I used to work in a hospital where there were a number of people doing cancer research. My job was to assess how computers could help them automate some of the drudgery (this was the mid '80's computers were still a novelty to a surprising number of scientists).
Many days during lunch meetings these guys would be shooting the shit about their work and it always struck me how easy it seemed to kill cancer cells. One day I had that thought out loud, and it was explained to me that many diseases such as cancer and most viruses such as HIV/aids are fairly fragile in the grand scheme of things. One of the problems researchers had to deal with was that it sometimes a little too easy to kill things in a laboratory setting, only to find no measurable effect in clinical trial.
You really must have a certain mindset to devote that much time (in some cases years) only to find out you were heading down a blind alley. Then you simply start all over again.
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