Forums → WEPR → Cancer

Yup. Cell phones and TV cause cancer. The Sun causes cancer too. Of course we all know that constantly talking on the phone sends too many signals into the brain and can cause cancer. The Sun can cause skin cancer. And some say that the electronic signals from the TV can cause cancer (I'm still not convinced). But using these things in excess can be dangerous. I think the point is that we should not use cancerous causing agents in excess.

But cancer is scary, even the thought of having it. I had a lump on one of my testicles that was causing tons of pain. I scheduled an appointment, but I couldn't get in for two weeks. Those were the worst weeks of my life, thinking that I had cancer (not to mention the unimaginable pain). Luckily it was just a badly swollen infection the could be fixed with medicine. It's a scary thing.

cancer really cant be cured very easily if it has gone to alot of parts of your body. scientists say a very good way is to laugh and be happy

Oh goody! I think there's actually quite a bit of insight in this quote:

Everything causes it, you can't escape, can't even escape talking about it... BTW, this forum causes cancer.

Aye that cancer is a cause for concern, but I feel society has overinflated its threat. Hell, everything's a cancer risk these days.

I think the point that Strop is trying to make (and one with which I would agree) is that we can only determine correlation, but not causation.
There are people who think that living near high voltage power lines cause cancer, but there's just no demonstrable proof of that. There are so many environmental factors in a person's life that to determine a "cause" of cancerous cells is nigh impossible. That's why so many things are said to "cause" cancer because we just can't determine certain sources. In addition, the formation of cancerous cells is a very complex process which we don't really fully understand, so to try to work backwards using an incomplete principal leaves a lot of room for error.
We have reached a point where we are confusing correlation for causation (if there even is such a thing) and we don't know how to tell the difference. It's like me saying that eating fruit causes death because everyone who has ever eaten fruit has died or will die.

You're on the right track...well, saying that cancer is always in your body can be true in a limited sense, but before people start running about in a headless panic...

It's "Let's see how much off the top of my head I can remember time!!!"

* Cancer, or, to use the broader term neoplasia, is when a group of cells enter an 'altered' state. Cancer, in this context, means something quite specific, which I'll get into in a bit.

* The mechanisms for this vary. A cell could have been damaged and not repaired/not destroyed, there could be a number of growth factors that aren't being properly regulated etc. etc. Whatever it is, cancer will always involve your body's own cells (actually...there are super rare cases where a person actually has cells that are not theirs incorporated into their tissues but I must stress, this is like one-in-a-billion, but I digress.)

So in this way, yes, so long as you have a body that has cells that are reproducing, you could get cancer. How likely this is varies is all.

* What's important to note is that two conditions for a neoplasm (tumor) to form must be satisfied: a predisposition for the tissues concerned to form such (the 'lying dormant' part), and some kind of trigger or precipitating event (the 'wakes up' part).

* There are a number of features involved in a neoplasm: most essential is state where their growth rate compared to their death rate is greater than is typical for their tissues. This is why a cancer is thought of as a growing mass.

* Other things can happen to the cells- often they have some other genetic alterations that cause them to change appearance and function too. The exact nature of this is often a good indicator of just how 'nasty' the neoplasm is.

* There are different types of neoplasm! The ones that appear to be controlled such that it is either contained, grows very slowly, or otherwise seems harmless are known as a 'benign tumor'. However, the nastier ones and those that are more likely to spread/grow faster are known as 'malignant tumors'. It is these that are properly referred to as cancer.

Cancer is as varied as the tissues in our body, heck, it can be as varied as our genetic code even. You can think of it as "the mutants that slipped through the gaps", seeing as ordinarily, mutated/damaged cells are cleaned up. However, in the event that all the checks don't work as they should, you can end up with this cancerous tissue pretty much running amok and living for itself as opposed to getting along with the rest of your body. Furthermore bits of it can break off and spread to other tissues- this is known as metastasis. That's probably the worst thing that could happen, as far as cancers go.

