• Question: what causes cancer?

    Asked by Daanish_Latif to Paul, MarthaNari, Jonny, Hannah, Alison on 20 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 20 Jun 2015:

      There’s a lot of things that can cause cancer. Some are related to our lifestyle, like smoking and alcohol consumption, others are caused by our genes, and genetic things we’ve inherited, and others are caused by things like UV light. There’s a really in depth discussion of all of these on this website: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer.

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      Heya Latif, to add a bit of fluff to what Paul said:
      Basically, cancer cells are just normal body cells that have gone crazy and started multiplying pointlessly. Some things make it more likely for your cells to go crazy – for example, when your body constantly has to repair itself because of challenges from the environment (e.g. smoking, UV light, being around chemical waste etc.).
      The funny thing is, our immune system is generally really good at recognizing ‘crazy’ cells and killing them. Our body probably kills a few thousand cancer cells every day. No big deal. So why do some of those cells escape capture and start growing into big colonies (i.e. tumors)? Some of the answer can lie in your genes – they could make you body more likely to grow certain cancer cells, or your immune system less good at killing them. Another possibility is that your immune system might be weakened, for example by constant stress.

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