“*A carcinogen is a substance, organism or agent capable of causing cancer*”.
“*Cancer* is *a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body*”.
How does something like alcohol or tobacco cause cancer?
In: Biology
Through some sort of DNA damage they cause mutations. Sometimes those mutations do nothing, sometimes they just cause the cell with the mutationto die, and in unfortunate circumstances, they can also cause the cell to divide uncontrollably. That uncontrolled division is what we call cancer, and the cancer type (eg.breast, lung,etc.), depends on the cell type affected.
The nature of these mutations vary. And though you may have two “lung” cancers, if they are caused by different mutations then treatment that works on one may not work on the other. That’s why it’s hard to say that there is a “cure for cancer”. Cancer is a whole constellation of diseases, each caused or enhanced by different mutations in different genes, so there is unlikely to be a “cure-all” for cancer. Luckily, we are getting better at identifying the mutations and learning how to treat them specifically. So, while “cancer” might not be cured, we’re working our hardest on treating as many subtypes as we can.
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