We treat every disease with poison. The disease is alive, and we want to kill it. That's all poison is.

For reference, "antibiotic" means "contrary to life".

We also treat cancer with surgery, the only problem being that, like the poison, it doesn't really work.

But cancer is not a living organism and rather parts of the living organism gone wrong.

And cutting the bad parts out, can indeed work, but maybe future generations find a way to help the body stop going wrong, so you don't need those radical methods anymore.

> But cancer is not a living organism and rather parts of the living organism gone wrong.

This is much like saying that criminals are not living organisms, just parts of a society that have gone wrong.

Cancers are living organisms, similar to, but quite distinct from, the animal they developed from.

I meant, cancer is not a living organism, in a way, that a living organism can reproduce. Cancer can only grow, until the body is destroyed, but not beyond. . So seems a bit similar to a parasite, but not the same.

A parasite is its own organism, has its own purpose. Even though it is against the purpose of the host. Cancer has no purpose. It is a "bug" in the organism that can be fatal.

Maybe 25th century people, instead of resorting to poisoning it, will find a way to assimilate disease and add its biological distinctiveness to our own.

Why would using the best means/technology available to us at the time make us "idiots"?

Were primitive hunters "idiots" for using crude (only by modern standards of course) sharpened sticks/stones instead of rifles?