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In Deadpool Ajax tortures Wade in order to see if he has any mutant genes, which he hopes will bring about his mutant abilities. Of course, it works and brings Wade's mutant ability to life in the form of being able to regenerate and heal quickly.

His ability to heal and regenerate would explain why his cancer doesn't kill him, though it's still there. As fast as the cancer cells spread, the mutant genes stop them.

But what about the other people/mutants being experimented on? For those that also have dormant mutant genes, once the genes are awakened, the reaction would be different for each individual. For a person who develops mutant abilities that differ from Wade's healing/regenerative ability, would they still suffer with their sickness and eventually die?

Most of the people Ajax is experimenting on are terminal, and they wouldn't have the same ability to keep their sickness in check the way Wade does.

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    Wade's cancer is not gone. It turned into super cancer and is why his skin is all messed up.
    – Catija
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 13:36
  • Doesn't Ajax say his mutant genes are fighting it and it's practically gone or something like that?
    – Stephen_Film_Guy
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 13:41
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    No. The cancer and his healing abilities are in stasis. The cancer grows at the same rate as his healing power is able to cure it, so neither "wins". There's a question about it here somewhere but I'm mobile. I'll look for it later.
    – Catija
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 13:43
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    Are most of the people Ajax is experimenting on terminally ill? I don't think that's ever explicitly stated in the movie anywhere. I assumed that they had a lot of different reasons for applying for the experiment; Wade's was his cancer but that doesn't mean that was the reason for any of the others.
    – Anthony Grist
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 15:18
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    Well, I just assumed a lot of them were ill. I know at one point in the movie we see "Agent Smith" handing a card to a man on a mattress in some kind of flop house. He appears to be hooked to an IV. Of course, this man could also just be a drug addict, or a homeless person.
    – Stephen_Film_Guy
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 18:38

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Yes, or maybe. This part of the movie was probably the worst adaption of the source material in the movie. In the comics, Wade and "Worm" Cunningham are sent to the Hospice after failing to develop useful superpowers in the Weapon X program. They are sent there to die peacefully, and away from the public eye, a way for the government to keep things under wraps. But a Doctor there, Killebrew, along with The Attending (better known as Francis) has illegally decided to use the patients as guinea pigs. They were not all terminal, just failed projects, and they were not mutants. And they did it for a variety of reasons, for God or Country (Most of Alpha Flight), a sense of civic duty, for super powers, for financial gain, or because they were sadists (Sabertooth, Ajax).

The movie changed this to Ajax being the one in charge, attempting to force dormant mutant powers to activate in desperate soldiers of fortune (mercenaries). This is done through a combination of drugs, a stressful environment, and life endangering situations. While it's true that mutant powers vary by a great deal

  1. the powers are a mutation meant to enhance the survival of the host
  2. there are some mutant power sets that are fairly common (telepaths, healers, super strength, speedsters, shape shifters)
  3. Francis' end goal doesn't care what the results are as long as he gets a super soldier.

Given that mutant powers are often a result of the environment that the host is in, as a way to protect the host, if you put multiple people in the same life or death situations, the results should be the same. Anyone that doesn't heal or produce a power is just written off as another reject corpse. Anyone who produces a useful (to Francis) power is supposed to be brainwashed and used as a weapon as Francis or his customers see fit, until they die in a fight or from the disease. Those that get cured of their sickness are just a nice bonus. They even heavily implied that Angeldust was brainwashed by Francis.

Francis was right about to write off Wade for dead/useless when he put him in the oxygen tank, as a final resort to force a mutant change. He had no moral objection to using people or taking their lives for his financial gain.

Also, we don't explicitly know if everyone was there because of fatal diseases. Just that Mr. Pedophile targeted two people that were sick, Wade and another unnamed person.

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    Thank you for the answer! I appreciate it. Truth be told, Deadpool was really never a character I followed all that much, and I was going solely off of what I saw (and remembered) of the film. So, I appreciate this.
    – Stephen_Film_Guy
    Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 18:53

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