• Question: What causes cancer??

    Asked by jesssica14 to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 9 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by mrquibble, lilzatron.
    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 9 Nov 2012:

      If I could answer that completely, it would be me and not that nice posh John Gurdon who won this year’s Nobel prize.

      One good answer is that things damage your genes, and sometimes the damaged genes make the cell go rogue.

      What damages your genes? Cigarette smoke (in the lungs); sunburn (for melanoma, my specialty, on the skin); but often bad luck. The process of cells digesting normal food is probably the worst cause of gene damage, and you can’t stop doing that…

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 9 Nov 2012:

      Hi jessica,
      almost all things known to “cause cancer” are not guaranteed to cause cancer. That’s why scientists talk about “risk factors”, instead of causes. Which means, that people who are exposed to this risk factors are more likely to get cancer than people who are not exposed. And while it is possible, that a smoking person will never get lung cancer, the risk of getting lung cancer (and other cancers) is much higher for smokers.
      Easiest-to-follow piece of advice to reduce your cancer risk: don’t smoke!
      Other things known to be risk factors additionally to the ones Robert mentioned: viruses, certain chemicals and radiation.

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      I wish I could answer that question! Although if you read a certain daily newspaper, they’d have you believe that almost everything causes cancer, even crayons! I’m not going to say which one – you’ll find it with some clever Google action!

      But cancer arises when genes become altered and cells begin to grow and reproduce without control. These growing cells can grow into a mass that becomes a tumour, and tumours can cause problems like stopping organs from working properly or from causing bleeding if they damage blood vessels. What we really need to understand is what causes the genes to alter – chemicals, toxic things, cell damage, radiation… all sorts of things that we get exposed to every day. We need to figure out how to best minimise the risk of being exposed to the bad stuff.

Comments

  • Photo: jesssica14

    jesssica14 commented on :

    Thank you all for your comments! I can’t believe that crayons could cause cancer! so is there anything that cannot cause cancer at all?? 🙂

    • Photo: Susanne

      Susanne commented on :

      yes, water built of normal stable isotopes 🙂
      You can hear a lot about this causes cancer, and this can prevent cancer… Most of the time they do not talk about anything that has to do with real life exposures. Who cares if you can get cancer if you eat 300 green-things-from tomatoes per day for 10 years? Noone, mmh?

  • Photo: Robert

    Robert commented on :

    Actually, eating normal food causes such a lot that many other things are probably irrelevant.

    • Photo: Susanne

      Susanne commented on :

      Reminds me of Anne Glover saying that GM food is not safe. Not because of the GM, but because eating ANY food is not 100 percent safe.
      Suggestion: Stop eating. Oh no, maybe that is not safe either? 🙂