• Question: do you think there will ever be a cure for cancer?

    Asked by mhchs11 to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by blondie2.
    • Photo: Christine Switzer

      Christine Switzer answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Yes, I think there will be cures for cancer and I hope that there will be better prevention as well. We have a lot to learn yet about why cancerous cells form, but we have made a lot of progress recently. Better drugs and treatments have been developed. Treatments are getting more targeted as well. I saw a presentation last week about a radiation device that can be implanted in the body at the cancerous area so that it targets just that area. I do think that in our lifetime, we will see huge advances in this field.

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Cancer affects a lot of people so there’s a huge amount of research going on in this field (including work by our very own Jess!). So yes, I think in the future we will see better treatments for tackling the disease. There won’t be one single cure though, since there are so many different kinds of cancer.

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I don’t think there will be ONE cure for all cancers but we already have good drugs that can treat current cancers and some of the drugs do get rid of the cancer cells in the body!
      So I think in the future there will be different drugs ‘curing’ different cancers.

      I think the key is to also detect it early so the cancer is not yet ‘aggressive’ so we need very good tests to screen the population. e.g. breast and testicular cancers – we have very good diagnostic tests so we can screen people and treat them if cancerous cells are found in their body.
      Or maybe even to prevent cancer such as lifestyle choices.. no smoking and no binge drinking- will save lots of money and reduce risk of cancer. Fruit and veg are very good natural chemopreventives (things that will prevent cancer from occuring) so a diet rich in fruit and veg is recommended. Even chemicals in tomatoes, green tea and red wine contains ‘anti-oxidants’ and they are really good for you.. help get rid of the free radicals (really reactive chemicals that can cause cancer!).

      We still do not understand the biology of many cancer types so more time is needed to study them in order to create a really effective drug that will kill them!! e.g. pancreatic cancer is a big killer and we know hardly anything about it – what mutations causes the normal cells to become cancer cells.

      Like Christine have said, some patients with certain types of skin cancer can be cured after undergoing radiotherapy.

    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I hope so and I think we will make progress here soon. There are so many scientists working on this problem that we will hopefully start finding out some ways to beat it. The problem is that it can take many different forms as Jess explains above and this means we may not get a single cure that will work for everything.

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