There is Likely No Conspiracy To Hide The Cure For Cancer

My opponent contests that there is a lot of money in treating cancer, the implication being that big pharma would intentionally keep the cure for cancer a secret in order to continue profiting off of cancer patients. There are multiple problems with this assertion.1. It assumes the value gained from curing cancer is less than the value of treating itThink about how rich and famous the team of scientists that finally cured cancer would be. Remember, not everyone involved in cancer research/treatment profits from all cancer patients. Every nation, company, and individual scientist only gets a piece of the pie, and the quickest way to get a bigger piece of the pie for oneself is to make all your competitors obsolete. Furthermore, consider countries with socialized medicine. These nations clearly have a financial incentive to cure cancer, because it would cut costs for them tremendously. Keep in mind that for this conspiracy to work, every privy nation would have to be in on it, even though most nations wouldn't actually profit from doing so. "But what about the insurance companies? They have a lot of money and influence over the health care system! " Well, what about them? Insurance companies don't make money spending on expensive cancer-treatments. In fact, the healthier their payees are, the more profit they make, so while they do have a lot of money and influence, their interests are actually to cure cancer so they can cut costs. It's easy to fall into the mental trap of assuming an entire industry is in collusion with one another, but when you stop and realize an industry is actually comprised of several small groups in competition with one another, the idea that each group would voluntarily forgo such a profitable option when there's nothing but a backdoor-deal keeping their competition from curing cancer and taking all the profits for themselves, the idea of a conspiracy becomes incredulous. 2. It ignores non-profit cancer researchersNot everyone in the cancer-game is doing so to meet a bottom-line. Consider the vast number of universities and non-profit medical organization who can and do make frequent breakthroughs in cancer research [1][2]. What possible reason would there be for a non-profit organization to intentionally hide the cure for cancer to stuff the pockets of corporations they have no allegiance to? It's not like they stand to gain anything, themselves. 3. Cancer researchers have families, tooThink about the researchers who specifically got into studying cancer because they knew a loved one who passed away from cancer, or how about the corporate fat-cats who have children that have developed leukemia. You may think some of these people genuinely value money over their loved ones, but all it would take is one person who values human life more than money to ruin this neat little racket they have going on. Are these people really willing to let their friends, families, and potentially even themselves die just so they don't have to manufacture a cure that would have earned them untold billions, anyway?4. A profit incentive doesn't prove conspiracyJust because there's a lot of money involved in treating cancer doesn't prove, or even indicate that the cure is known and intentionally kept a secret. This hardly even qualifies as circumstantial evidence. There's lots of money in lots of other industries, but that doesn't prove they, too, have some sort of conspiracy controlling how they operate, so we can't assume such is true for the cancer industry without more compelling evidence. It must further be considered that we already have many examples of these companies choosing cures over profit [3][4][5]. Why don't we see the suppression of vaccines and antibiotics? Considering how prevalent measles and tuberculosis could be right now, why do these corporations continue to invest in spreading the cure, rather than coming up with some phony shortage so they can instead sell us treatments? There's simply too many unanswered gaps to use the profit incentive as evidence of anything. ConclusionPrima facie it may seem plausible to suggest that there is a conspiracy to hide the cure for cancer, but once all the relevant information is considered, it becomes crystal-clear that not only is there no evidence the cure is being hidden, but there isn't even a real incentive to do so. As such, we have no compelling reason to assume any such conspiracy exists. The resolution is affirmed. VOTE PROSources 1. . http://www.cancer.org... 2. . http://www.nejm.org... 3. . https://medium.com... 4. . http://www.academicjournals.org... 5. . https://www.behance.net...