"Cable" comes to the cancer ward

WSJ story describing recent claims by researchers of notable advances in treating cancer, the focus being on targeted therapies that employ advanced genetic-based technologies.

Naturally, all of this is expensive.

This will be a constant theme of the bio-gen revolution that unfolds over coming decades:  the tech will be there, but the question will be one of who gets access.  I expect that access to such medical technologies, especially those involving the significant extension of life, will become the primary human rights struggle of the century.

But what caught my eye here was the following bit:

"Cancer is like cable television," says George Sledge, a breast-cancer expert at Indiana University and newly elected president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which hosted the cancer meeting. "Thirty years ago you had three channels. Now you have 500."

The guy's point:  the more we learn and the better we target, the more target-complex becomes the battlespace.  Cancer, over time, will be revealed to be almost as complex and varied as the human experience. Since it is primarily a disease of aging, the longer we extend life, the more we will view it as our primary medical challenge.  For most of us who will enjoy this life-lengthening age, cancer will be less the dead-end and more the accepted right of passage.

But yeah, who plays gatekeeper will be crucial.