• Question: How Long do you guys think it will take to find a cure for Cancer?

    Asked by Kajetan_KSM to Christie, Dan, David, Dawn, Sian on 15 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Fish 'n' Chips.
    • Photo: Dawn Lau

      Dawn Lau answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      This is a really complicated question, because cancer is actually several types of diseases! So there’s no definitive answer to this question.

      We already have treatments that work really well for some types of cancers. For example, melanoma (skin cancer) can be cured if it’s caught early, through surgery. Skin cancer in particular is easy to spot because people tend to notice abnormal things on their skin, like a weird mole.

      In most cases, cancer that is caught early has a higher chance of successful treatment. However, the hard part is that because cancer is caused by so many different factors, there isn’t one single cure to treat all cancers. Therefore researchers have to develop different treatments for different types of cancers, and some will be harder to treat than others. This is an area of intense research and we’ve come a long way, so we’re making successful progress in this field.

    • Photo: Sian Thomas

      Sian Thomas answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Great answer Dawn. But also there is the issue of factors that affect the growth of cancer. So we know that some foods contain chemicals that are carcinogenic. Of course, people are advised not to consume these but most of us don’t worry about the odd piece of burnt bacon (tastes yummy).

      So there is a balance between treatment and exposure – which is sometimes far removed from disease onset.

    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      I think we’re a long way yet from discovering a proper cure for cancer. As Dawn said, there are so many cancers and they all behave differently, have different genetic mutations and spread around the body differently. We’re doing better in understanding which parts of the body they are more likely to spread to, and which genetic mutations can lead to successful treatments though.

      There is a lot of money being spent on cancer research because more people are being affected, mostly because we are an ageing population (and old people are more likely to get cancer because they cant repair mistakes in their DNA as well as we can!) and developments in medicine mean we are living longer and more likely to get cancer.

      It’s hard to give a number for how many years we are from curing cancer, because we still don’t know enough about it! Hopefully we’ll have new treatments to at least stop it once it starts though!

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