• Question: what is blood cancer

    Asked by freyas to Zach, Claire, Elizabeth, Manolis, Mark on 11 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Zach Dixon

      Zach Dixon answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Hi 🙂

      Blood cancer happens when the cells of the blood grow out of control because of faulty DNA (the instructions that tell a cell how to behave).

    • Photo: Claire Vinten

      Claire Vinten answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      All types of cancer involve cells growing too fast, when they shouldn’t be. This causes damage to the body – because suddenly there are thousands of cells in the way that shouldn’t be there.

      Blood is full of cells, the liquid part of blood carries these cells around the body. Some of them are called White blood cells – these white cells kill anything bad that gets into the blood, like bacteria. They make up part of our ‘immune system’ – have you heard of that before? It’s what stops us getting ill all the time, by fighting off diseases.

      In blood cancer – also called leukaemia – the part of the body that makes the white blood cells (called bone marrow – but don’t worry about this part too much) goes into overdrive. It makes far too many white blood cells, but the worst part is that none of them work properly. Infact, the bone marrow is making so many cells so quickly that it doesn’t finish making them and puts them into the blood before they are complete cells. This means that they can’t work properly at all, and the person with the cancer doesn’t have an immune system that works.

      Does that make sense? 🙂

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