Since President Nixon announced the “War on Cancer” 54 years ago, an estimated one trillion dollars has been spent trying to cure cancer. We have a few cures today, but still, there is no one generalized “cure” for cancer. Why? To answer this, let’s look closer at cancer and why it is not just one disease, but thousands of different diseases.
- At its basic level, cancer is the uncontrolled overgrowth of our body’s own cells, such that, in the end, the cancer overtakes the body’s function to live. One problem is that, even within a single tumor, cancer cells are not identical. If treatment kills one group of sensitive cells, resistant groups can survive and multiply.
- Since cancer derives from the body’s own cells, it is incredibly difficult to design a treatment that would be a magic bullet that would kill the cancer without harming healthy tissue.
- Cancer cells develop sophisticated ways to avoid our natural immune system. They can disguise themselves as healthy tissue, making them invisible to the body’s own natural defense.
- Each patient’s cancer has a unique DNA mutation signature. Unfortunately, many different DNA signatures can give rise to the same cancer. For example, three people with Stage 2 breast cancer can actually have three different DNA profiles. So, in effect, we need three different methods to treat these three different DNA cancers. Multiply that by the 2,300,000 new cases of breast cancer each year in the United States, and you can see how enormous the problem is.
The road to finding a cure for cancer will be long and probably never-ending. But don’t lose all hope, as there are preventive measures you can undertake to decrease your incidence of developing cancer. More on that next week.
Dr. Charlie Barnett is a contributor to KnoxTNToday, where he writes a weekly column, DocTalk, sharing his expertise on health and wellness management.
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