Quote:
Originally Posted by neshera
Just as a thought exercise:
If someone develops a non-invasive cure for cancer, many nurses and surgeons will be underemployed/unemployed. Would this be a bad thing?
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Absolutely not, is obviously the answer you're looking for. As JesseK suggested, doctors would still have plenty to do treating patients. Cancer researchers will still have plenty to work on. Even with some non-invasive cure, there will be research that can be done into improving the treatment, or finding alternatives, or even if cancer becomes a complete non-issue, there will always be more to research. Similarly, the nurses and surgeons will continue to have surgeries to carry out, or if the demand for invasive procedures really does dwindle they can adapt to the developing demands of carrying out these procedures (already, more and more surgeries are being carried out via ultrasound or endoscopy). It's akin to the field of physics. I often wonder why people are so driven to discover a "grand unified theory of everything," as if after that we will know everything there is to know about the universe and our "toil" as physicists will be done. There will always be more that we don't know.