Athena Aktipis

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1,334 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 9 Jan

Athena Aktipis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #144 Classic episode – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is a fundamental universal phenomena · 9 Jan 2026 podcast

So if you...

high doses, and for a long time, you're actually applying the strongest possible selection pressure to favor the cells that are resistant, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So the only cells that survive are the ones that can survive in the presence of the drug that you're trying to use to get rid of the tumor.

And so then the question becomes, well, you know, well, what's the alternative then?

You know, like, you know, and and if you accept that for certain kinds of tumors, at least, especially if they're advanced.

Right.

And are likely genetically diverse.

They probably already have resistance mutations.

Then you kind of have to.

For a certain class, I'm not going to say for all tumors because there's some where, yes, you can get rid of them with standard chemotherapy.

But there are certain classes of tumors for which, you know, the sort of logical approach is to look at it and say, OK, it's unlikely that this could be eradicated with high dose therapy.

So we have to sort of take as given that this tumor is going to stick around.

So what kind of tumor do we want to cultivate?

And, you know, what you want is a tumor that's going to respond when you treat it.

Right.

That's going to be controllable.

That's going to not become invasive and metastatic.

One that's not going to disrupt the life of the person who harbors it as much.

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