Week 7 - Sophisticated Understanding of Cancer

I think Western Medicine has a very sophisticated understanding of Cancer cells. In general, I don't think our understanding of Cancer is complete enough to be considered sophisticated. We still, apparently, don't know really why cancer happens. We don't understand all the objectives in causing cancer to appear in ones body. We seem to really understand on a micro level what cancer does in our body and even how it starts but we don't know the why.

Sophistication is a cultural, relative term. For example, the chimps using the stick to dig for termites, we view this as sophisticated for chimps, but primitve for us. We may think a high paid female professional wearing designer clothes is sophisticated but if she were to move to Tokyo, she may be considered, overly confident and showy, not sophisticated. I believe that westerns really dislike not having a solid answer. As a result, we delve deep into what we do know, hoping this may make-up for some of what we don't know. We can know every molecule of a cancer cell and how it lives and reacts in the body. This will not change the fact that we don't know why cancer happens.