One very important thing to note in all of this is that we're noticing cancer a lot now because we're not dying of other things like infectious diseases, parasites and starvation/hypothermia/mortal injury nearly as much. Your body does its best to fix itself as it goes along but simply put, the longer you live, the more run down it gets and the more likely it is that your body's quality control might stuff up. But even in this, not all things were created equal.

omg, hello Moe!

Yes, my previous post was directed @Bigbowla...but Moe's nailed what I was trying to say.

It's just that when somebody reads "the word 'cause' should not exist" I would expect them to have a bit of a WTF moment!

Yeah, cancer does stick out precisely because it involves 'you' material as opposed to foreign stuff (hence the difficulty in finding cures, though there's lots of promise on the horizon!) Rays and radiation play a huge part of it- notably ionising radiation (which can knock various sub-atomic particles out of whack depending on the type of radiation), or, much more commonly, UV light, which can damage the skin.

Speaking of which, skin cancer (particularly melanoma but really a whole range of types) is a huge problem in beach-crazy countries like Australia. I don't exactly know if that would contribute the most, since I'm not sure on the measure of significance either, but certainly a big one.

@Strop: Congrats on the progress for medical student-ness. If you practice medicine half as well as you post, you'll save a lot of lives.

I think a good point has been made, that the causes of cancer are myriad, and there's not a lot of point in freaking out so much over them. Like the plastic recall because some baby bottle had a chance of causing cancer. The chance was something ridiculously low, especially compared to environmental factors. I think you had a higher risk of getting skin cancer from a 5 minute jog in the sun than if you rolled around in these bottles and drank out of them everyday for a decade. (ok, I may be exaggerating, but you get the point). At some point, we're going to have to accept some risk in our lives; shouldn't we look at the things that have the highest risk now instead of nebulous half-proved things like power-lines?

sum1 shud bloody cure it and pull their fingers out its serious.

@woody_7007

Cancer is not something that can have a cure. There are so many types of cancers in so many forms. There's brain, stomach, throat, oral, lung, liver, skin, bone, breast cancer and so many more. Each type is so different. For instance, testicular cancer has a near 99% cure rate. While lung cancer has no better than a 33% success rate. It's because enough research was put into it and testicular cancer was solved. Each cancer type will take billions, if not trillions of dollars to effectively cure, which is why there is no "one size fits all" cure.

ye but cancer is similar just rogue bodily cells becoming tumours. Its just where it is in the body that decides its name i thout anyways. Also if u can cure it it would be worth spending the money because it kills so many people

Thanks, Kane. I'm actually really flattered.

We pour a huge amount of money into curing cancer in all its forms, actually- it commands huge pulling power in terms of funding, and insofar as the practice of medicine is justified then this is money well spent, since cancer (in its totality) does happen to be one of the most significant morbidities, at least according to the World Health Organisation.

As thelistman points out, different strategies work differently on different cancers. The range of interventions commonly undertaken today involves physical removal (resection of skin cancers, colonoscopies, mastectomies), radiological (chemotherapy, radioactive beads), or a mix of both. The limitation of all these approaches is that we need to be able to physically locate the cancerous tissues, and it's best if we can clearly define the borders of said tissue and affect as little healthy tissue as possible. Ironically, the kinds of cancers that allow for this are the ones that aren't as likely to require such dramatic interventions.

This is why lately we've directed our attention to finding out "what makes cancer different from the rest of us?" One of the most recent innovations in cancer cures is genetically-modified viruses that will only target cancerous cells. Research on this has been going on for some years but apparently in the last three or so years this approach has yielded some promising breakthroughs.

Also:

At some point, we're going to have to accept some risk in our lives; shouldn't we look at the things that have the highest risk now instead of nebulous half-proved things like power-lines?

Sucks.

We have no control over it.

It's going to take over the world.

Kind of like the oil companies...