• Question: why isn't there a cure for cancer?

    Asked by kirsty21 to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Because ‘cancer’ is a word describing a disease that has so many different causes. If cancer was a simple, easy to understand disease we’d have a cure by now, probably.

      But there are so many variable genetic causes and lifestyle determined factors that we may never have a one size fits all cure for cancer.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Because there are thousands of different types of cancer, each with a different cause. Because of all the different causes, there will never be a single pill that will cure all cancers. What we can do it try to understand the most common ones and learn how to treat them.

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      The main problem is that every cancer is really different to the other. Even 2 cases of, for example, lung cancer can have completely different causes. Keeping with lung cancer as an example, someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day can get lung cancer but so can someone who has never smoked in their life. The risk for the non smoker is greatly decreased but it still can happen.

      It normally comes down to a mutations making a protein not work the way it should, the big problem in cancer is that for every cancer there are lots of proteins that can go wrong and give the same result. This makes it really difficult to make a magic bullet type cure.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Cancer is always caused by an abnormal division of what would otherwise be normal cells. It can develop due to a variety of causes and in different parts of an organism, progressing or not at different rates. Its effects are also different depending on what functions are affected.
      To find a cure for cancer, however, we need to “attack” a cell that belongs to the organism. Whatever you use to try to kill it, is likely to also kill other cells in your body. So unless you can surgically remove all cancer cells, other types of treatment tend to have limited efficiency because they destroy normal cells too. Some treatments do work though!

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