Question: Do you think scientists focus too much on facilitating/preventing symptoms of a disease instead of trying to stop people from getting it in the first place?

Natasha Myhill answered on 15 Nov 2017:

Hmm, tricky question! You’re right in that the focus is split among the whole scientific community, which also means that the money funding the research is split. It depends on the disease I think. For example, because cancer arises from our own cells in a very unpredictable way, I dont think we will ever actually be able to stop people getting it, so its important to develop better treatments/detection systems for it. However, other diseases that we know more about or that are more predictable, research into stopping people getting them is very important. For example, as we are living longer now, more people will get dementia/Alzheimers, so if we could find a drug that people could take to prevent it, that would be great. Similarly, more and more vaccines are being developed to prevent certain diseases caused by viruses, which are also really important!