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Asked by spongebob48 to Cathal, Daphne, Darren, Jon, Katherine on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by ilovescience2991.
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Darren Logan answered on 13 Mar 2012:
Cancer is actually a process – when your cells go out of control and start dividing rapidly. There are lots of different reasons this can happen (genetic reasons, or due to radiation, or smoking, or too much sun) and each one gives a slightly different type of disease. There are also lots of different types of cells, and depending on which one the cancer starts in you will get a different type of disease.
So for this reason, pretty much every cancer is different from the one before so it will be very difficult to cure them all. However, it think it is likely that many cancers will be more “treatable” in the future and will be something people live with so long as they take their medicine, rather than something they die from.
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Katherine Haxton answered on 16 Mar 2012:
One of the really important things we need to do is make the drugs that treat cancer have fewer side effects. Sometimes the side effects of the drugs make the patients feel worse than the cancer did in the first place. People working to cure cancers work in all kinds of areas of science – understanding why cells go out of control and how to stop it or fix it, understanding how certain small molecules (drugs) interact with cells and kill them or stop them multiplying, developing new drugs to kill cancer cells, developing new ways to deliver drugs to reduce side effects.
I think Darren’s right – it will be really difficult to cure all cancer but we are getting better at it and we will keep getting better at it.
Comments
ilovescience2991 commented on :
mt gradad die from cancer. can you die from smoking
ilovescience2991 commented on :
my sorry
Katherine commented on :
Hello ilovescience
I’m sorry to hear about your grandad. Yes sadly you can die from smoking. There are chemicals in cigarette smoke that can damage people’s lungs and some of this damage can cause lung cancer. There are other ways to get lung cancer so not all sufferers are smokers. Smoking can increase the risk of other diseases as well, and smoking around other people can increase their risk of disease, particularly children.
If you stop smoking, after a few years the body manages to repair a lot of the damage done to the lungs. The younger you are when you stop smoking, the better, but its better not to start in the first place.
ilovescience2991 commented on :
i know two girls at my school who smoke and i dont know if i should tell somone about it what would you do??
Katherine commented on :
I would probably tell someone but privately so people didn’t know it was me. I’d pick a teacher I trusted and got on OK with, and I’d ask them about it.
There were lots of girls who smoked when I was at school – always in the toilets which made them horrible. The smell of smoke is quite obvious on people’s clothes so one of your teachers may have noticed already