I have a cousin who is severely ill with brain cancer. I am struggling to deal with it. I cannot understand why medicine is finding it so hard to find an ultimate and final cure to this disease??!!?
You see so many people including many celebrities suffering from this disease. What will it take to bring it down?
The reason for this is that the concept of 'cancer' in the mind of lay people is incorrect. There is no single cancer. Each cancer is unique. It foremost depends on the type of cell, then on the mechanism the cancer started - some cancers in some cells start in a similar or even the same way, others start differently in the same cell type. Cancers can be inherited by a mutation which knocks out the anti-cancer genes in the cell or they can start de novo (anew).
Even one mutation is usually not enough, you need a multitude of events to combine to cause loss of cell growth control which ultimately causes the cell line to overgrow the other cells, break through surrounding tissues and break off and travel via blood or lymph to other remote sites and start to grow there. These cells can then mutate further. For some cancers causes have been found - eg a particular virus which incorporates it's DNA into the cell and so switches off the anti-cancer protection or stimulates increased growth via secondary means. It can be via chemicals - eg asbestos, or radiation both UV (sun) and ionizing (nuclear bomb). It can be via physical force. It can be via products of organisms. Reduced immunity for example someone who is on immunosuppressants can have increased risk of some cancers. People with HIV have increased risk of numerous cancers through direct HIV or indirect reduced immunity.
Anyhow cancers are complex and the problem is that there are so many types and while some have cures - some cures are as simple as enough Vitamin A others are just too difficult to decipher at this stage.
For example in the brain there are a variety of cells. There can therefore be a variety of tumours. There are also tumour subtypes and different grades of tumours from least aggressive to most aggressive. The brain is additionally tricky because location is more important in the brain then elsewhere because some tumours may be cut away, others partially while others not at all. If that's the case the whole brain radiation, localised radiation or chemotherapy are possible but most tumours respond poorly to that.
The key is avoidance of known risks (eg avoidance of smoking or avoidance or smoked foods to avoid stomach cancer or avoidance of carbon-chloride molecules to avoid bladder cancer), follow up if there is family history of inheritable cancers (eg some types of colon cancer, breast cancer) and early detection ie not leaving symptoms which in the beginning are usually very ubiquitous to the last moment. If something seems strange (atypical) and persists have it checked out. In some parts of the world where certain cancers are very prevalent screening programs are rigorously adhered to - eg in Japan they do gastroscopies after a certain age because of the high risk of stomach cancer. This is all avoidance or early detection as once many of these cancers get out of control there is often very little which can be done.
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