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Cancer is a dangerous disease. In the U.S., it is responsible for 25% of all deaths. More than 60% percent of the cancer deaths worldwide are caused by factors which people can influence. You can think of the consuming of tobacco and alcohol and low fruit and vegetable diets. Other cancer causing factors are obesity and overweight.
For years scientists have been working on cures to combat cancer. The knowledge we learned from investigations can be used to create better ways of treating cancer.
Of course, preventing is always better than curing, so I think that we should pay more attention to e.g. anti-tobacco campaigns. However, just preventing cancer won’t be enough. There will always have to be a proper treatment.
Creating cancer therapies is very difficult. A lot of cancer-cells can develop a resistance against the cure they’re being exposed to. To make the matter worse, there is also a so-called multidrug resistance. This means that if you expose cancer-cells to a certain treatment, they develop resistance not only to that drug, but also to others. |
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Upcoming cures
We’ve got life, the growth of organisms and cell renewal thanks to cell division. However, in cancer, this has got out of control. Cancer cells are in fact just like other cells except for one characteristic: they are reproducing and dividing instead of dying off. Scientists are trying to map the genetic codes of cancer cells.
When these codes are mapped, it is easier to create treatments which only work against the cancer cells.
Chemotherapy doesn’t discriminate between healthy cells and dangerous ones, but also works on other quickly dividing cells just as hair follicles. This is what causes the undesired side-effects.
The best way of combating cancer is by diagnosing it early.
By looking at the genes of a person, doctors are already able to detect some upcoming cancers. But if doctors are able to map the entire gene map of cancer, they are allowed to pick out people who are likely to develop cancer.
When people who are likely to develop cancer know this in an earlier stage, the treatments can be much more effective.
Eventually, it would even be possible to implant a ‘gene chip’ which detects signs of cancer causing gene-mutations!
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