• Question: Cancer is a known disease that kills a lot of persons. I would like to ask..... How frequently can a person have this disease and how?

    Asked by MarineBiologyFan to Sian, Max, Lizzie, Francis, Ben on 6 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Francis Man

      Francis Man answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I find the answer to this question quite scary… Apparently we have a 50% chance of being diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime. I found the information of the website of Cancer Research UK (http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/risk/lifetime-risk).

      The good news is that the survival rate had increased a lot over the last decades (you’ll find those numbers on the same website, under “Cancer survival statistics”), and that many of these cancers can be prevented (not smoking is a good way to reduce the risk of getting cancer).

    • Photo: Lizzie Wright

      Lizzie Wright answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      Francis answered this well, and he’s right, it can be scary. It is rare for one person to develop different kinds of cancers, but it is more common for the same kind of cancer to return or to spread to other places in the body. Lots of research is ongoing to investigate how cancer develops – this helps us to prevent it and develop treatments against it. Hopefully in the future, we will be able to reduce how many people get cancer and how many people can be treated.

    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      I agree with both of the answers below. There is a 50 % lifetime risk of cancer. A lot of the risk is due to us living older, as cancer primarily affects people as they get older. You never know though, some of us may develop cancerous cells which are destroyed by our immune system before they become detectable, so we may never know how high the number actually is. Finally, some cancers are so slow growing (some forms of prostrate cancer in men) that the person might actually die of old age before they die of the cancer.

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