• Question: is it possible to actually rip up cancer.

    Asked by labrat to Catherine, Charlotte, Colin, Becki, Rick on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Charlotte Dalton

      Charlotte Dalton answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Well I guess radiotherapy kind of rips up cancer cells using radiation, the problem with doing anything physical to cancer cells is that they can be deep in the body and hard to get to, and you might damage healthy cells too. If someone has a tumour surgeons often try and cut it out but it is really hard to get it all

    • Photo: Rebecca Scott

      Rebecca Scott answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      hmmm… I don’t know. But I found this website had some interesting info about cancer and how it develops and spreads http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/cancerlibrary/what-is-cancer

    • Photo: Colin Swift

      Colin Swift answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      It is possible to kill cancer cells using radiation – Radiotherapy as Charlotte points out. Cancer cells are less tolerant to radiation than normal cells so by targeting the tumor, and hitting it repeatedly over a number of days the tumor can be killed off. There are side effects of the radiation dose, but by targeting the radiation these can be minimised.
      Some sorts of cancer can also be treated with light – using photodynamic therapy, but this currently is limited to tumors that are not too thick (i.e. skin cancer).
      The use of drugs is also employed (chemotherapy) and is often employed alongside radiotherapy to maximise the cure rate.

    • Photo: Catherine Fontinelle

      Catherine Fontinelle answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Kidney stones can get shaken to bits by sound waves so maybe there’s some way of painting a target on a tumour and shaking it to bits?

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