Cancer

[SHRED]

People say it all the time. That we need to find a cure for cancer.

But isn't it more complicated than that?
Isn't the word "cancer" a relatively generic term for a disease that takes many forms and therefore needs many different types of treatments and approaches?

We'd all love to see cancer eradicated but will there be one cure?

[sharp_stick]

1. You're absolutely right

cancer is an overarching term that covers thousands of different diseases. Breast cancer can form several different ways as can most of the other cancers.

There will probably never be a single cure unless there is ever found a common element to all of the cancer cells.

One of the biggest problems with cancer treatment is that cancer cells are in fact cells from the person with cancer. So when you kill them you also tend to kill a lot of the non-cancerous cells as well.

The new immuno-oncology drugs are very promising in that they are using the patients own immune system to recognize and attack the cancerous cells.

[SheilaT]

2. Yep. There is no one cancer.

The good news is that treatments, if not outright cures, have advanced a great deal since the 1950's. I can recall when a diagnosis of leukemia was invariably a death sentence. Now, most of the time it can be brought to remission. That's just one example. Cancer still kills, but not usually as swiftly or terribly as it used to.

If you haven't yet read The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, I highly recommend it.