• Question: How does cancer start?

    Asked by to Claire, Elizabeth, Manolis, Mark, Zach on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Claire Vinten

      Claire Vinten answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Great question

      Cancer is when the tiny cells that make up animals (including humans) grow too fast. Cells die all the time in our bodies, and that is normal. To replace them we need our cells to ‘replicate’ – this just means to make an identical copy of themselves. So if one cells replicates you end up with two cells. Cells get lots of signals from the body telling them when to start replicating and when to stop replicating. Cancer happens when there is a problem with the ‘off button’. The cells should not be replicating any more, but they can’t hear the body telling them to stop. So they just keep going and going and going and going and going and going…..

      Then we have too many cells! When there are hundreds of thousands of replicating cells, you can see them – they form a tumour.

      The problem is these nasty cells that have taken up all the space stop the nice normal cells from working properly. And the nasty cells still keep going and going and going and going…..

      The nasty cells grow much faster than the normal cells too, which makes the problem worse. Eventually, there will be so many nasty cells that the body can’t function properly any more.

      Does that make sense?

      😀

    • Photo: Zach Dixon

      Zach Dixon answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      To follow on from Claire’s answer, there are a number of ways in which this problem with the ‘off button’ can happen – but we can never tell for sure exactly how a persons cancer started.

      Smoking is by far the biggest risk for causing cancer. Each cigarette has 100s of cancer causing chemicals in and can lead to the problem with the off button in the cells of your lungs.

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