisposition,  oncogenes from a previously flu that are activated by an unknown mechanism,  exposure to mutagenic agents, radiation damage,  etc. All this have influenced in the type of neoplasm and their aggressiveness.  Then, you have the problem of molecular machiner. Normal cells,  when they malfunction,  they activate their caspases,  and puff!  Apoptosis!  Or, of their vesicles are ruptured,  the hydrolyses do the shredding,  leading to necrosis. 

We are highly conditioned by linear thinking,  whereas cancer doesn't play by those rules - there isn't a single pathway,  but several,  that may lead to a neoplasm. So,  the bold step forward is to get better and better micro,  threshold,  and macroscale knowledge (cytological,  histological,  anatopathological). And that takes time - fortunately,  our conversation Neumann machines ain't that simple - or else we would be doomed to be so simple we wouldn't be able to understand ourselves

One answer to the question, that I haven't seen listed, is that we are living so much longer. When the average lifespan was, say, 35 years, people were dying of something else. Like infection, or injury. I think some of this is a perception that we are doing so poorly, as the disease has become increasingly visible over the decades, if only because people live so much longer.

 2 cents'worth from 2 totally different angles:

-Science - the onset of some cancers is inevitable under the laws of physics - to wit, some are triggered by cosmic rays scrambling & playing havoc with our body cells (with a helping push from the tunnel effect at cell level.) I read a statistic somewhere that on average 8 cancer seeds are created that way per day per person

- Mind attitude - for what's it's worth, I once read a book by Anita Moorjani in which she tells how her fear of cancer seemingly triggered & fed the disease, and how freeing herself from the fear led to a medically stunning U-turn in the disease's path

This being said, Abdulqadir, it's doubtful if anyone knows the full answer .....

thank you everyone for the valuable contributions

My family is going through cancer right now.

The reason that we are doing so poorly is because of the profit from not curing cancer but holding it at bay.

All companies that are for profit have a goal of increasing the profitability to the share holders.  This is the first law of business and no true business lives without this law directing or guiding them forward.  No one in their right mind would invest in a company that its goal was put itself out of business!

The medical industry more than one hundred years ago divided into two groups.  The Homeopaths and the Medical Doctors.  These two groups had a fundamentally different approach to the practice of medicine and the battle lines where drawn.

The Homeopaths wanted to heal from within and the Doctors wanted to operate on or remove the offending part with care and give medications that science had provided. 

They also thought that the chemical companies that sponsored research had more pure and there by better medicines.  The idea that nature could help or cure was removed from the equation in favor of science of the day.  In their opinion only science could solve the centuries old problems. 

This divide was deep and bitter.  The homeopaths knew that the centuries of using medicines from nature had worked even though they may not understand the entire issue.

The problem was that at this time the largest of the Chemical and Pharmacy companies knew that they could not patent nature and there fore there was no money in nature or natural products as anyone and their brother could produce them.  They had to protect the profit of their companies by making a stark difference between the natural (not pure), products that sometimes were not safe or clean because of the understanding of the problems for the time, and the pure processed forms of the drugs that only they could produce.  This was easy. 

Many of these companies took products and made them seem unsafe because of the other things that were in them to sell their purified forms or man made forms of the same thing.  It did not take them long to understand that if I can make a  chemical that looks like the natural one but is slightly different that I could patent that and then be the only one to be able to sell that anywhere. 

This was then the cash cow for the big companies.  legally protected from competition and a captive market.  All they had to do was discredit the homeopaths and set up the AMA for the people what they were calling "true doctors" and they could have a corner on the market. 

Well it was not that easy as the competition started patenting their own products and they could sometimes undercut the market with cheep products.  This required the help of some very well educated people and lead to the companies doing research to prove their products were better and more scientific than someone that had not proven the product.  This lead to a line of questioning the quality of a product by the number of trials or tests that were done on it to prove it works. No one wants to try something with out some tests first being done on it!

At present the cost for a new drug in the USA is at least a Billion dollars for the research and approval process and almost ten years.  This means that in the biggest market for drugs in the worlds the USA it is only a very few companies that can afford to be in the business.  They have protected the profits of the share holders so will that no one with a real cure for anything can get into the market unless they sell the product to them or wait 10 years to get it approved.

This type of market place only wants to treat symptoms and not cure something as it is not good for profits.

The cancer business today is worth an estimates one Trillion dollars to the biggest of the drug companies and after some of these drugs have been on the market for decades profits are outrageous.   As they sell these poisons they can finally say they have refined the process of killing the cancer cells before the poisons kill the person they are trying to cure.

With this cash cow no one on the medical or the drug companies pay role wants a cure without a replacement for this revenue stream.  

To the biggest of these companies this is not an issue of anything but "PURE" business.  They spend billions of dollars a year in developing new drugs that can be patented and stop research on things that can not be patented. 

You will see things that look promising that have one study done on it and it had great results but then the funding was pulled and they went on to something that had a cash value to the company funding the research.  The one study is published but if no one can get funding for more research then they go to the next thing.  I have looked at hundreds of things like this and sometimes these companies will fund the research if they can patent the process of purifying the product and this can lead to some good products but most of the time if it can be done a different way they patent what they can and hold up more research.

Over the years some people have been demonized for using natural methods to help people or to cure people but the big money stays way clear of this and just makes it seem like a bad idea so that it seems like pseudoscience even if it is real.  With no funding the places eventually go away.  I can not tell if they are good or not but even if they cure one in a twenty they are doing good work and much more research needs to be done.    

It is a very big business that dictates if people can be cured or if they can get some more money out of the process.  The business model does not work if you cure everyone. 

If you have the illusion that business is noble and only has the purest of thoughts then ask all the business in the world what their stock holders want from them?

There are something out there that have more promise for a cure than anyone wants to admit.  The problem is getting the funding to do the research to prove it.  

I have been working towards natural products and will continue to do so even if there is not funding for that.

George           

Profit has to be removed from the equation of companies that help in medicine.  We should have never let it be part of this story.  From the time one hundred years ago when many of the big organizations formed to help with medicine (AMA) and more there has been this push to help only if there is enough money in the cause.

It is against the code of ethics of doctors but not against the code of ethics of business as a matter of fact it is the exact code that makes them so much money that they become to big to fail. 

Article The fight against cancer: Is it worthwhile?

Cancer will be defeated