I read some stuff about mRNA treatment a while ago that seemed like it might be promising.
I think that's what the poster above you was saying. "Oldschool" chemo is basically poison, and the hope is that it kills off the cancer before the patient. But there are newer drugs that are extremely effective with way way way less side effects out there, depending on which type of cancer one has. Things like immunotherapy are really effective if you happen to match their targeted types of cancer, and some have basically 0 side effects, leading to a QoL improvement if they happen to work. People have gotten nobel prizes for some of these discoveries, it's really insane how far we've come in the last 30-40 years.
I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have dedicated their lives to it?
Check out this paper from the Lander lab: https://elifesciences.org/articles/61026
It’s a bit jargon heavy but it’s a nice case study in how tumor growth is controlled through all the same mechanisms that normal tissue growth uses. Even cells with an outright cancerous gene mutation are basically still just doing normal growth and development.
Might be that cancer hits after creating offspring.
Mortality is a feature when it comes to species level fitness. Sucks for the individual though.