[MattSAU2XR8]

Bit late to the party on this one too.

Condolences to anyone whose family has been affected. Mine has, and its not been good.

Cancer isn't a single disease, although cancers are a group are largely looked after by one group of doctors, namely Oncologists.

And so some are being beaten, some may be in the near future, and some probably won't be in our lifetimes.

Examples include:
- Cervical cancer was caught earlier by Papp smears, and is now being prevented by HPV vaccines, but this is a cancer caused initially by a virus
- Bowel cancers more often detected now by stool tests looking for blood, and with early detection, fairly wide excision, and follow up chemo, are reasonably often cured.
- Slow growing tumours such as glioblastoma brain cancer which do not have clear margins, and occupy tissue that can't be sacrificed are very rarely cured.

Main problem in most of the incurable ones is that the immune system can't recognise the cells as 'foreign' since they are missing genes/proteins rather than having extra ones, they aren't susceptible to poisons that the rest of the body can tolerate (eg. chemo), they don't cause symptoms until they have spread, and that they can often evolve to become 'immune' to chemo drugs.

So unfortunately the truth is that not all cancers can be beaten in the near future. If looking for the outlook for a particular cancer, then Medscape is a good starting point. Just do a google search for (Medscape Stomach Cancer) for example. It may ask you to login but signup is free...