How come we can find cures for up-and-coming diseases in usually less than ten years, but cancer has existed for so long and there still isn’t a reliable cure?
In: Biology
Cancer isn’t one disease it is a wide range of similar diseases which turn normal human cells rogue.
This is my first time answering on of these so I’ll try to make it simple as possible. Cancer is caused by mutations that can come about in many different ways. Because the cause of cancer is so complex (with different genetic and environmental factors), it is much more difficult to treat compared to other diseases. Treatment is also difficult because each person reacts to the treatment differently and it can effect different areas/systems in the body.
There is obviously wayyyy more information about this but this is the most basic explanation. Hope that help!
Cancer isn’t a disease as much a malfunction of your own cellular machinery.
There are a number on control mechanisms which make sure cells don’t grow out of control, if any of these many mechanisms fail in the trillions of cells in your body, you potentially get cancer.
Not all cancers are failures of the same cellular machinery. Not all cancers are equally treatable.
The question is how do you get a medicine or therapy to target only the bad cells but not the healthy cells?
We very rarely if ever can cure a disease. We can develop preventative measures like vaccines, treatments like antibiotics or just treat the symptoms to increase comfort. But actually curing anything is quite difficult. We have lots of treatments for cancer already but because cancerous cells are so similar to the hosts it’s very hard to do anything that can kill them without also doing incredible damage to the person.
lots of diseases don’t have a cure. take the common cold. and seasonal flu. modern medicine is advanced but not as advanced as you think. we still don’t have solutions for many diseases that have lasted centuries
There isn’t one singular cancer, there are many types of cancers. Each type involves its own ways of developing and spreading.
Cancer begins when a piece of a person’s DNA mutates. Usually mutations happen when a cell is damaged – from radiation, a virus or bacteria, toxins, or as a byproduct of metabolism in the body. We’re all constantly producing & killing those mutated cells all the time. Most of the time, our bodies are expert cancer assassins. But, sometimes the mutation makes the cells multiply and spread faster than the body can eliminate the cancerous cells.
If say, a lung cell is damaged by asbestos, those damaged cells create mesothelioma – a type of lung cancer. Smokers are at risk of squamous cell carcinoma – also a type of lung cancer. Each type of lung cancer starts in different types of cells & responds to different types of treatment. Some are surgically removed, some respond to radiation or drugs (chemotherapy).
There are reliable treatments, and even preventative measures (like getting vaccinated for HPV, a virus that causes genital/oral warts that can damage cells) that are available, but there will most likely never be a one-size-fits-all ‘cure for cancer’.
Cancer isn’t just one single type of sickness or mutation. There are so many types, both benign and malignant.
The causes aren’t always known. Sometimes it’s exposure to a particular environment or substance, but others have little to no warning.
They’re also unpredictable. Some respond well to established treatment, others require new methods, and some just don’t respond at all.
And to make things more complicated, they can go undetected for so long that catching them.and treating them can be tricky too.
If it helps, we didn’t so much find a cure for, say, COVID as we did figure out a way to tell our body “holy shit this thing will kill you and you definitely need to kill it”. Our body’s immune system – an incredibly intricate structure – does the rest.
The problem with cancer is that cancer by nature has figured out how to evade the body’s immune system, in part because cancer cells are our own cells (and therefore bear many of the chemical markings our body uses to avoid attacking itself). Our immune system’s evolution is constrained by the need to (a) not attack its own healthy cells (so it can’t be too sensitive to small changes) *and* (b) to hunt and kill cancerous cells (so it has to be willing to attack them *sometimes*). The balance we have is basically the best it can do, which does a good job of holding off cancer until very late in life in most people. By the time you get cancer, your immune system has fended off literally billions of potential proto-cancers – but you live a long time and you have a lot of cells, so eventually one of them can roll the dice exactly right.
Cancer isn’t a disease; its your body’s own cells going rogue and growing when they’re not supposed to.
In short: It’s not that we can’t “cure” cancer, its that a) Every cancer is different in how it grows and spreads, and b) we need to find a way to cure cancer without harming our good cells (which, ironically, could turn cancerous themselves) during treatment.
Technically cancer is pretty different from other diseases as it comes from within the body and isn’t just some virus coming from atmosphere. Our body constantly produces new cells which interact with each other, perform some predefined functions, consume elements from outer world (whatever you breath, eat, drink and so on) to live and reproduce.
Cancer happens when any type of cells for some reason mutates (randomly changes its structure) and stops fulfilling its purpose while still technically being alive and somewhat included in the system. This most often happens because it got some weird element and developed in wrong way. If the organism fails to quickly detect and kill such cells, they start reproducing, but also unpredictably. Congratulations, there’s cancer.
It’s just a big collection of bad cells, which take energy from good cells, uncontrollably reproduce, taking even more energy, and start just physically pushing everything else near them, breaking the normal working flow of organs. That’s why it’s dangerous and why it can be undetected for a very long time – you won’t notice it until cancer cells start physically interfering with half of your body processes. And since they are still cells, it’s incredibly difficult to kill only bad cells, not damaging all the good ones.
Chemotherapy does exactly this, it’s basically a compromise between trying to kill as much cancer cells as possible while trying to not kill everything else in the process. Physical operations remove the big cancer tumors, but it’s still impossible to identify and remove every single cancer cell, and most of them are still able to reproduce. That’s why right now it’s almost impossible to fully get rid of cancer. However, if the technology reaches the level where we can perform full body scans with getting status of every single cell and killing them one by one, it’ll probably stop being an issue.
Latest Answers