Isn’t radiation a known way to damage cells and increase the potential for cancer?
In: Biology
Cell DNA is continually being damaged and repaired. Cancer happens when the repair mechanism breaks.
Granted, focused radiation does an abnormally high amount of damage to DNA in a short period of time. This is mitigated by two factors. 1) Healthy cells can repair. 2) cancer cells are hit by multiple radiation beams at once, but healthy cells are not. Imagine stabbing the tumor with four spears. All the healthy cells on the sides get hit by one spear. So we can figure out how much radiation a healthy cells can tolerate and then use multiple brands to make it deadly at the tumor.
Granted, you raise an excellent point, one potential side effect would be making new cancer cells.
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