Question: my sister suffers with heart cancer due to leucimia, what did the luecimia drugs do to her to give her cancer

Robert Insall answered on 9 Nov 2012:

The thing about cancer drugs at the moment is they’re a very very blunt tool. Most chemotherapy drugs work by killing all growing cells. They work because the cancers are the cells in your body that are growing the fastest, so they get killed first, but chemotherapy drugs are basically foul poisons that affect all of your body – that’s why they make your hair fall out, for example.
One of the common side-effects of chemotherapy is getting other cancers later, unfortunately. But you have to remember that a generation or 2 ago EVERYONE who had childhood leukaemia died, whereas now most children survive, even though a good few (like your sister, apparently) have side-effects. But a chance of side effects – even if they’re truly nasty – is way better than certainly dying, isn’t it?
Many of my pals in cancer research are working on chemotherapy drugs that are more specific at killing cancer cells and not harming normal cells. Most of them don’t work, yet (and some do). But we’ll keep trying. We really want it, but perhaps we aren’t clever enough yet.