• Question: if you couldnt cure cancer wat would this do to your work

    Asked by chantal24 to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 17 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by aoifedelaney.
    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 17 Nov 2012:

      The project that I’m working on at the minute has a really good chance of helping to treat cancer, based on a lot of work that’s already been done by a lot of other scientists. But you can never tell if something will work until you’ve tested it, and this is what I’m doing at the moment. If what I’m working on at the minute turns out not to cure cancer, I will work hard to find out why it was ineffective, and then I would publish my work anyway, so other scientists can learn from it and don’t waste time on it.

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 18 Nov 2012:

      My project isn’t really focused on cancer, but I’m looking at diseases that people can get from water. I’m using flamingos as an indicator of how polluted water is. We don’t really think about it here in Ireland, but in some parts of the world, polluted water is a serious problem – some people don’t have any access to clean drinking water. This causes lots of diseases, and this is something I’m trying to figure out.

    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      i think that there are some really big challenges ahead of humankind that will put cancer to one side for a while. If we cant feed ourselves, or if we break the ecosystems we depend on permanently, then what good is a cure for cancer?

    • Photo: Aggelos Zacharopoulos

      Aggelos Zacharopoulos answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      @chantal24 and @aoifedelaney,
      cancer is such a challenge for medical scientists and finding a cure or even improving the life expectancy of cancer patients would be such an achievement! There is a lot of money directed to this type of research and new treatments are being developed for the different types of cancers everyday.

      I do not research on cancer treatments myself but I appreciate immensely the positive impact that the work of medical researchers could have on everybody’s life.

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