Why is cancer so hard to cure? Will we ever find an infallible cure?
In: 2088
Cancer is unlike any other disease.
It is not an infection by some foreign body. You cannot give the body a way to effectively fight off some foreign intruders. It also isnt some kind of poisoning to which you can give an antidote.
No, cancer is your own body killing itself.
Cancer comes in many form, its not just one specific thing.
In a fully grown humans each cell has its life and before it dies it creates a copy to replace itself (or some part of your body replaces it; red blood cells for example cant reproduce).
But what if, instead of reproducing just a single copy, it creates 50 copies. And they each create more copies, and those will create more. This uncontrolled growth is called a tumor.
These tumors feed on your bodies resources, while not serving any function or purpose. They can put pressure on nerves or blood vessels. Those two things combined can damage or kill off other parts of your body.
But your immune system cant do anything about it. Theres no intruder to fight off. These cells are still your body; and the immune system recognizes them as such.
And as i said earlier, cancer comes in dozens of forms and has many causes. There are several genes in a cell that could cause it to become cancerous. And there are dozens of reasons these genes could break. It could be something acute like radiation poisoning. It could also be something more long term like smoking. But ultimately we often dont even know where the cancer came from in the first place, its just there now.
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