Cancer: when cells go wrong

I don’t think anyone has not been touched in one way or another by cancer; either having been diagnosed or knowing someone else who has been.  Cancer can show itself in countless ways, but the most common cancers are of the lung, prostate, breast, skin, colon and leukemia (cancer of the blood).
I just wanted to briefly tell you what cancer is, its most common causes and current treatments.
All of our body’s cells are truly magnificent machines. There is a mechanism in them that tells them to multiply, in order to replace them when they are damaged or dying. It is this same mechanism that heals cuts in our skin. New skin cells are multiplied off of the ones that are on the cut edge. They start multiplying, and continue until they bump into cells on the other side of the cut. When they are touching other skin cells, the multiplication slows back down to normal. It’s like they flip an ‘off switch’. Really cool, huh. 
Sometimes though, a cell will either be copied wrong, or gets changed by other things like, infection, radiation, or irritation, so that it doesn’t have an ‘off switch’. These cells start duplicating themselves, so that all the copies are also broken and a chain reaction of cells mass-producing begins. This, in its simplest form, is cancer. Where this uncontrolled growth of cells occurs, determines the type of cancer it is. For example uncontrolled growth of skin cells is carcinoma or melanoma; breast tissue is breast cancer; bladder tissue is bladder cancer, etc.
The difference between malignant and benign cancers is simple. If the uncontrolled cell growth invades surrounding tissue and spreads to other parts of the body, it is malignant. If it stays local and doesn’t threaten surrounding areas, it is benign.
Now of course, these definitions I am giving you are very simple, but I just wanted to make sure we knew the basics.
Treatments include surgery to remove the affected area, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Surgery removes the cancer cells physically and also removes some of the healthy tissues that surround it. Often you will hear terms like “clean margins”. Although not a guarantee that all the cancer was removed, when it was cut out it was surrounded by healthy cells. Radiation does the same thing by using radiation to mutate the cells to the point where they can no longer multiply. This also destroys some of the surrounding area to help ensure that all of the cancer is treated. Chemotherapy floods the affected person’s body with cancer killing drugs to treat cancers that are either too risky or resistant to operate or radiate. This treatment usually results in hair loss and other side effects like nausea and weakness. Combinations of these treatments are often used to increase the likelihood of success.
Next week I will share with you some of the ‘cutting edge’ treatments that seem to promise to turn the “big C” into the “little c”.  Be sure to send your science related questions or comments to sciguy@gonzalescannon.com.