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Asked by 11redme to Susana, Sam, Ed, Dave, Ben on 17 Jun 2013.
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Ed Lowe answered on 17 Jun 2013:
I’ve been a scientist for about 20 years now, if I include the time whilst I was studying for my PhD.
Your question about a cure for cancer is a difficult one to answer and I think the answer may be both yes and no. Some types of cancer are already possible to treat well, and most people will survive them if they are caught early enough.
Unfortunately, the DNA damage which causes cancer is something that builds up slowly over the span of your lifetime due to perfectly normal things like exposure to sunlight. So whilst we may well be able to prevent people from dieing of cancer at a young age it is sadly likely to be with us as a disease of old age for the foreseeable future.
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Benjamin Hall answered on 17 Jun 2013:
It depends on how you define a scientist, I guess. It’s debateable whether or not I’m a scientist now as a PhD student!
My first time in a research lab was as an undergraduate but I’m not going to count that. I’ll count from starting my PhD and say I’ve been a scientist for 9 months.
On the subject of cancer, that’s a really difficult question and even the best scientists that work on cancer probably won’t know the answer.
If I had to speculate I’d say we will eventually understand most cancers to an extent that we can treat them very effectively. But there will always be some very rare cancers we will find difficult to treat.
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Sam Horrell answered on 17 Jun 2013:
If being a scintist is measured from the start of a science degree I’ve been a scientist for nearly 5 years now. If its from the start of a PhD its 2. If its years after a PhD I’m not a scientist.
In terms of cancer it depends heavily on the type of cancer. There are some cancers which have a well defined cause such as cervical cancer and infection with the HPV virus. They have a vaccine against the virus now and eradicating that cancer should be within our reach.
Other cancers are much more complex with upwards of 10 different ways you could get that cancer. To cure it you would need to prevent all of these which is a huge thing to accomplish. In cases like this it may be better to manage the cancer through treatment and reduce the likelyhood of people getting cancer by encouraging healthier lifestyles. Take lung cancer for example, if people stopped smoking (just smoking nothing else) lung cancers would ruduce by around 50-60%.
A lot of work in cancer is involved in finding new ways to detect cancer as it is so much easier to treat if it is caught early. Some cancers such as liver cancer have very few symptoms and is generally not caught until it is too late for treatment.
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Susana Teixeira answered on 17 Jun 2013:
I have been a scientist for 13 years now, not very long.
There are many different types of cancer so it is difficult to give a general answer, but I do believe we can find cures for all. I don’t think it will happen quickly though, from one single Eureka discovery (but I may be wrong!). I think it will need a collective effort from many scientists in different areas and here students can help. People of all ages should keep asking for a cure and demanding their governments to keep supporting this quest, as well as investing in prevention and early diagnosis because these are extremely important weapons against cancer.
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David Briggs answered on 17 Jun 2013:
I’ve been a Scientist since 2001 or 2004, depending on whether you count from the start of the end of my PhD. So 9 or 12 years.
I did spend some of that time working for Cancer Research UK.
The problem with cancers is that there are so many different reasons we get cancer, and so many different cancers, that we can’t really hope to get a single wonder-drug that cures all cancers.
Some of the more common causes of cancer might be curable, but one the whole, no – there is no “magic bullet”
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