Question: Do you think the world will ever be cancer free ?

Matthew Lee answered on 10 Jun 2017:

This is really similar to another question so I’m going to use the same answer for that with a bit changed at the end.
No. I don’t think you can find a cure for cancer. The problem is, is that ‘cancer’ is hundreds of different diseases. Cancer means abnormal cell growth, which basically means that a cell has gone wrong and is growing and dividing and growing and dividing without stopping. And as you have about 200 different types of cell in the body that means you can get 200 different types of cancer. But the most difficult part is that every one of those 200 possible cancers will be completely different to someone elses. So for example if you have a cancer of a cell called ‘A’ and so does someone else, although you have the same cancer, the reason you have the cancer is different because each cancer is caused by a different set of mutations. So if 100 people have cancer ‘A’ they will all be similar but only some of them will be treated the same, the others will have to have special treatments that are targeted at their specific cancer – this is called personalised medicine (google it!).

In short, I don’t think the world will ever be cancer free because all cells have the ability to become cancers. But we now have the technology and medicine to treat cancer more effectively so people can beat it, so people can live with it, and so we can detect it earlier.