Question: What is cancer and why is it so difficult to find a cure? Is it a type of bacteria

Jess Bean answered on 19 Jun 2013:

Thats a great question piwikiwi!

Cancer is a disease that affects the cells in your body. Normally they grow and divide at a normal rate, which means your body can constantly grow and develop. Cancer occurs when cells in your body stop growing normally and instead grow too quickly – this causes things called tumours which invade other parts of the body.

Scientists have done loads of work on cancer cells and why normal cells turn into cancer cells. Around 95% cancers are caused by your environment. These are things like smoking, the sun, eating bad food and drinking too much alcohol. The other 5% of cancers are genetic – that is that they are because of problems with your DNA that has been passed down from your parents.

It’s so hard to find a cure because there are hundreds of different cancers, all of which need a different cure. Because cancer is a problem with your cell’s DNA, we have to learn exactly which bit of DNA is damaged.

The last bit is actually quite interesting. It is thought that around 18% cancers are caused by viruses, but also bacteria and parasites. One of the vaccinations that you may have at school at 16 is now the HPV vaccine – HPV is a virus that is known to cause cervical cancer.