Isn’t radiation a known way to damage cells and increase the potential for cancer?
In: Biology
You can think of a cell’s DNA like software. A small amount of damage can lead to bugs. Our cells are fitted out with tools to manage and repair bugs, and other tools that will cause the whole program to just shut down if the bugs are too critical or extensive.
Cancer happens when you get a very specific set of bugs, in very specific order. Starting with the cell’s bug-detection toolkit.
The kinds of DNA damage we encounter in our day-to-day life (for example UV damage) generally don’t cause major damage to the software. Instead, they cause slight occasional changes, spread throughout the code, which can lead to bugs.
Radiation therapy, on the other hand, is targeted, heavy DNA damage. It doesn’t cause small errors throughout the program. It straight up scrambles the software so it won’t even start.
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