Question: Do you think there will ever be a cure for deadly diseases?

Sive Finlay answered on 13 Nov 2013:

Hi Nicholas,

That’s a tricky one because there are so many deadly diseases which are caused by very different processes. For example, there will never be one cure for cancer because there are lots of different types of cancer which act by different mechanisms. Malaria is another deadly disease for which we have treatments but there’s no one cure because there are different types of malaria which are all caused by different parasites. Similarly, there are lots of different types of bacterial diseases and trying to treat or cure them is always difficult because bacteria can evolve to be resistant to our current treatments.
It is, however, possible to cure and wipe-out deadly diseases; smallpox was eradicated in the late 1970s. So I do think that we will find cures for some deadly diseases but I don’t know if we could ever reach a stage when we are free of all deadly diseases. Viral and bacterial diseases are constantly evolving and mutating so even if we can cure the deadliest diseases facing us today I don’t think we could wipe out diseases completely.
Sive