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Alright, thanks for taking me seriously. I'm feeling a bit touchy today. I think the problem is that I'm using the words artist, job, rules, authority, and creativity in a very liberal way.

I guess my general point is that to be an artist, you have to be creative. To be creative, you have to do something new. To do something new, you have to depart from what exists in some way. Whatever exists can be called authority, tradition, or "the rules". And then something new is a challenge to that authority. If you build a skyscraper in a town with no skyscrapers, you are challenging authority, even if all the other towns have skyscrapers. When parents make a baby, it's a creative act, and the baby ends up challenging the authority of the parents; the baby breaks the existing rules of the family structure. It's the same with the work that an artist does. It doesn't have to be socially rebellious in nature. An expression of beauty that has not been seen before is breaking the rules about the limits of beauty.

Even more generally speaking, when an artist does manage to break the rules, they end up challenging our preconceptions of what can be - these preconceptions are the true "rules" - and it opens us up to a deeper experience of the world. As examples, anything that creates a feeling of awe, anything that touches on sublime beauty, is operating on this level. I think if you look closely, all of the artists you named are working in this way; it's not mere repetition of what came before.

The problem is that you're talking down to me. If you can't or won't see this, I don't want to engage in a debate.

Okay, but that's not actually how cysts work if you look it up. They are sacs that can have cancerous tissue inside them, but they can also have fluid or air. The operational definition of benign and malignant tumors that doctors use boils down to rudimentary observation, yes, but in the lab we've really identified many of the key mutations in the transition from benign to malignant. So I guess you could say we have a reasonably good idea of what cancer is and how it works, but it hasn't fully made its way onto the front lines yet, either in terms of assessment or treatment.

I understand your cynical point of view about funding, but I guess I would say two things. First, cynicism is a cancer unto itself (ha), and all academics are faced with the corrupting influence of money. Second, if you go and talk to the cancer researchers in the nearest university you'll probably find a great deal of them really do care about the work; they just might care about a very tiny corner of it rather than a cure-all solution.

Incivility is against the guidelines, I don't want to argue with it.

That was unnecessarily condescending. Incivility is against the guidelines. What I have to say doesn't lose its validity simply because you shame me for my point of view. If you were sure enough of your position, you wouldn't need to humiliate me about mine.

I see what you're saying, but we probably don't have the same interpretation of the words 'job' and 'artist'. More broadly, the nature of creativity is to challenge authority. Look at any time period, any medium, and the most creative work is always going against the grain. Breaking the rules can be as simple as using an uncommon kind of brushstroke. It doesn't have to be against the wishes of whoever is paying for the work, and furthermore, just because something is challenging authority doesn't mean it's creative.

Okay, fair point. I'll revise: the job of an artist is to break the rules intelligently.

Also, I think you're conflating legality and morality. I can think of situations for all 8 cases of (legal|illegal)(moral|immoral)(agree|disagree). However, you're probably right that agreement/disagreement influences morality judgments.

The job of an artist is to break the rules.

So I think the general claim is that focusing on cancer is a middle ground between seeking treatments for obscure well-defined illnesses and searching for a panacea for illness or disease in general. Cancer has a precise operational definition: unregulated cell growth. It isn't nearly as vague as illness or disease. We understand a lot about all the different pathways inside cells that can lead to it. A "cure for cancer" is an attempt to address the issue upstream, such that it will affect all different types of cancer in the body. Unlike seeking a panacea for all illness, this is not obviously a waste of research effort. There are highly similar mechanisms at work in every cancer. Even if a cure-all cannot be found (I would be surprised, personally), just trying to understand the mechanisms still has value.

Sorry, I don't understand. If you meant PaulHoule's comment I'm not sure how that answers my question, and I didn't find any other comments by you. Do you mean because cancer isn't a simple, isolated thing like polio or TB?

Why is it a waste of research effort? We've made dramatic non-palliative strides in the area of cancer treatment, and most importantly have been able to induce complete remission in a significant number of cases.

Social pressures both to differentiate and conform to a particular sub-group during adolescence, and the kinds of groups that girls and boys tend to form. At least in part.