I know there’s a reason, but I don’t know what it is.
In: Biology
You *can* cut off cancer cells and thousands of people undergo successful surgery without their cancer ever returning. However it’s tricky. Many times you can cut off the original cancer and yet a new cancer can grow somewhere else. Also you could cut off 99.9% of the cancer and leave a few cells behind, which then grow back into new cancer. Lastly, sometimes cancer tissue looks like normal tissue and it might be hard for the surgeon to differentiate the two.
To answer your question we first have to understand what cancer is and how it works. Cancer starts with a single human cell that stops doing its intended job and instead grows and makes more cancer cells very quickly. The way cancer hurts us is by growing so big in a vital organ that the vital organ can’t do its job any longer, and we die from the failure of the vital organ. For example, breasts are very nice, but no one would die from breast cancer if it stayed in the breast. We can live without breasts. Breast cancer kills people because it spreads to places like the liver and lungs and we can’t without those. Now to your question.
You *can* cut out cancer cells. The problem is that if you miss even one cell it just starts the process all over again, which is why we almost always give chemo/immunotherapy or radiation or both in addition to the surgery, just to increase the chances of killing any stray cells left behind by the surgery.
I am a blood cancer survivor. There is no way to “cut off” cancerous cells there. All the main blood cancers (lymphomas, leukemias and myelomas) have to be treated systemically. Sometimes there may be surgical reduction of a lymph node or to debulk lymphatic masses, but that is either for biopsy or to alleviate symptoms. It’s never curative with a blood cancer. Also, people are lumping all sorts of drug therapies into a generic “chemo” category. But there are many targeted therapies that do not randomly attack fast-growth cells like the ‘usual’ chemotherapy does. Immunotherapies like CAR-T, Rituxan, etc., are highly targeted and go after very specific cells.
Because cancer is profitable in big pharmas eyes if there was a true cure for cancer which there very likely is one there would be no money to be made, the sad truth
Cancer cells don’t die as normal cells do and multiply themselves quick, it’s like zombie attack: you can kill some but the only way to stay safe is to kill them all. If some live they will replicate again. And yes, some of them could be just cut off.
Have you heard of “Crispr” ?. It’s a medical tool that allows surgeons to cut out microscopic sequences of sick and deformed cells. Crispr is currently going through testing, but I have faith it will change the world by restoring health to many sick people.
Something missing from the picture is that we all have cancer cells in our body. They sometimes get created and are immediately killed, or they hang out somewhere without multiplying, or they make a tiny tumor somewhere not noticable. So all of this is not worth to be called “you have cancer”. One someone suffers from a noticable cancer that needs surgery, then the doctor can assume with higher probability that the same type of cells, or the same weakness that caused them, will do the trick again in the future. So this patient has to stay under observation even after a cancer is surgically removed.
There are some cancers you can just cut out and not do chemotherapy. Thyroid cancer is one of the few where you can make full recovery without additional treatments after surgery.
That’s what they do. But you might be at a stage where they would need to cut more than what is needed for the body to continue breathing. :/
You can, and surgeons frequently do, but there’s no guarantee it will remove the underlying cause.
ETA: excising tumors is effectively first aid for cancer.
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