• Question: How do you cur cancer

    Asked by kod to Claire, Liad, Ruth, Ryan, Mako on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Jatan123, KATIE46, amy2003, JHILL_FOOTBALL, OverLordDestroy1.
    • Photo: Liad Baruchin

      Liad Baruchin answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      There a lot of different ways to combat cancer. Most of the ways involve trying to target the cancer while keeping to good cells alive. People are working day and night to find a proper cure, but for now there is no definite cure.

    • Photo: Claire Bryer

      Claire Bryer answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      It is very tricky to cure cancer because it hides by pretending they are ‘good cells’ so your body doesn’t get rid of them. Scientists have been working on different ways to detect and find cancer cells, and to find drugs that can kill these bad cells without killing your own cells. This is also very difficult as different types of cancers hide in different ways! Just because we find a drug that is good at killing some types of breast cancer cells does not mean it is good for killing lung cancer cells. Cancer can be caused by mutations in many different genes, and finding out where these mutations are can tell scientists which type of drug to use. Using someone’s DNA code to see what drugs they can respond to is called ‘pharmacogenetics’.
      I do believe that in 10-20 years we will have made enough progress to virtually ‘cure’ most cancers. As part of this we will need to have improved early detection of cancer. If you find cancer late on then it can spread and change into many different subtypes of cancer, which is difficult to treat. But if you find it early then it will be easier to treat and cure.

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