Hi Anonymous,

What sets it off?
- Radiation, excessive X-ray exposure, chemotherapy, heriditary reasons, and a lot of cancerous diseases are idiopathic i.e. occur without a known reason.

Is it inside everyone, and if so why dose it only attack some people/animals?
- No it's not inside everyone. It attacks certain people due to the abovementioned reasons. Recent medical studies, however, claim that some people are more suspected to get cancer than others.

Whats cancers can be cured and how?
- Surgical removal of cancers is very successful in early treatment. Drugs that slows down body growth are useful too. Radical cure to cancer is not available yet. Benign tumors are easily treated than malignant tumors.

Why is it so deadly?
- Cancer is simply an enormous overgrowth and multiplication of body cells. As a result of this, a tumor of cells is formed. They keep on dividing and growing. They consume much nutrients that are supposed to be delivered to other healthy tissues. That's why cancerous patients grow weak until they slowly die.

When will they finally find a cure for all cancers?
- Well, nobody knows for sure.

Whats are the symptoms of different cancers?
- Most of cancers are asymptomatic i.e. they show no early symptoms. That is one reason cancer is a dangerous disease. For cancers keep on growing without the notice of the patient, until they change from benign into malignant, making treatment much more difficult. Early detected cancers are much more easily cured. However, some cancers show symptoms as: tenderness, pain, and acheness at the site of the tumor, general weakness, fevers, and headache.

What different type of cancers are there?
- There are numerous types of cancers that have been medically detected. There are cancers of skin, mucous membranes, glands, bones, muscles, retina, kidneys, liver, heart, spleen, gall bladder, intestine, stomach, esophagus, rectum, uterus, vagina, prostate, testis, and ovaries.

More info on cancer in Wikipedia.

Hope this helps

-- Edited by Dr Haisook at 21:40, 2006-05-27