text: can we cure cancer by making it a cash prize? everyone (and all nations) has been touched by cancer in some way. if all goverments add money to a prize-pool and then make that prize available to the first person/team to cure cancer completely, would that work? this could work just like the ansari space prize. however - the catch - the cure must be made available free for all who would need it (and in the public domain). no patents and such! truly free. man gets motivated by a prize, competes for it - in a race! the prize could be yours, maybe even in the billions of dollars! do you think that will inspire/motivate people to get involved? would that work? we need to do something to get it moving along quicker... i dream of a world free of cancer cancer is really 180+ diseases under the same name. different types of cancer that affect different organs can and do have a different mode of action (moa) in many cases. as with many diseases a complete and total cure is not at hand.   1000's of scientists have wrote research papers, 1000's of experiments done, and great progress has been made. you are  likely to be living 5 years from now if you are told "you have cancer". thirty years ago most told the same thing died within 5 years.   as one scientist said sometime ago: "you will not be walking down the street some day and read a headline that says --scientists find cure for cancer--". rather we will chip away at it slow but sure". it is impossible to cure 180 diseases all at once.  other issues such as early detection will be just as important as cures for this disease. the problem with cancer is that most of the time when symptoms appear for the first time it has already spread. this is why it is important to educate the public to be on the look out for early signs especially if someone  has a family history of cancer.  if you recieved severe sunburn before age 18, have a dermatologist check your skin once a year. women over 50 should have yearly mamograms. if you don't smoke, don't start. if you do smoke, try to quit.       many of the treatments today, although not an outright cure, can make this disease manageable. i hope that in the near future better public education, early detection, and therapies that offer management of cancer will help in the fight.   maybe i can summerize by saying that a complete and total cure is not a "one-shot" deal. attacking cancer from several different angles sems the best idea at least for now. as for the long term future --  we can always hope.