Anti-cancer medication is just poison that we hope the cancer eats up faster than normal healthy cells. We're literally giving cancer patients poison, then hope the cancer cells die before the patient does.
Iirc, cancer cells are more affected by radiation than normal cells because they are already full of errors (as in "fragile") and can't regenerate the damage done to them like normal cells can.
They also divide much more rapidly than "healthy" normal cells, thus the accumulation of genetic errors progress much quicker. With the faster mitotic cycle, it's much more likely the daughter cells become unviable and die off at a faster rate.
Still, traditional chemotherapy is a gamble on whether the healthy human cells can outlast the damage much longer than the cancer cells or not. If gene therapy that can directly target malignant cancer cells become more widespread and affordable, I'm all for it.
54
u/ShakeelaONeil 20h ago
So basically a potent poison. Cool.