Why/how does radiation therapy not just cause more cancer?

Question

Isn’t radiation a known way to damage cells and increase the potential for cancer?

In: Biology

Answer 1

It does, but with cancer or bad mutations, the cells usually have a self destruct trigger. If the cell has too much DNA damage, it will kill itself. This works 99% of the time, the exception of course is if the self destruct mechanism is damaged.. then you get cancer, cancer.

So when you irradiate, you’re kind of hoping the cells do what they’re supposed to for that 99% of the time, and sometimes it does cause more cancer, rarely happens but yea.