So today I found out that Kelly Preston die of breast cancer, also today I found out that I have no idea how cancer works.
What I knew:
>>cancer = tumor (cells divided uncontrollably and no longer perform their roles)
>>sometime tumors can not be removed (which I understand when it comes to organs like the brain, you can’t get to it without breaking some other part BUT I don’t get it why you can easily cut out breast tumors or skin ones???)
>>sometimes cells from those tumors will travel through blood and that leads to tumors in other places, why is that possible??
And those are my main question, why can’t you just go in and cut the tumor out in those non-essential organs?
In: Biology
>BUT I don’t get it why you can easily cut out breast tumors or skin ones???
Often you can.
By the time you do so, metastasis may have already started.
>sometimes cells from those tumors will travel through blood and that leads to tumors in other places, why is that possible??
Because every cell in the human body has the DNA for the entire body, and parts of the human body travel around within it.
The most obvious example of a cell that you *want* to travel around your blood stream, lymph nodes, and even through other tissues sometimes, is white blood cells. The ones that help you recover when you’re sick, stop you from dying when a splinter pierces your skin, etc. Their ability to do so is encoded in the DNA of *every* cell and all a cancer cell has to do is then toggle that DNA back on.
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