Question: if there is a cure for cancer, why don't we use it?

Helen Pritchard-Smith answered on 24 Jun 2013:

Cancer refers to a general type of disease, there are a lot of different types, they can occur in different parts of the body. Some cancers are benign (they stay where they first grow in the body) this is less dangerous as it can normally be removed by surgery and chemo- and or radiotherapy can be given to ensure it there are no cancer or tumour cells left after the surgery.

If cancer is metastatic bits of the original cancer tumour break off and travel around the body hence primary (original tumour) and secondary cancers (tumours that have broken off the first one and settled in another part of the body).

This is why some cancers can be cured and others can’t, it depends on the type of cancer the patient’s have. Cancer happens when your own bodies cells stop working properly, our bodies are good at adapting and so are cancer cells. One of the major problems are that cancer cells get used to certain treatments like chemotherapy, they become “resistant” which means we can’t use our most effective cancer killing methods on it.

Our bodies have evolved over many millions of years so it is a case of finding a way to get round a system that is much more advanced than the treatments we throw at it. Cancer researchers are trying very hard and treatments will continue to improve and with them survival rates.

If there was a cure, it would be used.