Question: What's the difference between a cure for cancer and the current treatment?

Josh Meyers answered on 18 Jun 2015:

When treating cancer, scientists tend to be very careful about using the word ‘cure’. This is because many current treatments merely control the cancer or slow its progression rather than fully cure it.

Also, many cancers can be controlled with current therapies for a limited time before the cancer mutates, and finds a way to become resistant to treatment.

For these reasons, cancer is often ‘controlled’ rather than cured. If we found a new treatment that would stop cancer mutating. Or that was effective in all mutant forms of disease. Then maybe we would be closer to using the word ‘cure’.