• Question: Why hasn't there been a cure for cancer yet as scientists have been studying it for years!

    Asked by flash18 to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      There has been a cure for cancer, but which one?

      For many cancers we now have excellent therapies. Simply labelling all these cancerous diseases with their myriad types together as just “cancer” is a mistake.

      By analogy, Manchester United and Steeple Swinderby Wanderers are both football teams, but they are rather different!

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      It is hard to cure! There are lots and lots of treatments, and new things are discovered all the time. However, different types of cancer need different types of treatment , so it gets complicated! Cancer has been around for a long time – even dinosaurs got cancer! – so it takes a while to figure everything out.

    • Photo: Ruth Mitchell

      Ruth Mitchell answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      A cure implies that it is gone completely when treated. With some cancers this is the case but with other it may come back even when treated. So one type of cancer in a certain person might be cured but the same cancer in another person causes different damage and isn’t. So we are not only looking at all the different types of cancer but also how to affects the person.

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      As Peter, Katy and Ruth have all said – there are many many types of cancer. Also, a hundred patients who all have liver cancer will also have a hundred different ‘types’ of cancer! Every single tumour is different, even cells within the same tumour can be different from each other. That’s why many of the treatments we currently have will work better for some people than others, and for some people it won’t work at all, even if they all have the same type of cancer. It’s hard to say what will work and what won’t for any given person until we try it. It will be very very difficult to invent just ONE thing that will cure ALL cancer, but what we can do is to invent many many ways to treat cancer, so that we won’t run out of options to try.

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      There are so many types, and each type has things about it which make it quite unique. Also, the same type of cancer can be unpredictable every time it develops. One thing we have got very good at is treating the symptoms, and in some cases, if its caught early enough, then we can cure it. Since the 1970s we’ve spent over £100 billion (yes, billion) trying to cure it!

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