• Question: why are some people more prone to cancer than others?

    Asked by lauranorder to Mark, Paul on 25 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 25 Jun 2010:

      Good question!

      It’s because of how cancer works. Cancer is a disease where cells divide uncontrollably. For that to happen 7 pathways in the cell all need to go wrong and fail. As you need more than one pathway to fail you can still live with some of those pathways broken.

      So this is why people are more prone – the people that are more prone have some of those pathways already broken (the genes not producing the correct protein) so they need less things to break to get cancer so it’s more likely

      Does that answer the qu?

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 25 Jun 2010:

      I’m not a biologist, but I think it is mainly a genetic thing. There do seem to be some environmental factors that can affect this as well, such as living in areas where there have been radiation leaks (e.g. Chernobyl, or after the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or where certain chemicals are polluting the ground or water.

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