Question: HI im a scientist i do you think that there will be a cure fo cancer

Claire Lee answered on 18 Jun 2013:

Yes I do!

You know, there are a lot of different types of cancers. There is one that affects women called HPV, but men can be carriers. It’s actually a virus, and now there’s a vaccine available for it! Winner!

Then, there are things like skin cancer or breast cancer. They difficult because you usually only catch them really late, but if you catch them early enough there are treatments like chemo or radiation that can get rid of the cancer completely.

But there are other types of cancer that we can only get rid of for a while, but know they’ll come back at some point (this is called being in remission). Any cancer at all is horrible, but I personally think this is the worst. My dad has one of these types – it’s called multiple myeloma, and he was first diagnosed with it 10 years ago (in 2003). He was lucky enough to just make it into the aggressive treatment, which after a few months of chemo put the cancer back in remission. The doctors gave him 7-10 years to live. That was 10 year ago.

Since then, the cancer has come back twice. Each time, the treatment has been different, because there have been such advances in the field, with new treatments to try, and both times he has beaten the cancer back into remission. (It’s not as great as it sounds – he is in a lot of pain, as the cancer ate away at the bone in his back. He used to be taller than me, now he is shorter. And he deals with pain every day. And the cancer is back again, but not enough to warrant treatment. But he is alive!)

My point is, there are teams and teams of people working on new and better treatments for the different types of cancer. Some of them we can cure already! Some of them we can’t. But as long as we have people working on it, there will be new ideas that could one day be “the one”.