• Question: what is cancer ?

    Asked by rmills to Wei, Rebecca on 17 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Rebecca Handley

      Rebecca Handley answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Cancer is a disease that affects almost all forms of life. Your body is made up of hundreds of cells, each of these cells have different functions and these functions are highly controlled. Cancer is caused by renegade cells who are damaged/mutated and are no longer controlled by the body. Without control they divide and multiply rapidly. Usually your immune system recognises these cells and destroys them before they spread more than a few millimetres. But if the cells spread and reach a blood vessel they can be spread all over your body, which makes it harder for immune system to fight. Its once a dividing cancerous cell had reached a blood vessel that its called malignant.

    • Photo: Wei Xun

      Wei Xun answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Cancer is the name for a group of diseases defined as having cells that do not stop growing and invades the parts of the body nearby, or some of these cells can go into the blood vessels and lodge somewhere else and grow again, this is called metastasis.

      You see your cells know exactly what to do, they will grow when they’ve been told by the body (via various hormones etc), and they know when to divide into two, and when to die, ie when they’re damaged. But when their genes have been damaged in a particular way and somehow the body isn’t able to repair them, then they will not listen to the signals for them to just die and continue to grow. This will go unchecked until the tumour is big enough to be detected and treated. So the earlier the tumour can be found, the better the chance of a full recovery.

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