• Question: If you can slow down cancers how do you think you cure it

    Asked by tom to Sarah, Mohan, Jen, Dan, Christopher on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Daniel Fovargue

      Daniel Fovargue answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Well, I guess if you can slow down both the growth and spreading of cancer to a great enough extent, then that sort of counts as curing it, as long as any existing tumours aren’t doing any harm.

      The problem is that slowing down cancer can have really bad side effects.

    • Photo: Mohan K

      Mohan K answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Chemotherapy slows down and shrinks tumours but it isn’t curative. To cure a cancer you must either cut it out or kill it.

      Normal procedure is to conduct surgery to cut it out and then delivery radiotherapy to the tumour site. The radiotherapy delivery a lethal radiation dose to a very small area of the body in a very contr0lled way to kill the cells there.

      Sometimes radiotherapy in conducted before surgery and sometimes without surgery.

    • Photo: Sarah De Vos

      Sarah De Vos answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      By treating cancers, e.g. by chemotherapy or radiotherapy you effectively shrink it and thus hopefully slow it down, or, ideally, cure it by removing the cancer completely. Technically we can only really say we have cured cancers if all of the cancer has been removed. This isn’t always possible sadly.

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