My grandmother recently passed away from cancer after it jumped from bladder to stomach. If it can spread throughout a body, why not person to person?
In: Biology
Cancer cells are normal body cells that have, for lack of a better term, “gone rogue”. They are cells that just keep growing (making tumors) and don’t listen when other cells tell them to stop. It’s difficult to fight because scientists have to find a way to only kill your misbehaving cells, without hurting your healthy ones. To your immune system, your cancer cells are just normal cells.
It spreads around the body mainly by having cells fall into the bloodstream and ride around until they anchor somewhere else.
The reason cancer cells don’t spread to other people is that they aren’t protected in other bodies. For example, if one of your grandmother’s cancerous cells had somehow gotten into your body, your immune system would recognize it as an invader and kill it immediately.
Does that make sense?
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